Scholars of international relations tend to prefer one model or another in explaining the foreign policy behavior of governments. Steve Yetiv, however, advocates an approach that applies five familiar models: rational actor, cognitive, domestic politics, groupthink, and bureaucratic politics. Drawing on the widest set of primary sources and interviews with key actors to date, he applies each of these models to the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis and to the U.S. decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. Probing the strengths and shortcomings of each model in explaining how and why the United States decided to proceed with the Persian Gulf War, he shows that all models (with the exception of the government politics model) contribute in some way to our understanding of the event. No one model provides the best explanation, but when all five are used, a fuller and more complete understanding emerges. In the case of the Gulf War, Yetiv demonstrates the limits of models that presume rational decision-making as well as the crucial importance of using various perspectives. Drawing partly on the Gulf War case, he also develops innovative theories about when groupthink can actually produce a positive outcome and about the conditions under which government politics will likely be avoided. He shows that the best explanations for government behavior ultimately integrate empirical insights yielded from both international and domestic theory, which scholars have often seen as analytically separate. With its use of the Persian Gulf crisis as a teachable case study and coverage of the more recent Iraq war, Explaining Foreign Policy will be of interest to students and scholars of foreign policy, international relations, and related fields.

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.

Steve A. Yetiv has developed an interdisciplinary, integrated approach to studying foreign policy decisions, which he applies here to understand better how and why the United States went to war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 and 2003. Yetiv’s innovative method employs the rational actor, cognitive, domestic politics, groupthink, and bureaucratic politics models to explain the foreign policy behavior of governments. Drawing on the widest set of primary sources to date—including a trove of recently declassified documents—and on interviews with key actors, he applies these models to illuminate the decision-making process in the two Gulf Wars and to develop theoretical notions about foreign policy. What Yetiv discovers, in addition to empirical evidence about the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars, is that no one approach provides the best explanation, but when all five are used, a fuller and more complete understanding emerges. Thoroughly updated with a new preface and a chapter on the 2003 Iraq War, Explaining Foreign Policy, already widely used in courses, will continue to be of interest to students and scholars of foreign policy, international relations, and related fields.

A concise introduction to the study of foreign policy, this textbook provides an essential guide to a major area of international politics which has become increasingly complex and sophisticated.

Offering empirical richness within a consistent theoretical framework, this work provides a comprehensive examination of small state foreign policy.

Why would Georgia attack South Ossetia in August 2008, with Russian forces conducting exercises nearby? This remains a puzzle to analysts-on a not inconsiderable list of foreign policy puzzles. Hans Mouritzen and Anders Wivel use the example of the Russo-Georgian war to illustrate and evaluate their original model for explaining foreign policy behavior. The authors apply the model to the actions of 40 countries in relation to the 2008 war. Uniquely linking system, interstate, and intrastate levels of explanation, and benefiting from the WikiLeaks revelations, they offer an important new tool for foreign policy analysis.

Provides an up to date overview of the course of Pakistan’s foreign policy There is growing interest in Pakistan due to the instability in the region Jihadism is a hot topic

Originally published in 1991, Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations has become an indispensable volume not only for teachers and students in international history and political science, but also for general readers seeking an introduction to American diplomatic history. This collection of essays highlights a variety of newer, innovative, and stimulating conceptual approaches and analytical methods used to study the history of American foreign relations, including bureaucratic, dependency, and world systems theories, corporatist and national security models, psychology, culture, and ideology. Along with substantially revised essays from the first edition, this volume presents entirely new material on postcolonial theory, borderlands history, modernization theory, gender, race, memory, cultural transfer, and critical theory. The book seeks to define the study of American international history, stimulate research in fresh directions, and encourage cross-disciplinary thinking, especially between diplomatic history and other fields of American history, in an increasingly transnational, globalizing world.

This book explores foreign policy developments in post-colonial Africa. A continental foreign policy is a tenuous proposition, yet new African states emerged out of armed resistance and advocacy from regional allies such as the Bandung Conference and the League of Arab States. Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan African country to gain independence in 1957. Fourteen more countries gained independence in 1960 alone, and by May 1963, when the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was formed, 30 countries were independent. An early OAU committee was the African Liberation Committee (ALC), tasked to work in the Frontline States (FLS) to support independence in Southern Africa. Pan-Africanists, in alliance with Brazzaville, Casablanca and Monrovia groups, approached continental unity differently, and regionalism continued to be a major feature. Africa’s challenges were often magnified by the capitalist-democratic versus communist-socialist bloc rivalry, but through Africa’s use and leveraging of IGOs – the UN, UNDP, UNECA, GATT, NIEO and others – to advance development, the formation of the African Economic Community, OAU’s evolution into the AU and other alliances belied collective actions, even as Africa implemented decisions that required cooperation: uti possidetis (maintaining colonial borders), containing secession, intra- and inter-state conflicts, rebellions and building RECs and a united Africa as envisioned by Pan Africanists worked better collectively.