International Studies Compendium Project

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Comment on this article   For many realists who see the state as a black box, foreign policy choices, including the “national interest,” are clear because all states follow a predictable, expected-utility calculation contingent on external factors to make choices. Analysts of foreign policy decision making, however, contend that policy choices are shaped by more than external factors. Specifically, who decides does matter, as does the decision-making process by which they make decisions. Finding realist analyses incomplete, in the 1960s scholars such as Richard Snyder, Henry Bruck, and Burton Sapin produced work that focused on the world of decision makers in context who subjectively, if purposefully, interpret situations. They saw a need to look inside the state to understand the complex motivations and set of actors that make up a state's foreign policy ( Snyder et al. 1962 ; see also Allison 1971 ; Neack et al. 1995 ; Allison and Zelikow 1999 ). Since then much attention has been paid to categorizing different types of decision units such as leaders, single groups, and coalitions and the circumstances under which each become relevant ( M.G. Hermann et al. 1987 ; Hagan and Hermann 2002 ; M.G. Hermann 2001 ). This essay focuses on the small group and the circumstances under which it is important to foreign policy decision making. The core decision-making literature argues ... log in or subscribe to read full text