Groupthink Versus High-Quality Decision Making in International Relations

Mark Schafer is professor of political science at Louisiana State University. He has published more than thirty-five articles in such publications as Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly, and, with Stephen Walker, he is the editor of Beliefs and Leadership in World Politics. Schafer is the past president of the Foreign Policy Analysis section of the International Studies Association and has received the Erik Erikson Award for Early Career Achievement from the International Society of Political Psychology. Scott Crichlow is associate professor of political science at West Virginia University. His work concerns foreign-policy decision making, international relations, and political psychology, and has been published in International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Political Psychology.

• List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments Part I. Groupthink and the Quality of the Foreign-Policy Decision-Making Process 1. Introduction 2. The Group and the Individual in Foreign-Policy Decision Making 3. The Decision-Making Model: The Interplay of Group Processes and Psychological Characteristics Part II. Case Studies in American Foreign-Policy Decision Making 4. Case Studies in Low-Quality Decision Making 5. Case Studies in High-Quality Decision Making Part III. Statistical Analyses 6. The Effect of Groupthink Versus High-Quality Decision Making on Outcomes 7. Individual-Level Factors Affecting the Quality of Decision Making Part IV. Conclusions 8. The 2003 War in Iraq: How Flawed Decision Making Led to Critical Failures 9. Groupthink Versus High-Quality Decision Making: Lessons and Prescriptions Appendix A. Cases Included in the Analysis Appendix B. Operational Definitions of Situational-Context Variables Appendix C. Operational Definitions of Group-Structural Variables Appendix D. Operational Definitions of Decision-Processing Variables Notes References Index