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From the Anschluss to Munich, Britain pursued a policy of appeasement. The Chamberlain government responded to German advances in Central Europe by selecting policies of peace rather than policies of war. What prompted British decision-makers to choose a path of diplomacy rather than a path of military confrontation? Why did they accommodate German expansion? This paper reviews British decision-making from March to September 1938 and considers the explanatory power of the cognitive calculus theory of decision-making. It draws attention to deliberations at the top levels of government, including the Cabinet and Inner Cabinet, the Foreign Policy Committee, and the Committee on Imperial Defense, and highlights the influence of decision role, decision stage, and substantive knowledge in framing problems and selecting solutions. Demonstrating the impact of military and non-military expertise in arriving at foreign policy judgments, this paper affirms the explanatory power of the cognitive calculus theory and extends earlier work, including American and Japanese decisions for war and peace in other times and other circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The government responded to American advances in the Pacific by selecting policies of war rather than policies of peace. Why did Japanese decision-makers choose the path of military confrontation rather than the path of diplomacy? What prompted them to confront the United States at Pearl Harbor? Was it the configuration of the international system, or the capabilities and resources of nation-states that compelled them all to choose war? Or were structural circumstances fluid enough for people to disagree, and for differences among decision-makers to reflect variations in the cognitive costs of making judgments?This paper will review Japanese decision-making dynamics in 1941, and investigate whether structural conditions or the cognitive calculus theory of decision-making best accounts for the foreign policy preferences of individual actors. It will draw attention to deliberations at several levels of government, including within the military services themselves, and consider whether the transparency of American provocations forced all decision-makers to routinely choose force, or if the ambiguity of American actions prompted some people to prefer diplomatic initiatives while others preferred military solutions. In particular, it will explore the proposition that because all individuals are cognitive misers or cognitive processing cost-minimizers who unconsciously prefer judgments that are mentally cheap to those that are mentally dear, differences between civilian and military actors predictably reflect the influence of three different cognitive cost-cutting cues: decision stage (problem definition or solution definition), decision role assignment (leader or advisor), and a decision-maker’s level of substantive knowledge (novice to expert).By examining the evolution of Japanese foreign policy over the course of several months, this paper will not only assess whether and when the cognitive calculus theory of decision-making can offer a most useful explanation for this case, it will address whether the actions of Japanese officials in 1941, like those of British decision-makers in 1938 and American decision-makers in the Cuban missile crisis, the turn toward peace in Vietnam, and the 9/11 responses of 2001 (four cases already investigated), reinforce and extend the power of the theory. It will consider whether the cognitive calculus explanation can account for the preferences of different individual actors, in different states, facing different national conditions, and different international circumstances. This paper will conclude with a discussion of the implications of this work for future scholarly and policy efforts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the cognitive calculus theory of decision-making. The theory is derived deductively from experimental evidence in social and cognitive psychology, and is based on the notion that all people are cognitive misers or cognitive processing cost-minimizers who unconsciously prefer judgments that are mentally cheap to those that are mentally dear. It proposes that the relative miserliness of any foreign policy choice depends on three distinct variables: the decision-making stage (problem definition or solution definition), a decision-maker's role assignment (leader or advisor), and his or her level of knowledge (novice to expert). And it argues that when circumstances are fluid enough for people to disagree, it is the cognitive cost of making policy judgments (low to high) that accounts for systematic differences between civilian and military specialists in choices of war and peace. Evidence from the British decisions for peace in 1938 confirm the explanatory power of the new theory and extend earlier work on several American cases including studies of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the 1968 turn toward peace, and the 2001 decision for war. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the cognitive calculus theory of decision-making. The theory is derived deductively from experimental evidence in social and cognitive psychology, and it is based on the notion that all people are cognitive misers or cognitive processing cost-minimizers who unconsciously prefer judgments that are mentally cheap to those that are mentally dear. It proposes that the relative miserliness of any foreign policy choice depends on three distinct variables: the decision-making stage (problem definition or solution definition), a decision-maker’s role assignment (leader or advisor), and his or her level of knowledge (novice to expert). And it argues that when circumstances are fluid enough for people to disagree, it is the cognitive cost of making policy judgments (low to high) that accounts for systematic differences between civilian and military specialists in choices of war and peace. Evidence from the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the American decision for war in 2001 confirms the explanatory power of the new theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new and general theory of decision-making: the cognitive miser theory. This theory focuses on the individual actor as the fundamental unit of analysis, and proposes that it is variations in decision role (leader or advisor), and variations in levels of knowledge (expert, intermediate, or novice) that prompt national actors to choose policies of war rather than policies of peace. Using the Kennedy administration’s response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Bush administration’s response to the terrorist events of September 11, this paper confirms the power of the new theory, and demonstrates the potential of this new approach to illuminate an even broader array of choices, both within foreign policy studies and beyond. