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6.10.2024

Section I. Theories of Decisionmaking

Prompt#2

Individual leaders on foreign policy decisionmaking

Foreign policy decisionmaking heavily affects the interests of states, bureaucracies,

organizations, and individuals. Humans as decisionmaking process actors, have significant

influence on all dimensions of decisionmaking progress. According to father of behavior

approach – H. Eulau, who has famously argued that “The root is man” (Eulau). Indeed, humans

have always played an important role in decisionmaking, either directly alter the decisionmaking,

or indirectly using agencies to leverage on the process of decisionmaking. When set human

beings in different circumstances and empower them different roles, or, when the decision types

are different, they will interact and respond differently based upon many factors such as mindset

rationality, biased perception, organizational interests, and bargaining power. Therefore, in

foreign policy decisionmaking, behaviors derived from humans matters a lot in the process of

decisionmaking, which allow us to focus more on individuals and their leveraging agencies,

rather than traditional IR theories of states focusing, to learn how individual behaviors could

influence the foreign policy decisionmaking process. Therefore, the essay argues that individual

leaders have great amount of influence on foreign policy decisionmaking especially in the

unitary models of Rational Actor Model (RAM) and Psychological Model on rational choices

and cognitive perception by leaders; and also on non-unitary models of Organization Decision

Making (ODM) and Bureaucratic Politics (BP) on leveraging Standard Operating Procedures

(SOPs) and impacting negotiating process.

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The influence of individual leaders in foreign policy decisionmaking can be direct or

indirect. The direct influence of individuals could be explained by RAM model and

Psychological Model, which both started from the analysis of individual actors themselves, such

as their rationality in decisionmaking paradigm of utility maximization, and their bias perception

of values in information processing in decisionmaking. They are the direct analysis of decision

makers. The indirect influence of individuals could be interpreted by ODM and BP model, which

both of them focus on how individuals role in their decisionmaking agencies such as

organization and the bureaucratic bargaining process. They put individuals in a group

environment which have many interests being involved to exam how individuals based upon the

previous experiences and bureaucratic interests to react and results in decisionmaking.

The understanding of the RAM model is essential to the direct influence of individual

leaders on decisionmaking. The RAM model is an unitary model of individual decisionmaking

which assumes that decision makers (DM) will accurately measure costs, benefits, and risks for

all available options, and select with the option with highest expected utility. It it a natural and

intuitive direct analysis to individual decision makers. It assumes that individuals have complete

information for each options of decisionmaking and understand the information in a way that can

based upon their rationality to conduct a risk and cost benefits calculation to evaluate potential

outcome and maximize future utility by comparing and contrasting those options, then further

influence the decisionmaking. The RAM model emphasizes on the reasoning processing of

individual DMs based upon their rationality to generate future bundles of options in

decisionmaking. It follows an option generating paradigm for DMs. DMs immerse themselves in

certain contexts and based on logical assessment derived from their values to perceive and

understand information, then identify problems. From the available information and their values,

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their rationality of maximization of utility incentivize DMs to conduct a reasoning process to

identify goals in decisionmaking from risk and cost evaluation. In order to achieve rational goals,

DMs will list and evaluate those alternatives and then finally make a rational choice with the

highest expected utility. For example, in the case of secret bombing in cambodia, Nixon

administration as single unit rational DM, thought and chose the option of expansion of war to

Cambodia quickly due to the pressure from stoping the war and election. The primary goal set by

the Nixon administration was to disrupt the North Vietnamese supply lines and sanctuaries in

Cambodia. They listed the bundles of options such as ground invasion and secret bombing based

upon the available information, and then evaluate and decided that expand the war to Cambodia

is necessary. Through the entire rational paradigm, it allows the rational actors to generate

bundles of options based on information and choose the one that with the highest utility and the

lowest cost from the reasoning process, and then leads to rational decisionmaking from

individual leaders.

