The Behavioral Revolution and International Relations

• Published in: International organization Vol. 71; no. S1; pp. S1 - S31
• Main Authors: Hafner-Burton, Emilie M., Haggard, Stephan, Lake, David A., Victor, David G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.04.2017
• Subjects: Behavior; Behavioral economics; Behavioral psychology; Cognition & reasoning; Decision making; Defense industry; Dictators; Disasters; Expected utility; Game theory; Hussein, Saddam; International relations; Introduction; Kahneman, Daniel (1934-2024); Laboratories; Political science; Politics; Psychology; Social sciences; Socialization; New York; United States > US; Iraq
• ISSN: 0020-8183; 1531-5088
• DOI: 10.1017/S0020818316000400

What explains the strategically costly and ill-planned American invasion and occupation of Iraq? What accounts for Saddam Hussein's failure to take actions that might have deflected it? These decisions can be explored with rationalist tools, including the existence of credible commitment problems and asymmetries in information. But explanations of this sort beg a number of important questions. The Clinton and Bush administrations did not differ substantially in their information about Iraq. But Bush administration officials--and the president himself--did hold beliefs that differed substantially from those of their predecessors, and those beliefs had profound effects. Decision making by both Iraqi and US leaders displayed strong biases. Saddam Hussein failed to recognize that the United States was committed to war unless he was willing to reveal credibly that he had, in fact, dismantled his weapons of mass destruction. The United States signaled its intentions repeatedly, but the Iraqi leader remained impervious to new information. Bush administration officials believed that the Americans would be greeted as liberators and democracy would flourish of its own accord. Such motivated reasoning both precipitated war and contributed to the failure to plan adequately for rebuilding the Iraqi state in war's wake. The causes of the Iraq War and the disastrous consequences of its aftermath appear to lie as much in the realm of beliefs and decision making as in standard theories of bargaining. Similar anomalies can be found in the study of international political economy. The theory of open-economy politics offers clear predictions about individual preferences with respect to trade policy. When factors of production are specific to an industry, individuals employed or invested in the comparatively advantaged sector should favor free trade. When factors of production are mobile, individuals who possess assets that are relatively scarce should favor protectionism. Yet, after more than a decade of careful empirical research, there is little evidence that voters actually define their interests in these rational, materialist ways. Instead, citizens' preferences appear to be in part sociotropic--rooted in concerns about the economy's performance as a whole and averse to policies that harm the least advantaged in society. Individuals also have predispositions with respect to trade that are rooted in nationalism, ethnocentrism, and even racism. Women are more protectionist than men, perhaps because they are more averse to social inequalities. Trade policy preferences depend heavily on how the issues are framed, for example, whether questions engage respondents' status as a producer or consumer. Rather than holding attitudes determined by their position in the international market, individuals appear to be guided by dispositions rooted in emotion, social psychology, and even genetic differences.Armed with these sorts of insights, a new behavioral revolution has swept across the social sciences in the last few decades. With origins in psychology, of course, psychological models have fueled the dramatic growth of behavioral economics and are now gaining traction in political science as well. The defining characteristic of this revolution has been the use of empirical research on preferences, beliefs, and decision making to modify choice- and game-theoretic models. This is hardly the first time that international relations scholars have looked at how decision making might affect political outcomes. Earlier literatures drawing on psychology took advantage of prospect theory and research on decision-making heuristics. What is new in today's behavioral revolution is the explosion of experimental research in both laboratory and field settings. This empirical work has spawned important theoretical advances, such as a growing consensus around a "two-level" model of cognition in which some choices are intuitive and immediate--what Kahneman calls "System 1" or "fast" cognition--while others are slow, deliberative, and more "rational"--referred to as "System 2" or "slow" thinking. Also new are the efforts to anchor behavioral observations in a stronger neurological foundation through advances in brain science. The result has been a wealth of research presenting both complements and alternatives to rational choice models.This special issue aims to chart a strategy for incorporating the new behavioral revolution more fully into the study of international relations. In principle, standard rationalist approaches to the study of international relations have allowed individual preferences, beliefs, and decision making to vary. In practice, however, the focus on structure and interstate games mitigated the need to explore these variations in any great detail.