Approaches in Decision Making for Foreign Policy

INTRODUCTION

Foreign policy is the relation between the states. “Foreign policy is an activity of the state with which it fulfils its aims and interests within the international arena” (Patrič, 2013, p. 1). Foreign policy has many definitions by the other scholar. According to Laura Neack, which is cited from Charles Herman,(n.d), he mentioned foreign policy as,

“The discrete purposeful action that results from the political level decision of an individual or group of individuals… [it is] the abservable artifact of a political level decision. It is not the decision, but a product of the decision” (Neack, 2003, p. 25)

There are a lot of approaches that can be applied in making decision for foreign policy. The example of the approach is rational actor, bureaucratic, strategic planning, organizational behavior and hypothetical flow. This paper will preview about the approaches like rational actor, organizational behavior and bureaucratic model. It is from the Allison’s Three Model which is has been introduced by Graham T. Allison.

DISCUSSION

Rational actor is a part of in doing a rationalist approach to foreign policy decision making. At every basic level, we assume that people are rational in doing every aspect in social norms. Thus, rationality is a complex concept with different meaning and different people or actors. According to Slantchev, “Rationality does not carry any connotations of normative behavior.” (Slantchev, April 19, 2005) From here we can see that not at all the social norms based on the rationality by actors. According to Slantchev,

“Hence, one may well argue that Hitler was rational even though his actions were clearly morally reprehensible. Similarly, it is quite possible to argue that suicide terrorists are r...

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...depend on the rationality of the leader. The state will get benefit if the decision is give benefit to the state. The organizational is different from the rational actor model. The organization in the government is the one that responsible in making decision for foreign policy. The organization is consists from a lot of organization in the government. This model depends on the Standard Operating Procedure when making certain decision for foreign policy. The bureaucratic model is also different from the rational actor model, where the leader is not the person that responsible making decision in foreign policy. The people in government are making decision for their own interest that to maintain their survival in the state (Brummer, 2009). In other word, we can say that every approach has their own function and their own procedure in making decision in foreign policy.