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| A political system that allows little or no participation in decision making by individuals and groups outside the upper reaches of the government |
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| A concept that describes the degree of equilibrium (balance) or disequilibrium (imbalance) of power in the global or regional system |
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| This theory examines the relationship between the physical nature and political behavior of humans |
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| The bulk of the state's administrative structure that continues even when leaders change |
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| Cognitive decision making |
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| Making choices within the limits of what you consciously know |
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| A circumstance or event that is a surprise to decision makers, that evokes a sense of threat (particularly physical peril), and that must be responded to within a limited amount of time |
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| The manner by which humans choose which policy to pursue and which actions to take in support of policy goals. The study of decision making seeks to identify patterns in the way that humans make decisions. This includes gathering information, analyzing information, and making choices. Decision making is a complex process that relates to personality and other human traits, to the sociopolitical setting in which the decision makers function, and to the organizational structures involved. |
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| The government system a country has in terms of free and fair elections and levels of participation |
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| The comparison of animal and human behavior |
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| A concept that includes the influences and activities within a country that causes its government to decide to adopt one or another foreign policy. |
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| Foreign policy-making actors |
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| The political actors within a state-- including political executives, bureaucracies, legislatures, political opponents, interest groups, and the people--who influence the foreign policy process. |
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| Authority to act or to exert influence that is granted by statutory law or by the constitution to a political executive or to another element of government. |
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| Frustration-aggression theory |
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| A psychologically based theory that frustrated societies sometimes become collectively aggressive. (68) |
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| The difference between males and females along any one of a number of dimensions, including foreign policy preferences. (69) |
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| How an individual's membership in an organization/decision-making group influences his or her thinking and actions. In particular there are tendencies within a group to think a like, to avoid discordance, and to ignore ideas or information that threaten to disrupt the consensus. (72) |
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| The ranking official in the executive branch who is politically and constituionally invested with the preponderance of authority to administer the government and execute its laws and policies. (82) |
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| A single country or alliance that is so dominant in the international system that it plays the key role in determining the rules and norms by which the system operates. As a dominant power in the system, it has a central position in both making and enforcing the norms and modes of behavior. Hegemon is a synonym for a hegemonic power. (49, 93) |
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| A range of psychological strategies that allows individuals to simplify complex decisions. Such devices include evaluating people and events in terms of how well they coincide with your own belief system ("I am anticommunist: therefore all communists are dangerous"), stereotypes ("all Muslims are fanatics"), or analogies ("appeasing Hitler was wrong; therefore all compromise with aggressors is wrong.") (66) |
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| Horizontal authority structure |
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| A system in which authority is fragmented. The international system has a mostly horizontal authority structure. (91) |
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| An individual-level analysis approach to decision making that assumes that individuals make foreign policy decions and that different individuals are likely to make different decisions. (73) |
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| Individual-level analysis |
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| An analytical approach that emphasizes the role of individuals as either distinctpersonalities or biological/psychological beings. (65) |
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| Authority to act or to exert influence that is derived from custom or from the prestige within a political system of either an individual leader or an institution. |
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| A private (nongovernmental) association of people who have similiar policy views and who pressure the government to adopt those views as policy. (87) |
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| Intermestic policy (Intermestic) |
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| The merger of international and domestic concerns and decisions. (8,80) |
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| Substantive categories of policy that must be considered when evaluating national interest. (79) |
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| Leader-citizen opinion gap |
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| Differences of opinion between leaders and public, which may have an impact on foreign policy in a democratic country. (90) |
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| A range of personal job skills including administrative skills, legislative skills, public persuasion abilitis, and intellectual capacity that affect the authority of political leaders. (82,248) |
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| Different prospectives (system, state, individual) from which international politics can be analyzed. (65) |
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| The tendency of two countries or individuals to see each other in similar ways, whether positive or negative. (71) |
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| A perceptual phenomenon that describes how an individual acts and responds when faced with specific types of situations. (76) |
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| The process by which what is perceived, whether that perception is accurate or not, assumes a level of reality in the mind of the beholder and becomes the basis for making an operational decision (a decision about what to do). (76) |
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| A view of decision making that holds it occurs in two stages. During the first stage, nonrational considerations such as how an issue and the response to it will affect a decision maker's political or professional future are applied to narrow the range of choices. Then in the second stage decision makers use strategic considerations and other rational criteria to make a final policy choice |
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| A concept that refers to a society's general, long-held, and fundamental practices and attitudes. These are based on a country's historical experience and on the values (norms) of its citizens. These attitudes are often an important part of the internal setting in which national leaders make foreign policy. (81) |
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| Those officials, usually but not always in the executive branch of government, who are at the center of foreign policy-making and whose tenures are variable and dependent on the political contest for power. (82) |
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| An actor in the international system that has enough military, economic, and/or diplomatic strength to often have an important role in determining the rules and operation of the system. Power poles, or simply poles, have generally been either (1) a single country or empire or (2) a group of countries that constitute an alliance or bloc. (44, 93) |
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| How an individual's position influences his or her thinking and actions. (72) |
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| A system describing the current world system wherein states are the principal actors. (91) |
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| An analytical approach that emphasizes the actions of states and the internal (domestic) causes of their policies. (78) |
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| The concept that in order to arrive at satisfactory international agreements, a country's diplomats actually have to deal with (at one level) the other country's negotiators and (at the second level) legislators, interest groups, and other domestic factors. (84, 265) |
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| A type of international system that describes a single country with complete global hegemony. (93) |
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| Vertical authority structure |
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Definition
| A system in which subordinate units answer to higher levels of authority. (91) |
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