Groupthink Versus High-Quality Decision Making in International Relations Book

List of Tables and Figures ix

Acknowledgments xi

Part I Groupthink and the Quality of the Foreign-Policy Decision-Making Process

1 Introduction 5

2 The Group and the Individual in Foreign-Policy Decision Making 18

3 The Decision-Making Model: The Interplay of Group Processes and Psychological Characteristics 53

Part II Case Studies in American Foreign-Policy Decision Making

4 Case Studies in Low-Quality Decision Making 81

The Garter Administration and the Shah 82

Reagan Funding the Contras, 1981 92

Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative 103

George W. Bush and the 2002 Steel Tariffs 113

5 Case Studies in High-Quality Decision Making 123

The Carter Administration and the Ogaden Crisis 123

The Reagan Administration and Easing Ferdinand Marcos out of Power 132

The Clinton Administration and South Asia: Nuclear Capabilities and Another War Over Kashmir 143

Part III Statistical Analyses

6 The Effect of Groupthink Versus High-Quality Decision Making on Outcomes 157

7 Individual-Level Factors Affecting the Quality of Decision Making 188

Part IV Conclusions

8 The 2003 War in Iraq: How Flawed Decision Making Led to Critical Failures 211

9 Groupthink Versus High-Quality Decision Making: Lessons and Prescriptions 237

Appendix A Cases Included in the Analysis 251

Appendix B Operational Definitions of Situational-Context Variables 255

Appendix C Operational Definitions of Group-Structural Variables 257

Appendix D Operational Definitions of Decision-Processing Variables 259

Notes 261

References 265

Index 279