Constraints on Foreign Policy Decision MakingStability and Flexibility in Three Crises

TLDR: In this paper, the authors used stability and flexibility as the causes of constraints and applied them to three illustrative crisis situations (World War I, the Korean War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis) and found that stability influences the range of options considered and flexibility gives the location of the range on the behavior taxonomy.

Abstract: Since the usual theoretical approaches to explain foreign policy decision-making—that is, to isolate a single explanatory factor—have proven less than satisfying, a different perspective is proposed here. Normally the explanation is framed in a “this factor causes that behavior” statement. The perspective offered is that decision makers are constrained by certain factors to a limited range of choice. The factors of stability and flexibility are used as the causes of constraints and applied to three illustrative crisis situations—World War I, the Korean War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The results of the application indicate that stability influences the range of options considered and that flexibility gives the location of the range on the behavior taxonomy. The intensity of flexibility appears to indicate the probable location within the range of the behavior to be selected. These results give support to the proposition of constrained decision-making.