Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making presents a psychological approach to foreign policy decision making. This approach focuses on the decision process, dynamics, and outcome. The book includes a wealth of extended real-world case studies and examples that are woven into the text. The cases and examples, which are written in an accessible style, include decisions made by leaders of the United States, Israel, New Zealand, Cuba, Iceland, United Kingdom, and others. In addition to coverage of the rational model of decision making, levels of analysis of foreign policy decision making, and types of decisions, the book includes extensive material on alternatives to the rational choice model, the marketing and framing of decisions, cognitive biases, and domestic, cultural, and international influences on decision making in international affairs. Existing textbooks do not present such an approach to foreign policy decision making, international relations, American foreign policy, and comparative foreign policy.

This textbook analyzes eight crucial foreign policy decisions of the 1970s and 1980s, emphasizing how decision-making is influenced by the social characteristics of Third World states and their position in the global system. Chapter 1 situates the Third World in the global system and traces the evolu

This affordable text offers a clear, concise and readable narrative and analytical history of American foreign policy since the Spanish-American War. Special attention is given to the controversial issues and contrasting views that surround major wars and foreign policy decisions that the United States has made from 1895 to the present. The book narrates events and policies but goes further to emphasize the international setting and constraints within which American policy-makers had to operate, the domestic pressures on those policy-makers, and the ideologies, preferences, and personal idiosyncrasies of the leaders themselves.

This classic work has helped shape the field of international relations and especially influenced scholars interested in how foreign policy is made. At a time when conventional wisdom and traditional approaches are being questioned, and when there is increased interest in the importance of process, the insights of Snyder, Bruck and Sapin have continuing and increased relevance. Prescient in its focus on the effects on foreign policy of individuals and their preconceptions, organizations and their procedures, and cultures and their values, "Foreign Policy Decision-Making" is of continued relevance for anyone seeking to understand the ways foreign policy is made. Their seminal framework is here complemented by two new chapters examining its influence on generations of scholars, the current state of the field, and areas for future research.

The first edition of Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy is one of the most successful Brookings titles of all time. This thoroughly revised version updates that classic analysis of the role played by the federal bureaucracy—civilian career officials, political appointees, and military officers—and Congress in formulating U.S. national security policy, illustrating how policy decisions are actually made. Government agencies, departments, and individuals all have certain interests to preserve and promote. Those priorities, and the conflicts they sometimes spark, heavily influence the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. A decision that looks like an orchestrated attempt to influence another country may in fact represent a shaky compromise between rival elements within the U.S. government. The authors provide numerous examples of bureaucratic maneuvering and reveal how they have influenced our international relations. The revised edition includes new examples of bureaucratic politics from the past three decades, from Jimmy Carter's view of the State Department to conflicts between George W. Bush and the bureaucracy regarding Iraq. The second edition also includes a new analysis of Congress's role in the politics of foreign policymaking.

The quest for a viable policy toward the Third World will be a dominant theme in U.S. foreign policy throughout this decade. But before any judgments can be made about the range of choices for U.S. policymakers, it is necessary to understand the pressures that are likely to confront developing nations during the 1980s as well as the efforts of these nations as a group to extract greater resources and attention from the international system. This book considers policy responses that have been and are likely to be implemented by developing nations as they face increasing pressures in the areas of food, energy, trade, and debt – the main areas of interaction within the international system. The author also presents an analysis of how the North-South Dialogue functions and why it has produced so few genuine settlements, providing an additional perspective on whether the pressures on the developing countries might be diminished by successful global negotiations. The conclusions reached by examining policy responses and the Dialogue itself provide the basis for a number of specific policy prescriptions. They also help to establish a framework within which U.S. policy initiatives toward the Third World must be formed. The two concluding chapters discuss these policy choices in detail, carefully analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of persisting in present policies, attempting a genuine global restructuring, choosing to concentrate attention on a few "new influentials" in the Third World, and trying to construct a new approach out of selected elements of the other policy approaches.