Plan for Today: Domestic Politics & Decisionmaking Approaches

1. Plan for Today:Domestic Politics & Decisionmaking Approaches • Completing democratic peace debate. • Evaluating domestic politics as theory. • Introduction to decisionmaking approaches.

2. Controversies/ Counterarguments Continued… • Apparent relationship spurious: pattern caused by other factors. • Geographic distance: countries side by side more likely to go to war than those far apart. • Necessary alliances against common enemies for strategic reasons, regardless of democratic norms.

3. Controversies/ Counterarguments • Democratization may not lead to peace in short-medium term (Mansfield & Snyder). • Regimes in transition more warprone than stable democracies or authoritarian regimes. • Reason: democratization process plagued by nationalism and weak domestic institutions.

4. Responses of Democratic Peace Proponents • Virtual absence of war among democracies is statistically significant. • Only very small set of pairs of states capable of going to war at any time, including most democracies. • So absence of war in overall history is significant.

5. Responses of Democratic Peace Proponents • Defend definitions of democracy as careful, consistent, and reasonable. • Apparent “exceptions” or “iffy cases” extremely rare among wars. • Even if we include cases such as Finland in WWII, these are very rare exceptions.

6. Implications of the Democratic Peace (If True) • Challenge to realist theory. • Realism’s pessimism about prospects for international peace. • DP: democratic states can trust that there will be no war among them. Possibility of reliable peace. • Realism’s emphasis on systemic factors to explain outcomes. • DP: different states will act differently due to domestic characteristics.

7. Implications of the Democratic Peace (If True) • As number of democracies in the world increases, so does “zone of peace.” • Number of democracies increased dramatically since 1970s. • Now well over 50% of all states. • But large proportion not liberal democracies.

8. Implications of the Democratic Peace (If True) • Implication for how democratic states should pursue national security: by promoting democracy in other states. • This is hard to do effectively. • Caution from Mansfield & Snyder re: dangerous halfway stage.

9. Conclusion • Safe to say democracies very rarely go to war with one another. • Controversies remain over why, and whether identified pattern is statistically significant, mere coincidence, or spurious.

10. Evaluating Domestic Politics as Theory • Explanatory power: mixed. • Doesn’t provide overall argument about international politics at systemic level. • Only works on a state-by-state basis. • Individual arguments explain important gaps in realist and liberal explanations. • E.g. Humanitarian interventions.

11. Evaluating Domestic Politics as Theory • Predictive power: mixed. • Can’t predict a lot at system-wide level. • Specific predictions from some arguments: • E.g. Democratic peace. • Sometimes domestic politics perspective can be coupled with realism to enhance predictive ability. • US is hegemonic power; but how will it use power?

12. Evaluating Domestic Politics as Theory • Intellectual consistency and coherence: • Not great: no paradigm with unified argument. • Sometimes scholars disagree on how to assess one country’s culture and anticipated behaviour. • E.g. US values abroad: laissez-faire capitalism throughout the world, or individual freedoms?

13. Evaluating Domestic Politics as Theory • Scope: • Not great: fairly piecemeal. • Some exceptions with broad explanations based on domestic regime-type – e.g. democratic peace.

14. Evaluating Domestic Politics as Theory • Self-reflection and engagement with other theories: OK. • Domestic politics works well with constructivism. • Could work well with realism: What option will states choose among many possible options that satisfy security needs?

15. Decisionmaking Approaches:Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics

16. Decisionmaking Approaches • Looking inside state at how particular domestic actors influence international events. • Focus on flaws and pathologies in organizations and biases of decisionmakers.

17. Decisionmaking Approaches:Assumptions • States not unitary – many conflicting actors and processes involved. • States not rational – do not make “decisions.” • States’ behaviour as “outputs” of battling actors, inadequate routines, or mistakes. • Rational decisions require complete information and thorough evaluation of all options.

18. Decisionmaking Approaches:Limits to Rationality • Personality disorders: decisionmakers may be nuts!! • E.g. Saddam Hussein as an egomaniac. George W. Bush as beholden to father or evangelical fanatic.

19. Decisionmaking Approaches:Limits to Rationality • Human cognition is limited. • Human beings imperfect and biased in processing information. • Examples: • Prospect theory: people hate losses more than like gains. • Jervis: People overestimate extent to which others’ actions are a response to them.

20. Decisionmaking Approaches:Limits to Rationality • Huge complexity of decisions: parceled out to complex organizations. • Organizations act according to preset repertoires. • Organizations occupied by ambitious individuals.

21. Decisionmaking ApproachesTwo Branches of Theory • Organizational process theory. Focuses on the processes at work through standard operating procedures in government and even weapons systems. • Bureaucratic politics. Focuses on the clash among bureaucratic actors with conflicting interests.