The influence of individual leaders in RAM model can be measured by examining the

decisions themselves and the extent to which they align with the leader’s stated rational goals

and risk benefits calculations. In RAM model, the ultimate decisionmaking is the output from

bundles of options after careful rational evaluation. Therefore, the effectiveness of the goal in

decisionmaking reflects individual DM’s reasoning process’s efficiency. If the decisionmaking

results to successfully achieve the setting rational goals from individual leaders and bring a better

status or position to the subject that the individual representing, it can be measured as a reflection

of successful leaders decisionmaking. It can be exemplified by Nixon’s decision to secretly

bombing in Cambodia, which serves as a successful measure case of individual’s influence in

decisionmaking. The strategic rationale of Nixon can be seem as weakening North Vietnamese

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forces and improving negotiation terms, and reflects his goal of utilizing military force to

leverage to diplomatic goals. From the bundles of options, Nixon chose the one that accords

with the setting goals and the consequence of the bombing is the immediate success in disrupting

enemy operations and the eventual deeper U.S. involvement in Cambodia, which illustrate both

the immediate and long-term impacts of Nixon’s decision. His decisionmaking from many

potential possibilities caused a successful US strategic position in the war and a better election

status for himself. It disclosed that his rational evaluation and risk analysis conducted in a

positive manner that is able to allow his influence in decisionmaking to turn to a successful result

that align with his rationality. In other words, his rationality in decisionmaking process leads to

successful outcome that closely align with his representing interests, which in the RAM model, it

can be seem as the positive influence of individual leader. Therefore, the influence measure of

RAM model of individual leaders in decisionmaking is the effectiveness of the consequences of

decisionmaking itself in aligning with individual actors’ risk evaluation and utility maximization.

The understanding of the Psychological model is also crucial to the direct influence of

individual leaders on decisionmaking. While the RAM model focuses on the decisionmaking

moment of rational individual leaders, the Psychological Model emphasizes on individuals’ the

psychological and cognitive factors that influence how individual leaders perceive and respond

to the information processing then further impact the rational decisionmaking paradigm. Human

perception to the environment is an important psychological factor that impact decisionmaking.

Johnson and Tversky argued that the risk perception and cognition affects the information

processing to further influence the decisionmaking (Johnson and Tversky). Through the

influence of individual perception, the psychological model will leverage information processing

to the final rational decisionmaking of individual leaders as an inevitable human brain processing

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mechanism. Humans are biased perceiver of information and tend to believe information that

confirms their suspicions and beliefs. From the psychological perception, humans’ selective

perception cause individual leaders to believe what they want to hear and believe rather than

critical and neutral information, which leads to the decisionmaking will be influenced by

individual decision makers’ perception of the world and environment. Therefore, as biased

animal, humans psychological mechanism will automatically select the information which they

want to believe and based upon those selective information to affect perceptions to further

influence decisionmaking. Not only the psychological factor of perception matters to individual

decisionmaking, but also the risk sensitivity and certainty effect will highly influence the

decisionmaking. The Prospect Theory points out that humans are loss aversion, and feel loss and

gain differently when they are in different relative gain or loss situation. Decision makers tend to

prefer certain outcome than uncertain outcome because the uncertainty attach with risks in the

future. Meanwhile, when facing uncertain decisionmaking, humans will overvalue the successful

possibility and likely to assume that they will be the winner of the decisionmaking. Humans’

risk-seeking behavior in decisionmaking also highly affects by their relative position of gain or

loss, which refers as domain of gain and loss. When decision makers in a domain of gain context,

they are risk-averse and attempted to avoid anything to loss in future decisionmaking because

they are better off than reference point. But when decision makers in a domain of loss context,

they will be risk-seeking that willing to take all risks to win it back, similar to the trap of gamble.

Below the reference point, DMs are more willing to take risks, which will result in more

aggressive decisionmaking based on irrational cognition. Therefore, individuals perception of

world and risk sensitivity will highly influence their psychological cognition on information

processing to further leverage to their decisionmaking.

