Actors in the Decisionmaking Process

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Actors in the Decision-making Process

• Top officials holding formal roles
• Senior advisors in policy-planning
• Top suppliers of intelligence
• Congressional leaders in Committees
• Bureaucratic Actors
• Special interest groups and constituents
• Ideational groups in public opinion
• Advocates from other countries

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Narrowing the focus Who is likely to matter?

• --Type of Situation
• o Crisis, routine, in-between
• --Type of Leader
• o constraints, information, motivation
• --Type of Decision Unit
• o single leader, small group, large coalition
• --Constraining Ideational Beliefs about Nation
  and its Adversaries
• --Percent of public who see the issue as
  important
• o if narrow look at special interests
• o if broad look at fault-lines in public opinion
  coalitions
• --Principals control over Agents

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Citizens v. Leaders How do opinions differ?

• Citizens are less internationalist
• They favor domestic over foreign policy
• Agree on defense spending
• Agree on threat of terrorism, public more edgy
• Do they know how much it is?

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Paying for Defense
Projected Budget Year 2005
Total Defense Spending 529.5 billion
U.S. Government Office of Mgmt. and Budget
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Comparative Defense Budgets
(FY 2004)
United States 420 billion
Next 23 Largest Budgets 419.8 billion
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Relative Defense Spending By Groups
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Narrowing the focus Who is likely to matter?

• --Type of Situation
• o Crisis, routine, in-between
• --Type of Leader
• o constraints, information, motivation
• --Type of Decision Unit
• o single leader, small group, large coalition
• --Constraining Ideational Beliefs about Nation
  and its Adversaries
• --Percent of public who see the issue as
  important
• o if narrow look at special interests
• o if broad look at fault-lines in public opinion
  coalitions
• --Principals control over Agents

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Principals and Agents Delegation Models

• Need to delegate Economics of Information
• Principals want to hire agents that work and
  wont shirk and they want to establish incentive
  structures that reward work and not shirking.
• Asymmetries in information complicate the
  relationship.
• Principal uncertain about the type of worker
• Principal uncertain about the work performed
• Agent uncertain about the preferences of the
  principal
• Agent uncertain about the principals
  determination to retain control

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Overcoming Information Asymmetries

• Monitoring
• Incentive Structure
• Punishment

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Monitoring

• Reporting Requirements
• Restrict scope of delegation
• Strategy, structure, operations
• Bomb artillery in Serbia
• Decision to release bomb
• Decision to strike by air
• Target decision
• Decision to use force against Serbia
• Decision to create no-artillery zone
• Decision to defend village from artillery
• Rules of engagement, standing orders, mission
  orders, contingency plan

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Incentive Structure

• Autonomy as reward
• Screening selection of agent personnel
• Promotion for those who support principal
• Organizational culture
• Third Party Monitors think-tanks, news media
• Institutional checks Inter-service rivalry
  watchdogs
• Police Patrols investigations, audits, Cong.
  Budget Off. GAO
• Take back authority

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Punishment

• Impose intrusive monitoring
• Cut current budgets and perquisites
• Forced Detachment fire them
• Deny pension, cutoff amenities
• Uniform Code of Military Justice
• Capital punishment, imprisonment, fines
• Extra-legal Civilian actions Purges

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Col. Dunlaps CoupIs there a civilian military
gap?

• Conservative republicanism
• Gap on social issues like school prayer death
  penalty
• Favor military spending and less spending on
  social programs
• A gap on Militant internationalism

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Civilian and Military Elites

• Elite civilians non-veterans
• Elite civilians veterans
• Civilian elite in professional military education
  program
• Officers in the reserve and guard
• Officers on Active duty

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Opinion Gaps on Using Force

• Intervention for human rights goals
• Civilian favor more than military
• Intervention for realpolitk goals (e.g China)
• Military favors more than civilians
• Both agree force is appropriate and useful to
  defend realpolitik goals
• Military more in favor of Powell Doctrine
• Use force decisively more than incrementally
• Civilians willing to use force for more types of
  causes and more willing to put more restraints on
  how to use it.
• The higher the proportion of elite veterans in
  the administration, the lower the probability
  that the US will initiate a militarized dispute.

