POLI 360 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Cuban Missile Crisis, Decision-Making, Psych

• School: McGill University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLI 360
• Professor: T V Paul

Document Summary

Psychological explanations 1 5 ids, 1 short essay (answer all parts of question) Decision maker level: micro-understanding of why decisions are made for war, midterm: go through outline, reading material. Utility-maximizers, try to make choices b/o whatever maximizes utility. Every decision can be termed as rational choice. Allison: why cuban missile crisis occurred (1962) Borrowed from econ: man assumes consistency in behaviour, maximizes output. Purchase maximizes utility b/o resources have: war = decision states make, not often, but sometimes. Choices on basis of cert. assumptions they have and look at national interest and security as primary interest. Look at consequences by acting in each situation. Pick/choose option that supposed to max. goal: war, maximizes poli. Psych theories: question basic notion of rational choice. Ppl are complex beings: many considerations can be personal. Institutional: military want to start war for their own purposes. Show that basic model that is rational choice model not always accurate.