This course examines several frameworks for thinking about how a government decides what actions to take when faced with international events. These foreign policy decisions are made every day and are often incredibly important (such as the Cuban missile crisis or the decision to place ground troops in Vietnam). Should the U.S. use military force to achieve Iraqi compliance with the U.N. resolutions? What should the U.S. response be to the financial crisis in Asia? Should the U.S. sign a treaty on global warming? All these questions involve foreign policy decisions. We will not answer these questions, but will develop explanations of how and why governments reach the decisions that they do.

The most important goal of this class is that you learn to think about foreign policy events with an analytic framework rather than as "stories" or "opinions" in terms of history or current events. This means that doing well in this class depends on your understanding of the theoretical frameworks and your ability to apply the competing frameworks to various cases. It is not a course on history or current events and your performance in the class will have little to do with your ability to remember historical facts. To get an 'A' in this class you need to:

1. understand the analytic frameworks and how they differ from each other;
2. be able to apply these frameworks to examples of foreign policy decision making;
3. evaluate and compare the different approaches in terms of strengths and weaknesses.

In addition, I hope that learning these frameworks will give you new insight into how other foreign policy decisions are made that you will undoubtedly witness after your leave this course.

1. Keep up with the weekly readings!
2. Turn in the weekly one-page summary for discussion due every Friday. These summaries are an opportunity for you to polish your notes and they insure that everyone keeps up with the reading material. In addition, these summaries are needed for the discussions (see below).
3. Participate in the Friday discussion sessions, where you will discuss the readings in small groups and develop a group response to discussion questions. These will be turned in and graded, and, together with the summaries, constitute 30% of your grade. (Note that 30% can make or break your final grade--check the math.)

Grades will be weighted as follows: Midterm (30%), Final Exam (40%), Participatory group assignments (30%).

Graham Allison, Essence of Decision,
Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War,
Bruce Russett, Controlling the Sword.

In addition, there is a required reading packet available at Smith Bookstore for ~$25.00. The books used in this course are also available at the reserve reading desk in Wilson library if you don't want to purchase some or all of them. (The articles in the packet can be found in Wilson's periodicals; any book excerpts in the packet are also available on reserve.)

Jan 4 - 8: Allison, pp. 1-66.
Jan 11 - 15: Martin, Coercive Cooperation, Ch. 1, 2, 5.

(no class Monday Jan 18)
Attributes of Individuals and Problem Representation

Jan 20 - 22:
Hermann, "Explaining Foreign Policy Using Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders."

Sylvan and Thorson, "Ontologies, Problem Representation, and the Cuban Missile Crisis."

Attitudes towards Risk

Jan 25 - 29: McDermott, 1998. Risk-Taking in International Politics, Ch. 2 and 3.
Khong, pp. 3-68.

Reasoning with Analogies

Feb 1 - Feb. 5: Khong, pp. 68-264.

Feb. 10 - 12: Allison, pp. 67-143.

Feb 15 - 19:
Allison, pp. 144-263,
Bendor and Hammond, 1992. "Rethinking Allison's models."

(Feb 19: Video on Gulf War: "To the Brink of War")

Feb. 22 - 26:

Mar 1 - Mar 5: Russett, pp.1-51, 87-158.
(Mar 5: Video on foreign policy, Congress and media: "Constant Combatants")

Mar 8-Mar 12:
Morgan and Bickers. "Domestic Discontent and the External Use of Force."
Putnam. "Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games."