CANS 406 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Madeleine Albright, Game Theory, Organizational Culture
22 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Gender and the Conduct of Foreign Policy
-Foreign policy not usually a legislative process, its more about strategies for dealing with other
states, international organizations, and tackling international challenges
-Approach that tries to use scientific methods to test how decisions are made and develop
generalizable theories
-Foreign policy as a decision-making subfield
-Scholars identify a dependent variable (a specific foreign policy decision by an actor)
and try to explain how agents arrived at this choice (Stuart)
-Agents = individuals, groups, organizations
-Gender is rarely a variable in analyzing “relative potency of variables” (Stuart)
-Foreign policy decision-making subfield influenced by the rise of nuclear weapons
-Interest in rational decision making and control of the foreign policy process/behavior
-Hope that research would lead to predictable policy choices, outcomes, especially in
nuclear confrontations (Stuart)
-Game theory, simulations, rational choice to analyze foreign policy decision making
-Increasing skepticism surrounding the view of actors as unitary and rational
-Decision making influenced by bureaucratic politics, organizational culture, role
socialization
-Influence of Snyder, Bruck and Sapin on decision making approach – shift focus the “reified
nation state” to “those whose authoritative acts are…the acts of the state. State action is the
action taken by those acting in the name of the state”
-Key assumptions informing research on foreign policy decision making
-Importance of looking at the decisional unit pursuing a specific objective
-Decision making is a process, planful action, influenced by internal and external
settings, which are selectively perceived and evaluated by decision makers
-Different factors limit decision making (uncertainty, time constraints, competing
objective, competing or unclear motives)
-Madeleine Albright and Women’s War Crime Tribunal ruling rape as a weapon of war
-Women better at being empathetic according to her
-We need to “keep one’s gender goggles in place over the long haul” and be thinking about
dynamics of femininity and masculinity (Enloe)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Foreign policy not usually a legislative process, its more about strategies for dealing with other states, international organizations, and tackling international challenges. Approach that tries to use scientific methods to test how decisions are made and develop generalizable theories. Scholars identify a dependent variable (a specific foreign policy decision by an actor) and try to explain how agents arrived at this choice (stuart) Gender is rarely a variable in analyzing relative potency of variables (stuart) Foreign policy decision-making subfield influenced by the rise of nuclear weapons. Interest in rational decision making and control of the foreign policy process/behavior. Hope that research would lead to predictable policy choices, outcomes, especially in nuclear confrontations (stuart) Game theory, simulations, rational choice to analyze foreign policy decision making. Increasing skepticism surrounding the view of actors as unitary and rational. Decision making influenced by bureaucratic politics, organizational culture, role socialization.
