The foreign policy decision-maker simulation

Abstract

The major theoretical presupposition of our model of foreign-policy decision-making is that the beliefs of the decision-makers are central to the study of decision outputs and probably account for much of the variance in international politics. Beliefs represent both the congealed experiences of the decision-maker and his expectations about the decision environment. In the former sense, they are his decisions about the significance of past "events". In the decision-making process the belief system as a whole acts like a template for receiving and channeling information, and for relating possible policy options to perceptions about the intentions and behavior of other nations, as well as to the policy objectives of the decision-maker.