Charles F. Hermann

Changing Course: When Governments Choose to Redirect Foreign Policy

We are in a period of profound change in international relations and foreign policy. These developments call attention to the state of our knowledge about change processes in governmental decisionmaking. This essay reviews the contributions of several areas of conceptual literature and proposes a scheme for interpreting decisions in which a government decides to change policy direction. Foreign policy changes can be placed on a continuum indicating the magnitude of the shift from minor adjustment changes, through both program and goal changes, to fundamental changes in a countrys international orientation. These degrees of change are examined with respect to four change agents: (1) leader driven; (2) bureaucratic advocacy; (3) domestic restructuring; and (4) external shock. The phases of decisionmaking mediate between sources of change and the magnitude of change in policy. The essay concludes with an examination of propositions that suggest conditions under which the phases of decisionmaking can increase the likelihood of major change.

An attempt to simulate the outbreak of world war I

Political games and simulations are models or representations of particular political systems and their associated processes. They are techniques for reproducing in a simplified form selected aspects of one system, A , in some independent system, A′ . Games and simulations have a dynamic quality produced by the complex interaction of properties in the model. This feature enables them to generate states of the system that differ radically from those present originally. The kinds of transformations that may occur between the initial and final states of a simulation or game are difficult to represent by other means, despite a diversity in modeling procedures ranging from verbal descriptions to differential equations. Because of their apparent applicability to many problems of politics, as well as their novelty, games and simulations have been developed in a variety of areas in political science. They have been used in research, instruction, and policy formation. Although the application of these techniques has been increasing, systematic evaluation of their performance is only now beginning. This essay reports one type of evaluation. The researchers sought to structure a simulation of international politics so it would reproduce features of the political crisis that preceded the beginning of the First World War. Two separate trials or runs of the simulation were performed as a pilot project. With two runs, the data are sufficient only to illustrate what might be done in an expanded research program.

People and Processes in Foreign Policymaking: Insights from Comparative Case Studies

The previous articles in this special issue have elaborated a framework for classifying the people involved in foreign policymaking into decision units. Of particular interest has been examining the circumstances under which one type of decision unit takes responsibility for making the choice regarding how to deal with a foreign policy problem and the effect of the nature of that decision unit on the substance of the action selected. The present article is intended to report the results of the application of the framework to sixty-five case studies involving foreign policy issues facing thirty-one countries from all regions of the world. A list of the cases can be found in the appendix.

Resolve, Accept, or Avoid: Effects of Group Conflict on Foreign Policy Decisions

Groups are pervasive decision units in governments. Legislative committees, cabinets, military juntas, politburos of ruling parties, and executive councils are all candidates. The operation of many government ministries and agencies suggests that groups are also frequently at the core of the bureaucratic process. Coordination between bureaucracies creates both ad hoc and standing interdepartmental committees and boards that serve as decision units. In governments, groups usually convene to cope with problems. Such policy problems typically involve complex, cognitive tasks with no single correct answer. If no one individual alone has the authority to act on behalf of a government, then we must turn to alternative decision units. As we have just observed, another possible, and frequently encountered, configuration is the single group. By a single group we mean an entity of two or more people all of whom interact

Modeling the 1973 Soviet Decision to Support Egypt

We present a contingency model of Soviet foreign policy making that focuses on decision making in the Politburo. The model is designed around three questions and shows how the answers to these questions determine the likely nature of the decision the Politburo will reach at any point in time. The questions are (1) Whose positions on the Politburo are critical to making a decision? (2) What are the positions or preferences of those who count on the issue under consideration? (3) How are disagreements among these individuals handled? The model is illustrated by examining the Soviet decision to increase significantly the numbers and types of weapons delivered to Egypt in early 1973. Of interest in this case is accounting for the shift in Soviet policy from refusing Egypt offensive weapons to providing them.

The Comparative Study of Foreign Policy

The study of the processes by which foreign policy is formed has been in the embarrassing position of falling between two academic chairs. On the one hand, students of international affairs have displayed considerable reluctance to delve into the domestic factors that distinguish one nations policies from anothers. On the other hand, scholars of comparative politics, with their knowledge of political institutions and processes, have rarely considered the effect of various political arrangements on foreign policy.