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Beyond the psychological perception and risk sensitivity of individuals, when putting

individuals in groups and forced them with group identity will impact the individual

decisionmaking. Oftentimes, the error of individual decisionmaking can be attributed to

psychology of groupthink which individual prioritize group loyalty than neutral gathering of

information for decisionmaking. According to Irving Janis, the groupthink is defined as a

psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, where the desire for harmony

or conformity results in an irrational or dysfunctional decisionmaking (Janis). Under the situation

of groupthink, individual leaders may suppress dissenting opinions and ignore alternative

solutions to maintain group consensus, which might lead to poor decisionmaking because critical

thinking and diverse viewpoints are minimized. Janis argues that “the more amiability and esprit

the corps among the members of a policy making in-group, the greater is the danger that

independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink” (Janis). Within a group

environment, individual leaders might not make decisions by themselves due to the pressure to

conform with group identity and group interests. For example, LBJ’s Tuesday lunch reflects that

individual leader manipulate the group and force pressure to other decision makers in Vietnam

policy. Therefore, the groupthink psychology affect individual decision makers on the rational

information processing and the decisionmaking.

The influence of individual leaders in Psychological Model can be measured by the

extent of individual’s values and cognitive bias on decisionmaking. When individuals’ influence

align to decisionmaking more, such as leader’s perception based upon his or her own value, and

leader’s risk-seeking or risk-aversion, the more influence that the leaders have on

decisionmaking process. If leaders perception or status not reflect on the decisionmaking, it

discloses that the psychological factors of individual might matter less, probably due to

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groupthink suppress individuals. The analysis of President Carter in Iranian Hostage Rescue

Crisis can be measured as good individual leader influence on final decisionmaking. His

decisionmaking to undertake the risky rescue mission during the Iran Hostage Crisis was heavily

influenced by his personal values and the psychological pressure of operating in a domain of

losses. Carter’s willingness to authorize the high risk rescue mission displays his position in

domain of loss, which incentivize him to adapt the risks for potential rewards. Faced with

declining domestic popularity and international credibility, he perceived the rescue mission as a

necessary risk to restore national honor and improve his political fortunes. Additionally, his

personal perception on humanitarian values and the desire for peaceful conflict resolution create

a cognitive and biased information processing mechanism affected by psychological mechanism.

Therefore, the decisionmaking of rescue mission reflects heavily on his peace loving perception,

and risk-seeking in a domain of loss under relative passive international and domestic context.

Thus, the case shows that the great influence of individual leader Carter on decisionmaking

because the final decisionmaking highly align to his perception and risk-seeking under the

domain of loss.

With the direct influence of individual leaders from RAM model and Psychological

model above, the indirect influence from ODM and BP model also impact the decisionmaking

process as well. Both the SOPs and the bureaucratic bargaining require humans as executor and

basic unit in processing the decisionmaking. Humans could alter the SOPs and play an important

role in bureaucratic bargaining. Therefore, although the individual leaders might not be directly

affected the decisionmaking, they could still leverage the process and paradigm to influence the

foreign policy decisionmaking.

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The logical understanding of the ODM model is important for the indirect individual

influence in foreign policy decisionmaking. Rather than the logic of consequences of RAM

model, the ODM model developed based on the logic of appropriateness, which can be explained

that the behaviors and procedures are driven by rules of appropriate not the rules of

consequences. Specifically in the decisionmaking, the ODM model is a pattern-matching style of

paradigm that previously developed. Humans created specific tasks and develop routines based

upon previous experiences so that in the future when faced decisionmaking moment, they can

just follow the standard operating procedures to match the patterns. The ODM model serves as

the option creation theory for foreign policy decisionmaking, rather than a theory of choice.

