DECISION MAKING AND WORLD POLITICS: THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL LINKAGE

World politics is a discipline in which one studies how states interact with one another. There are numerous approaches to the study of this interaction. One can assign universal motivations and rules of behavior to all states and relate these attributes to patterns of interaction, systemic structures, and a variety of observed phenomena and processes (Morgenthau, 1973; Kaplan, 1957; Bueno de Mesquita, 1981a). One can also infer from observed patterns of interaction the kind of domestic attributes of states that might account for these patterns (Rummel, 1963; Tanter, 1966; Wilkenfeld, 1968). The significance of the decision making approach lies in its contention that world politics cannot be explained by theories that are independent of, and therefore insensitive to, the beliefs, values, and expectations of national decision makers. International relations are shaped by people with highly idiosyncratic interests, values, and ambitions (Moon, 1975; Almond and Genco, 1977).

Theodore Abel made two important observations which were to have a profound impact on the “founding fathers” of the decision making approach to world politics: (1) war is the result of conscious, carefully-calculated decisions of national foreign policy elites to engage in sustained combat against other states, and (2) decisions to engage in war are made much prior to the actual outbreak of military hostilities (Abel, 1941: 855). Whether these observations are empirically valid is arguable.