Bloodless Coup

David Welch's Painful Choices

Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change is worth your time if you hope to be able to understand foreign policy, and more to the point, fluctuations in foreign policy. It's almost two books in one as the opening of the text is a great review of why constructing a (useful and accurate) theory of foreign policy is close to impossible. Once Welch gets through with his argument for theorizing about foreign policy change, instead of foreign policy more generally, he lays out a loss-aversion theory of change that draws on organization theory, cognitive and motivational psychology and prospect theory. He then tests this theory through examinations of the Falklands War, the Northern Territories dispute between Japan and Russia, the US side of the Vietnam war, and attempts to liberalize trade between Canada and the US. Overall, these cases "vindicate the expectation of inertia, illustrate the punctuated equilibrium of foreign policy, and demonstrate that these tendencies are rendered intelligible by a combination of organizational and psychological considerations. The third hypothesis appears to have the most 'bang for the buck'" - the third hypothesis being the one that deals with prospect theory (change is more likely to stem from a fear of losses than from a desire for gains). But the other hypotheses also receive broad support - more bureaucratic states in democratic regimes are less likely than less bureaucratic states in autocratic regimes to change their foreign policies, and policy change is more likely occur in the face of a string of failures which have led to an unacceptable status quo (or the fear of an imminent collapse).

There are matters outside the model that clearly seem to be key to the course of these decision-making events (the analogies that decision makers relied on, path dependencies). But on the whole, Welch's approach as much to recommend it.