A Global Monitoring System: Appraising the Effects of Government on Human Dignity

Policy scientists can contribute to the democratic shaping and sharing of values by promoting and participating in a global monitoring system. Such a system would be designed to appraise policy formulation and execution by major governmental actors on a worldwide basis. The proposed system would be a private, transnational organization (or series of competing organizations) consisting of policy scientists from throughout the world who would use standardized indicators to monitor governmental actions and their impacts on professed official goals and on the attainment and distribution of basic human values. Taken collectively these basic values can be summated as human dignity. Key to the mission of the global monitoring system is its cybernetic nature, i.e., it is continuous, open, visible, and self-correcting. Appraisal is the assessment of institutional performance in terms of policy processes and actual outcomes as compared to avowed goals and the fundamental values associated with human dignity. Appraisal also involves attribution of the responsibility for these policy results. In performing its appraisal mission, the global monitoring system would undertake systematic projections of the probable consequences of current trends in policy. The results of such a continuous monitoring system would be disseminated at periodic intervals to the civic and public orders throughout the world.

Explaining Self-Defeating Foreign Policy Decisions: Interpreting Soviet Arms for Egypt in 1973 Through Process or Domestic Bargaining Models?

How should we explain why a state sometimes adopts a foreign policy in one region that interferes with its concurrent policies elsewhere? In their article in the March 1989 issue of this Review , Stewart, Hermann and Hermann proposed a three-level process model of foreign policy to explain such Soviet behavior towards Egypt in 1973. The analysis has continuing interest because it interprets the puzzling behavior as a manifestation of general problems of information processing in making foreign policy choices. Richard Anderson suggests that a two-level model of domestic bargaining better accounts for the causal sequence in Soviet-Egyptian relations and is in general more parsimonious. Margaret and Charles Hermann defend their substantive analysis and argue in any case for the complementarity of process and bargaining approaches.

The Situational Imperative: A Predictive Model of Foreign Policy Behavior

Hudson, V. M., Hermann, C. F., Singer, E. The Situational Imperative: A Predictive Model of Foreign Policy Behavior. Cooperation and Conflict, XXIV, 1989, 117-139. Foreign policy behaviors, defined in terms of the intensity of affect and commitment an actor conveys to external recipients using various instruments of statecraft, are explained in terms of a situational model. The model represents an externally-defined predisposition that will influence any group of policy-makers to act in a certain way once they recognize a specific foreign problem. In addition to different types of situations, the model includes as its variables the configuration of roles assumed in a situation by other international entities. It also includes a set of relationships, each capable of assuming different values, that exist between the actor and other role occupants. For each type of situation a decision logic is developed and expressed in a decision tree. Each branch of the decision tree constitutes a hypothesis about the configuration of behavior properties that will likely result. The model is illustrated by reference to two cases of foreign policy decision-making — the Zambian governments response to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white regime in Rhodesia in 1965 and the response of the United States government to the impending war between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands in 1982.

Ein Versuch zur Simulation des Ausbruchs des I. Weltkriegs

Politische Planspiele und Simulationen sind Modelle oder Nachbildungen bestimmter politischer Systeme und der mit ihnen zusammenhangenden Prozesse. Sie stellen Verfahren dar, mit denen sich ausgewahlte Aspekte eines Systems A in vereinfachter Form in einem unabhangigen System A’ nachbilden lassen. Wegen der komplexen wechselseitigen Beeinflussung der dem Modell eigenen Merkmale haben Planspiele und Simulationen einen dynamischen Charakter. Diese Eigenschaft ermoglicht es ihnen, Zustande des Systems herbeizufuhren, die sich von den ursprunglich vorhandenen radikal unterscheiden. Die verschiedenen Umwandlungen, die zwischen den Anfangs- und Endphasen einer Simulation bzw. eines Planspiels eintreten konnen, lassen sich nur schwer mit anderen Mitteln darstellen, obwohl bei der modellartigen Nachbildung so verschiedene Verfahren wie die Beschreibung mit Worten und Differentialgleichungen Verwendung finden. Wegen ihrer offensichtlichen Anwendbarkeit auf zahlreiche politische Probleme und zugleich wegen ihrer Neuartigkeit sind in einer Reihe von Bereichen der politischen Wissenschaft Planspiele und Simulationsverfahren entwickelt worden.2 Sie wurden in der Forschung, Ausbildung und bei der Gestaltung der Politik eingesetzt. Obwohl die genannten Verfahren immer haufiger Verwendung finden, beginnt man erst jetzt, sich ein systematisches und kritisches Urteil uber ihre Leistung zu bilden. Der vorliegende Aufsatz schildert eine Form dieser kritischen Bewertung.