Psychology and Foreign Policy Decision-Making

Abstract

Political psychology occupies an uncertain space in the study of international relations and foreign policy. Longstanding but gradually receding conceptions of the international relations field as a series of paradigmatic clashes among realist, liberal, Marxist, and constructivist approaches, or even between rationalism and constructivism, leave little if any room for the beliefs, personalities, emotions, perceptions, and decision-making processes of individual political leaders. 1 Many of the leading research programs in the international relations field today – including realist balance of power and transition theories, the bargaining model of war, democratic peace and capitalist peace theories, and a variety of institutionalist theories – give little or no causal weight to the role of individual political leaders. Debates in international political economy are commonly centered around system, state, and society-centered approaches while neglecting the individual level altogether (Ikenberry, Lake, & Mastanduno, 1988). Constructivist approaches, which should in principle be open to the inclusion of psychological variables, have until recently given little attention to individual agency (Shannon and Kowert, 2012). 2

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