Seminar in International Politics
G9802x
Fall 1998
Professor Robert Jervis
Office Hours: Wed., Fri., 2-3
Room 1333 IAB
The main function of this seminar is to help students write research papers on topics of their choice. Papers on decision-making would be especially welcome. Since this is one of my own interests, I will talk about it for the first few weeks before the student reports are ready. The readings for the first part of the course provide the foundations of these lectures.
1. LEVEL-OF-ANALYSIS PROBLEM
Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, chapters 1 and 6.
Jervis, "Political Decision-Making," Political Psychology, vol. 2, Summer, 1980, pp. 86-101.
Bernard Bailyn, "The Central Themes of the American Revolution," in Stephen Kurtz and James Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution, pp. 3-31.
Bruce Russett and Elizabeth Hanson, Interests and Ideology, ch. 4.
Sam Adams, "Vietnam Cover-up," Harper's, May 1975, pp. 41, 62-73
Robert Putman, Beliefs of Politicians, chs. 1, 8, and 9.
James Joll, "1914: The Hidden Assumption," in H.W. Koch, ed., The Origins of the First World War, pp. 307-328.
Marvin Harris, Cultural Materialism, ch. 2
John Odell, U.S. International Monetary Policy, pp. 58-75.
Howard Schuman and Michael P. Johnson, "Attitudes and Behavior," Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 2, pp. 161-207.
Keith Shimko, Images and Arms Control: Perceptions of the Soviet Union in the Reagan Administration, pp. 223-50.
Wesley Wark, "British Intelligence on the German Air Force Industry," The Historical Journal, vol. 25, 1982, pp. 627-648.
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions," Journal of Business, vol. 59, no. 4, part 2, October 1986, (also published as Hogarth and Reder, eds., Rational Choice) pp. S251-78.
Robin Hogarth and Melvin Reder, "Editors Comments: Perspectives From Economics and Psychology," Journal of Business, vol. 59, no. 4, part 2, October 1986, pp. S185-207.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap, chs. 1-3.
Samuel Popkin, The Rational Peasant, pp. 1-31.
Lucian Pye, "Political Culture Revisited," Political Psychology, vol. 12, September 1991, pp. 487-508.
2. ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES
Richard Cottam, Foreign Policy Motivation, chs. 2-4.
Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict Among Nations, ch. 3
Alexander George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy, ch. 20.
Alexander George, Presidential Decision-Making in Foreign Policy, chs. 4 and 5.
Abraham Ben-Zvi, "American Preconceptions and Policies Toward Japan, 1940-1941," International Studies Quarterly, vol. 19, June 1975, pp. 228-247.
Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, chs. 4, 5, and 11.
John Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision, pp.
109-139.
Ole Holsti in Robert Axelrod, ed., Structure of Decision, ch. 2.
Barbara Farnham, "Political Cognition and Decision-Making," Political Psychology, vol. 11, March 1990, pp. 83-112.
Richard Lebow, Between Peace and War, pp. 148-228.
Irving Janis and Leon Mann, Decision-Making, chs. 1-4.
Ralph White, "Why Aggressors Lose," Political Psychology, vol. 11, June 1990, pp. 227-42.
Miriam Steiner, "The Search for Order in a Disorderly World," International Organization, vol. 37, no. 3, Summer 1983, 373-414.
Lorand B. Szalay and Rita Mae Kelly, "Political Ideology and
Subjective Culture," American Political Science Review, vol. 76, September 1982, pp. 585-602.
Lloyd Etheredge, "Personality Effects on American Foreign Policy," American Political Science Review, vol. 72, June 1978, pp.
Saul Friedlander and Raymond Cohen, "The Personality Correlates of Belligerance in International Conflict," Comparative Politics, vol. 7, January 1975, pp. 155-186.
Philip Tetlock, Faye Crosby, and Travis Crosby, "Political Psychobiography," Micropolitics, vol. 1, 1981, pp. 191-213.
Fred Greenstein, "Can Personality and Politics be Studied Systematically?" Political Psychology, vol. 13, March 1992, pp. 105-28.
Alexander George, "The 'Operational Code': A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision Making," International Studies Quarterly, 13, June 1969, pp. 190-222.
"Memorandum of Conference with the President," Diplomatic History, pp. 324-329.