Within the organizations that has previous SOPs, it helps humans to conduct decisionmaking

more effectively and quickly, but for some extents, SOPs will constrain the menu of option.

Under the RAM decisionmaking paradigm, the decisionmaking moment is described as

“organized anarchies”, which can be interpreted as the complex, seemingly chaotic nature of

decisionmaking in certain organizations (Cohen et al.). The Garbage Can Theory interpret the

decision moment as “garbage can” which the situations are complicated and information flowed

in with a chaotic way. Within organizations operation, individual decision makers as a factory

with conveyor belts to communicate information and move decisionsmaking independently.

Therefore, under the environment of organized anarchies, decisionmaking do not follow a linear

path from problem to solution. Instead, the decisionmaking process is seen as a confluence of

these four independent streams which known as problem, solutions, participants and choice

opportunities. The organization combine 4 streams together, and plays the role in structuring

channels and constraining multifarious actions in order to generate better decisionmaking and

end up with building up the standard operating procedures. Individual decision makers in the

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organizations serves as the communication actors and the operators of SOPs in order to generate

menu of options for decisionmaking in foreign policy. Therefore, in a chaotic environment of

information flowing, the organization utilize its 4 streams to establish SOPs and present menu of

choices for decisionmaking.

The influence of individual leaders in ODM model can be measured by individuals’

ability to alter or override standard operating procedures in decisionmaking. Within the

decisionmaking organization, when leaders have the capability to make decisive interventions to

change or adapt organizational processes to achieve their desired outcomes, it discloses that

individuals leveraged influences in decisionmaking process. Although individuals influence in

decisionmaking under the ODM model might not be directly changing the decision itself,

through changing the SOPs to reach certain extents of goals can be seem as individuals’

influence in decisionmaking. For ODM model, individuals as participant which is one of the

streams within the operation of organization, they serve as the executor in decisionmaking

process that follows the SOPs in the organization. Their roles include the pattern-matching of

information to relate the decisionmaking situation to previous cases, and track the SOPs for

decisionmaking routines. In the case of 911, it can be measured as less individual influence in

SOPs. The case discloses that the less individual influence caused the tragic attack and the

negative side of the organization. In the case, the influence of individual leaders like President

Bush, National Security Advisor Rice, and CIA Director Tenet was less significant because they

followed the SOPs strictly in their own organizations, which unfortunately contributed to the

failure to prevent the attacks. The SOPs lack the mechanism of adopting the new changing

emergency situation in decisionmaking process. Before the attack, NSC counterterrorism

coordinator Clarke warned to potential domestic threats from al Qaeda but did not lead to

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significant changes in SOPs in intelligence searching or raised domestic vigilance, under the

organized anarchies circumstance. All different organizations just followed their own SOPs as

routines even the warning was released, which displays that SOPs worked well in following and

matching the pattern, but results in a failure due to slow reaction and lack of creation in

decisionmaking. Therefore, although individuals can have influence on ODM model

decisionmaking by modifying SOPs, their influence is limited if the organizations strictly adhere

to these procedures without room for adaptation in critical situations.

The logical understanding of the BP model is also crucial for the indirect individual

influence in foreign policy decisionmaking. Rather than individual actors or organizations, the

BP model emphasizes on many actors in different levels that having divergent issues in

decisionmaking and requires negotiating process in decisionmaking, which is called as

bargaining. In one single decisionmaking, there are many different interests being involved from

different levels of bureaucracy and leaders just as member of organization, do not have

omnipotence in making dominant decisions. According to Allison and Zelikow, one

decisionmaking is coming from the bargaining of multiple actors of different hierarchies, which

those bureaucracies or agencies have diverse interests and opinions in the decisionmaking “the

maker of government policy is not a single calculating decision maker, but rather a conglomerate

of large organizations and political actors who differ substantially about what their government

should do” (Allison & Zelikow). Therefore, in the BP model, there is no one dominance actors in

the decisionmaking but rather many of individuals and organizations being engaged in the

bargaining process, supporting by “numerous individuals and organizations, with varying

interests, are involved for any single issue, without the predominance of any participant. The

decision is formulated through bargaining and compromise, and considerable slippage occurs

