This book started to take shape quite a long time ago. As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I wrote a long paper reviewing the decision making approach to world politics. While working on this paper I was impressed both by the tremendous progress in this field and by the significant degree of cumulative research. However, I was also struck by the large number of conflicting models, propositions, and inconclusive empirical findings. The paper concluded with a plea for an integrative framework that would attempt to put together the main ideas of the various approaches under a single theoretical view.

As time went by, and as I became involved in empirical research on foreign policy decision making, I became increasingly convinced that an integration of decision making theories – though a significant contribution – would not solve the main problems of the approach as a whole. The rationale for studying international politics from a decision-theoretic perspective is the notion that the world is shaped by people and their choices rather than by a hidden hand operating above and beyond the nation state. Yet, decision theories – no matter how sophisticated – fall short of providing adequate theoretical bridges between people, their choices, and long-range international processes.