Back to the Future? Behavioral IR as a Case of Arrested Development

Abstract

Alex Mintz calls in his essay in this Forum for recognizing “Behavioral IR” as a subfield in the study of IR. He rests his case on the existence of “numerous anomalies from the traditional analytic, rational, expected utility model of choice” in research in political science and IR. A combination of favorable methodological developments and historical conditions has combined to create a bright future for Behavioral IR as a subfield. If this future promise is fulfilled, then Behavioral IR as a subfield may come to focus on the dyad as a micro-structural unit of analysis with models of bounded strategic rationality informed by content analyses of the beliefs and other psychological characteristics of the leaders of these dyads (Herrmann and Fischerkeller 1995; Lake and Powell 1999; Wendt 1999; Walker 2004). Some will point out no doubt that Behavioral IR has existed since the 1960s with its members publishing in outlets such as the Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Interactions, Journal of Peace Research, Conflict Management and Peace Science , and International Studies Quarterly . What is new is the opportunity to increase the explained variance in Behavioral IR studies by including the explicit measurement and analysis of psychological characteristics of political leaders in the contextual models tested in this literature. It is now cost effective to combine within a single research design the independent variables from contextual models and the psychological characteristics of leaders to achieve more robust results (Schafer 2000; Walker 2000; Post 2005; Walker and Schafer 2006). The gap between rational choice models and empirical studies of decision making may also shrink as a result of the use of the new methodological tools that are available for gathering information about individual decision makers. The “world in their minds” has now …