Images, Process and Feedback in Foreign Policy: Israel's Decisions on German Reparations*

Michael Brecher

American Political Science Review, 1973, vol. 67, issue 1, 73-102

Abstract: This paper attempts to operationalize the concept of a foreign policy system and to test the utility of one path to empirically oriented theory: The approach is designated “structured empiricism.” The research design incorporates some of the recent innovations in political science—the concept of system, the distinction between operational and psychological environment, the notion of issue-area and the attitudinal prism or lens through which decision makers' images are filtered. The focus is on one of the most significant Israeli foreign policy decision clusters—German Reparations 1950–2. Following the designation of the decision-making group, the dissection of their psychological environment, and the analysis of the decision-making process, the critical dimension of feedback is examined. The decision flow and feedback flow illustrate the dynamic character of a foreign policy system in action. Finally, a selection of hypotheses on the behavior of decision makers is tested, and the findings summarized.

Date: 1973
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:67:y:1973:i:01:p:73-102_14

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().