Source Peter Fever Christopher Gelpi, Choosing
Your Battles American Civil-Military Relations
and the Use of Force (Princeton UP 2004).
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Why Might the Military be More Reluctant to Use
Force?

• Organizational interests are not served by use of
  force Wars Kill Soldiers
• Military experience leads to less optimism about
  the political usefulness of force.
• Cautious about pre-emption or prevention, more
  aware of uncertainties

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Why Military Leaders Might be More Prone to Use
Force

• Organizational interests in defense spending,
  officer career advancement, and fulfills desire
  for heroism and excitement
• Favor offensive war-fighting doctrines, fight on
  our terms
• Socialized to envision national security as
  strictly a military problem
• Socialized to exaggerate external threats and
  opportunities to destroy them
• Likely to view war as inherent and unavoidable
  condition of mankind, more likely to start
  anyway.
• Trained to value simplicity and directness on the
  battlefield, avoid excessive deliberation and
  careful introspective choices

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A Cross-national Behavioral TestCivilian v
Military Regimes

• Types of governments The Independent variable
• Strong Civilian, Weak Civilian, Military
• Militarized Disputes The Dependent variable
• threats, force, fatalities
• Control Variables
• Democracy v. Non democracy, regime transition,
  history of previous conflict with other state,
  relative power, geography, domestic strife
  (diversion), trade dependence,
• Key Findings
• States with weak civilian control or military
  government are considerably more aggressive,
  holding other things constant.
• Of all control variables, civilian control has
  biggest impact except years of previous peace
  between the disputants.

Source Todd Sechser, Journal of Conflict
Resolution 485 (October 2004)
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The Empirical Study of World Views

• Identify actors and voices to study
• Identify moments when they are likely to speak
  about other countries
• Identify issues seen as salient in the
  relationship
• Identify events that produce a choice over a
  policy related to salient issues
• Apply a content analytic scheme A theoretically
  informed analysis of statements and images

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A Theory of ImagesAn Overview

• Perceived relationships involve beliefs about the
  self and others.
• Social Identity theory (SIT) provides insight
  into how people imagine the self in inter-group
  relations.
• National identities anchor perceived
  relationships and fuel emotions that drive
  sentiment and cognition.
• Balance theory provides insight into how people
  combine sentiments they feel toward others and
  the things they believe to be true about them.
  This can often produce stereotypes that have a
  functional purpose.
• These stereotypical images can reveal the
  underlying beliefs and identities that are
  motivating policy choices.

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Social Identity Theory (SIT)

• Personal and social identity The later derived
  from group memberships
• Social identities shape inter-group as distinct
  from inter-personal relations. They can lead to
  a category-based process.
• In-group bias in perception, judgment and
  behavior.
• Caused by need for positive distinctiveness
• Supported by minimal group experiments in
  contrast to Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT).
  Perceived differences and conflicts follow from
  group creation rather than cause it.
• It might interact with RCT. Strong identifiers
  moved more by instrumental RCT considerations.
• People feel better about themselves after the
  discrimination.
• National identification the most consistent
  predictor of xenophobic attitudes

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National Identity

• Nations are constructed not natural
• Difficult to identify necessary attributes
• Nationalism A belief that a community you pledge
  terminal loyalty to should have its own state.
• Measured by willingness to sacrifice to make sure
  the community has an independent state.

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What Causes Nationalism?

• The importance of the independence to the elite
• Percent of public attentive to politics
  nationalism comes with mass politics
• Viability of Nation-state
• Geography
• Population
• Economy
• Uniqueness of the terminal community
• Common and unshared language
• Common culture
• Common memories
• Complementarity of other community identities
• Religion
• Race

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Will Globalization Affect National Identities?
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What does national identity produce?

