FOREIGN POLICY DECISIONS

Individuals make foreign policy, but they are constrained by their own psychological limits as well as a complex set of institutional rules. Drawing from the literature of political psychology, social cognition and organizational behavior we explore the most significant actors shaping American foreign policy: presidential advisors, the media, the bureaucracy, Congress, interest groups and social movements. Social cognition and the new institutionalism provide an overarching explanation about the way in which decision-makers reason about problems and situations and embed those understandings in enduring institutions. We will read accounts of some significant decisions in postwar American foreign policy as well as participate in a decision-making simulation designed to integrate and illustrate key concepts.