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Explaining Self-Defeating Foreign Policy Decisions: Interpreting Soviet Arms for Egypt in 1973 Through Process or Domestic Bargaining Models?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Richard D. Anderson Jr. ,
Margaret G. Hermann  and
Charles F. Hermann
Richard D. Anderson Jr.
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Margaret G. Hermann
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Charles F. Hermann
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Abstract

How should we explain why a state sometimes adopts a foreign policy in one region that interferes with its concurrent policies elsewhere? In their article in the March 1989 issue of this Review, Stewart, Hermann and Hermann proposed a three-level process model of foreign policy to explain such Soviet behavior towards Egypt in 1973. The analysis has continuing interest because it interprets the puzzling behavior as a manifestation of general problems of information processing in making foreign policy choices. Richard Anderson suggests that a two-level model of domestic bargaining better accounts for the causal sequence in Soviet-Egyptian relations and is in general more parsimonious. Margaret and Charles Hermann defend their substantive analysis and argue in any case for the complementarity of process and bargaining approaches.

Type
Controversy
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 86 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 759 - 766
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1992

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