• Social capital Willingness to make individual
  sacrifice for the national group
• Mass-based support for leaders seen as advancing
  the national cause of independence.
• Leadership and identity contest in the Middle
  East.
• State nations (Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq)
• Ethnic nations (Turkey, Iran, Arab, Azeri, Kurd,
  Israeli)
• Religious nation (Islamic ummah)

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National identity and chauvinism

• How are patriotism, nationalism and chauvinism
  different?
• Can there be a liberal nationalism? Is terminal
  loyalty as the highest value consistent with
  individual freedom?
• Can we enjoy the benefits of social capital
  without the negative effects of chauvinism?
• Does emotional attachment to in-groups
  necessarily mean discrimination against
  out-groups?

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Social Identity and Stereotyping

• Categorization and stereotyping cannot be
  understood as solely information-processing
  device simplifying and facilitating thinking.
• Stereotyping relates to inter-group relations in
  a way that links to social identity processes
• Stereotypes play a functional role protecting
  positive distinctiveness (i.e. a positive view of
  ones group and self.)

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Balance TheoryFritz Heider

• People are uncomfortable when the sentiments the
  feel toward another conflict with the attributes
  they associate with the other.
• There is an inclination to balance sentiment and
  cognitive beliefs, see positive attributes in
  groups you like and negative attributes in groups
  you dont like.

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O
P
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What Drives Sentiment?

• Three key judgments working together as a gestalt
  (an integrated impression).
• Goal interdependence
• Relative power
• Relative status

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Perceived RelationshipsThree dimensional
gestalts
Cultural Status

• Goal interdependence

Superior
Comparable
Inferior
Barbarian
1
Superior
Imperialist
Conflict Perceived Threat
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Comparable
Enemy
4
Capability
Inferior
7
8
9
10
11
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Superior
Mutual Gain
Capability
Ally
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15
Comparable
Inferior
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17
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Superior
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20
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Opportunity To exploit
Capability
Comparable
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Degenerate
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Inferior
Colony
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Gestalts Associate with Emotions

• Emotion and perception may be a dual process
  difficult to untangle causation.
  Emotion-motivation-thought-action tendencies
• Enemy
• respect, - anger, fear
• Ally
• trust, - jealousy, annoyance
• Colony
• Parental affection (pride), - disgust (contempt)
• Imperialist
• gratitude, security, - fear, hatred

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Emotionally Charged Gestalts lead to balanced
stereotypes

• Image of the other is motivated by social
  identity, perceived threats and opportunities the
  group faces.
• Personal interest might be conflated with the
  group interest and multiple group identities
  might be integrated.
• Image of other will allow self-serving action
  released from moral prohibition, thus protecting
  self-esteem

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The Enemy Image
Subjects description of targets decision-making
process
Subjects description of targets capability

• Subjects description of
• Targets motivation

Leaders are bound By common cause out-group Homog
eneity Able to plot and Execute complex plots
and conspiracies
Evil, aggressive and unlimited. Non-defensive
motives Economic Messianic Communal Governmental
Enemys strength Derives from our Weakness and
inaction Strong will and resolve On our part
will reveal Enemy to be a paper
tiger. Confidence in domestic Weakness will
override Empirical evidence of capability
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The Ally Image
Subjects description of targets decision-making
process
Subjects description of targets capability

• Subjects description of
• Targets motivation

Entirely defensive, cooperative
and Benign Peaceful Altruism as Much
as Self-interest
Largely patriotic public willing to sacrifice
for country Popularity of government enhances
its strength
Well managed and organized but very complicated
and slow moving because it delivers so many
services to people and abides by popular will.
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The Imperialist Image
Subjects description of targets decision-making
process
Subjects description of targets capability

• Subjects description of
• Targets motivation

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The Enemy Image
Subjects description of targets decision-making
process
Subjects description of targets capability

• Subjects description of
• Targets motivation

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