Abstract
This study seeks to identify the factors that determine advisers' choice of tools and assess their influence under different circumstances. It uses historical process tracing methods to examine the `battle' between President Truman's foreign policy advisers over the formulation of US policy towards the Palestine question. It finds that: (1) advisers' self-perception determines the degree of their flexibility in the choice of tools; (2) the distribution of formal powers, the personalities involved and the type of policy question determine the intensity of the advisory battle; (3) non-expert advisers can win the advisory battle by using psychological tools of persuasion but only under certain specific conditions, which existed in this case; and finally that (4) an adviser's influence will be limited by the extent to which the leader is willing and able to independently form an opinion on the policy question.
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