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations analysts have long sought to explain when and why nations choose policies of war rather than policies of peace. Contemporary researchers offer structural accounts, or they offer decision-making accounts. Structural efforts contend that the foreign policy choices of rational actors are fundamentally determined by the configuration of the international system or by the capabilities and resources of nation-states. Decision-making efforts contend that such rational foreign policy choices are sometimes impeded by the dynamics of the organizational or the bureaucratic process, or by the individual cognitive process. Although each perspective provides distinctive types of explanatory approaches, only structural studies currently include clear and causal theories. Decision-making investigations do not yet offer a general theory of foreign policy choice.This paper will present a new theory: the cognitive calculus theory of decision-making. This new theory will combine the central features of an organizational and bureaucratic process perspective and the central features of an individual cognitive process perspective. However, it will overcome the chief limitations now associated with each. It will explain when and why national leaders will choose policies of war rather than policies of peace, and it will offer a clear and causal alternative to rational, structural explanations of foreign policy choice.To establish the significance of the new cognitive calculus theory of decision-making, this paper will begin by briefly reviewing the key differences that separate current structural theories from current decision-making approaches. It will then present a more detailed examination of several of the most important earlier contributions to foreign policy decision-making research. It will highlight work that draws attention to the influence of the organizational and the bureaucratic process, and work that draws attention to the influence of the individual cognitive process. It will claim that each type of decision-making effort has well-known strengths and weaknesses, but that neither type of decision-making approach offers a general theory of foreign policy choice.This paper will then review the central psychological argument presented in the new cognitive calculus theory of decision-making. It will show how this new theory focuses attention on the individual actor as the fundamental unit of analysis, and how it uses the simple and non-rational assumption that people are cognitive processing cost-minimizers to propose that it is variations in task and variations in knowledge which prompt variations in the price of any inference. This paper will then present a model of the theory that is specifically designed for application in the arena of international politics. This model will address the essential foreign policy choices of war and peace, and it will allow a series of predictions to be made about just when it should be that national leaders and their advisors will prefer the use of force to the use of diplomacy. To test the empirical validity of this model and these predictions in the "real world" of international history, this paper will include a case study of the Johnson administration?s turn toward peace in Vietnam in 1968. Results will confirm the power of the new theory and demonstrate its potential for explaining an even broader array of decisions for war and peace by US leaders and others. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations analysts have long sought to explain when and why nations choose policies of war rather than policies of peace. Contemporary researchers offer structural accounts, or they offer decision-making accounts. Structural efforts contend that the foreign policy choices of rational actors are fundamentally determined by the configuration of the international system or by the capabilities and resources of nation-states. Decision-making efforts contend that such rational foreign policy choices are sometimes impeded by the dynamics of the organizational or the bureaucratic process, or by the individual cognitive process. Although each perspective provides distinctive types of explanatory approaches, only structural studies currently include clear and causal theories. Decision-making investigations do not yet offer a genuine theory of foreign policy choice.This paper will present a new theory: the cognitive miser theory of decision-making. This new theory will combine the central features of an organizational and bureaucratic process perspective and the central features of an individual cognitive process perspective. However, it will overcome the chief limitations now associated with each. It will explain exactly when and why national leaders will choose policies of war rather than policies of peace, and offer a clear and causal alternative to rational, structural explanations of foreign policy choice.To test the power of the theory, this paper will include two case studies: the Kennedy administration?s response to the Cuban missile crisis; and the Bush administration?s response to September 11. Results will confirm the power of the theory and demonstrate its potential for explaining other decisions, too. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]