Two (or More) Heads Are Better Than One?

Abstract

Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making: A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy Choices. By Juliet Kaarbo. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. 340 pp., $85.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11824-3). As Juliet Kaarbo points out at the outset, “our knowledge of foreign policy decision making was and still is myopically based on the US system” (p. ix). I would refer to this more broadly as an Anglo-American bias. The United States and UK dominate today's social science literature, and scholars (and policymakers) in both countries tend to assume, based on their own countries' systems, that a “normal” government is led by one leader from one party. Without even noting their biased assumption, authors tend to automatically treat governments as rational, unitary actors. If they do introduce the notion of leaders having to balance varied interests in a cabinet, it is usually in the sense of varying personal ideologies (“hawks” versus “doves”) or different bureaucratic actors (as in the classic model of Graham Allison's Essence of Decision ). If authors do touch on the role of coalition governments in foreign policy, it is generally only to denigrate this model as inferior to the Anglo-American “one leader” ideal. Coalition governments are seen as either unable to reach decisions or prone to lurch from one extreme to the other, depending on the whim of the parties involved. The image of coalitions seems to be based on that of Italy or of France in the Third and Fourth Republics. This biased image is not merely an intellectual …