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" Who advises? Power, politics and persuasion in foreign policy decision -making "
Brent A. Strathman
D. Sylvan
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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54950
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| Doc. No
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TL24904
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| Call number
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3197860
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| Main Entry
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Brent A. Strathman
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| Title & Author
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Who advises? Power, politics and persuasion in foreign policy decision -making\ Brent A. Strathman
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| College
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The Ohio State University
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| Date
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2005
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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2005
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| Page No
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295
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| Abstract
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In a complex foreign policy system, involving myriad bureaucracies, advisors, and political entrepreneurs, who advises? What advice is heeded, and which advisor is followed? While most scholars tacitly acknowledge the importance of advisors in international relations, few attempt to answer the question of how advisors impact the decision making process, and the limits to successful advising. Importantly, the question of 'who advises?' is often crucial in explaining war and peace, since advisors often impact leader opinions and dictate the course of foreign policy. My dissertation blends insights from psychology and foreign policy to create a comprehensive framework describing foreign policy advising. In my framework, advisors compete against each other in a 'marketplace of ideas.' Successful advisors are those who draw from four bases of power (access, expertise, experience, and rhetoric) to posit salient appeals. However, these appeals are constrained by leader dispositions (such as militant assertiveness and political knowledge) and the strategic situation (the foreign policy problem a decision maker faces). I construct a set of hypotheses that combines bases of power, leader predispositions, strategic situation, and advisory technique to predict when advisors matter. I use experiments and comparative case studies to empirically explore these hypotheses. Experiments engage the psychological dimension of advising by exploring the impact of advice across personality types. Insights from the experiment are combined with the theoretical model, and applied to four cases of Presidential decision-making: the capture of the USS Pueblo , the capture of the USS Mayaguez, the decision to send troops to Lebanon, and the decision to not send troops to Rwanda. I trace the decision-making process using primary and secondary sources, and discover the influence wielded by Presidential advisors. Results suggest important paradoxes; for example, Presidents often ignore the advice of their expert military advisors. My dissertation is the first systematic study of advisory influence in Presidential decision-making, drawing from numerous fields of inquiry to construct a novel framework to examine foreign policy. Initial findings suggest new, counterintuitive hypotheses for future study.
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Social sciences; Advisors; Decision-making; Foreign policy; International security; Persuasion; Politics; Power; International law; International relations; 0616:International relations; 0616:International law
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D. Sylvan
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The Ohio State University
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