Decision-Making in U.S. Foreign Policy Crises: Presidential Leadership and Outcomes

Abstract

Scholars of foreign policy decision-making have argued that international interactions ultimately are grounded in people acting singly or in groups. Unfortunately, data limitations prevent many of these crucial foreign policy decision-making theories from being rigorously tested and systematically compared with theories from alternative perspectives. A promising approach to remedying this deficiency is the addition of decision-making variables to existing, large- N data sets. In this study, we coded a series of foreign policy decision-making variables for all U.S. cases in the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data set, and examined how these decision-making variables compared with structural factors in shaping crisis outcomes. The results reveal that when controlling for structural factors such as conflict setting and power discrepancy, foreign policy decision-making variables related to leaders’ traits, advisory structure, and the political context shaped the severity and centrality of violence employed by the United States. We conclude that including decision-making variables alongside structural variables will enhance the quality of data analysis in the areas of conflict studies and foreign policy analysis.