| Description |
How do leaders make decisions? What explains the foreign policies of states in the international system? This course critically evaluates alternative models of foreign policy decision-making. It is designed to survey prominent theories in this field including rational choice, psychological approaches, organizational and bureaucratic politics, norms and ideas, strategic culture, and groupthink. In addition to discussions of theories, the course uses evidence from American, Soviet, British, and Israeli decision-making behaviors to test the empirical validity of different theories in important historical episodes. |