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during implementation” (Rosati). During the bargaining process, the decisionmaking will be

discussed and evaluated based upon different bureaucracies interests, then the final

decisionmaking will be made after the bargaining of among bureaucracies. As the basic

bargaining unit including individuals and different organizations, the bureaucracy operates in a

top-down way in information processing and order messaging. The higher level of bureaucracies

will need to permit the process for the next steps as operation rather than automatically flowing

of information from top to down. While a hierarchy status has been established, it will generate

disagreement and bias that favored their own bureaucracies. It results in the non-unitary foreign

policy decisionmaking that many bureaucracies being involved, and non-rational decisionmaking

due to interest-driven oriented. The decisionmaking of BP model comes from the bureaucratic

bargaining process with different actors. Through the top-down manipulation of information and

structure, the bargaining process is able to be controlled over some key actors. Therefore, the

core logic of the BP model in decisionmaking is through the bureaucratic bargaining process to

generate decision, with the individual leader as the representative for the different level of

bureaucracies.

The influence of individual leaders in BP model can be measured by individuals’ role in

the bureaucratic bargaining process results in the decisionmaking, such as the form of coalition

and overcoming other bureaucratic resistance. In the BP model, foreign policy decisionmaking is

often a result of negotiations and power struggles among various actors and organizations within

the government. Individual leaders exert influence in decisionmaking through building coalitions

and using political capital to push their preferred decisionmaking that accord to their interests.

Individuals will have to communicate within the complex bureaucratic network in order to

bargain and persuade other bureaucracies to cooperate despite different interests. The case of the

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Somalia intervention decisionmaking displays significant amount of the bureaucratic bargaining

process among different US bureaucracies. The bureaucratic bargaining involved the

negotiations between the DOD and the State Department. For the DOD, due to the potential risks

of troops on the ground, the DOD was cautious towards the decisionmaking of military

intervention in Somalia. Key individual actors Acting Secretary of State Eagleburger, Secretary

of Defense Aspin, and National Security Advisor Scowcroft played crucial roles in forming a

coalition that supported military intervention to address the humanitarian crisis. Due to the

intervention might potentially hurt the interest of DOD, State Department’s convince to DOD on

emphasizing the moral imperative and strategic benefits of a humanitarian intervention. This

bargaining process included Secretary of Defense Aspin’s assurance that military engagement

would be limited and carefully managed to mitigate risks, ultimately leading to the alignment of

various bureaucratic interests and the decision to support a UN-led mission and deploy US

troops. It displays individual leaders’ strategic negotiation in bargaining process and

coalition-building were critical in shaping the decisionmaking.

In conclusion, based upon the four different types of decisionmaking model above, it

demonstrates that the individual leader’s influence in foreign policy decisionmaking in direct or

indirect way. Each type of model has its own measure of individuals’ influence and single actors

will play different roles in those decisionmaking. Back to the quote from Eulau “the root is

man”, humans as the most basic unit in the decisionmaking process, how to rationally and

critically respond to diverse decisionmaking circumstances and make the correct decisions

within organizations and bureaucracies are the key questions for every individual.

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Section II. The Practice of Decisionmaking

Prompt#2

Organization improves foreign policy decisionmaking

As individual, human brian mechanism will inevitably make mistakes when faced

complex and uncertain foreign policy decisionmaking with multiple interests being involved.

……….

Therefore, the essay argues that Zegart is incorrect because organizations actually improve

foreign policy decisionmaking and help individual leaders decrease pitfalls and mismanagement

with the establishment of SOPs and the 4 decisionmaking streams operate together well under

the organized anarchies moment, based upon the successful case of one hundred hour war, and

the counterexample of 9/11 attack.