Foreign Relations of the United States 1950, vol. 7, pp. 157-161, 1323-1324, 1242-1249.
John Terraine, The Road to Passchendale, pp. 137-176.
Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes (any section).
Fred Greenstein and Richard Immerman, "History as Rashamon: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Vietnam," unpublished MS.
3. PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES
Peter Suedfeld and Philip Tetlock, "Integrative Complexity of Communications in International Crises," Journal of Conflict Resolution, 21, March 1977, pp. 169-184.
Philip Tetlock, "Monitoring the Integrative Complexity of American and Soviet Policy Rhetoric: What Can be Learned?" Journal of Strategic Issues, vol. 44, 1988, pp. 101-31.
Eliot Aronson, "The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance," in Leonard Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 4, 1969, pp. 2-34.
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases," Science, 1974, vol. 185, pp. 1124-1131.
Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor, Social Cognition, chapters 6,9, and 10.
Lee Ross, "The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings," in Leonard Berkovitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol 10, 1977.
Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson, "Telling More Than We Can Know," Psychological Review, no. 84, May 1977, pp. 231-259.
Philip Tetlock and Ariel Levi, "Attribution Bias: On the Inconclusiveness of the Cognition-Motivation Debate," Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 18, 1982, pp. 68-88.
Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischoff, and Sarah Lichtenstein,
"Behavioral and Decision Theory," in Annual Review of Psychology, vol 28, 1977.
Richard Heuer, "Improving Intelligence Analysis," The Bureaucrat, vol. 8, 1979.
Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict Among Nations,
pp. 282-418.
Janice Stein and Raymond Tanter, Rational Decision
Making, pp. 309-346.
Robert Jervis, Richard N. Lebow, and Janice Stein, Psychology and Deterrence, chs. 1, 9.
Phillip Tetlock, "Psychological Research on Foreign Policy," L. Wheeler, ed., Review of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 4.
Philip Tetlock, "Social Psychology and World Politics," in D. Gilbert, Susan Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey, eds., Handbook of Social Psychology. chapter 35.
Michael Young and Mark Schafer, "Is There a Method in Our Madness? Ways of Assessing Cognition in International Relations," Mershon International Studies Review, vol. 42, May 1998, pp. 63-96.
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice," Science, Jan. 30, 1981, vol. 221, pp. 453-458.
Robert Jervis, "Political Implications of Loss Aversion," Political Psychology, vol. 13, June 1992, pp. 187-204.
Ole Holsti, "Theories of Crisis Decision-Making," in
Paul Lauren, ed., Diplomacy.
Phillip Tetlock, "Cognitive perspectives on Foreign Policy,"
in S. Long, ed., The Handbook of Political Behavior
Phillip Tetlock, " A Value Pluralism Model of Ideological Reasoning," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 50, 1986, 819-27.
Stephen Walker, "The Motivational Foundations of Political Belef Systems: A Re-Analysis of the Operational Code Construct," International Studies Quarterly, vol 27, June 1983, pp. 179-202.
Richard Herrmann, "Analyzing Soviet Images of the United States," Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 29, December 1985, pp. 665-98.
Shelley Taylor and Jonathan Brown, "Illusion and Well- Being: A Social Psychological Perspective on Mental Health," Psychological Bulletin, vol. 103, 1988, pp. 193-210.
Philip Tetlock, "Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy: In Search of an Illusive Concept," in George Breslauer and Philip Tetlock, eds., Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy, pp. 20-61.
Chaim Kaufmann, "Out of the Lab and into the Archives: A
Method for Testing Psychological Explanations of Political Decision Making," International Studies Quarterly, vol. 38, December 1994, pp. 557-586.
4. THREAT PERCEPTION
George Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck's European Order,
pp. 11-21.
Raymond Cohen, "Threat Perception in International Crisis," Political Science Quarterly, vol. 93, Spring 1978,
pp. 93-107.
Klaus Knorr, "Threat Perception," in Klaus Knorr, ed., Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems, pp. 78-119.
Jervis, Lebow, and Stein, Pychology and Deterrence, ch. 2.
Steven Kull, Minds at War: Nuclear Reality and the Inner Conflicts of Defense Policymakers, any chapter.