ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses several important issues in the analysis of international relations. These are the analysis of international negotiation, foreign policy evaluation, and "bureaucratic politics". The negotiation is said to be appropriate when the parties concerned have interests in common, when none can impose its preferences on the others, and when each has a veto. Cycles of crisis are accompanied by characteristic psychological and political sequences-reactions of denial, changing "definitions of the situation" and attributions of responsibility, as well as political realignments--that accompany the diplomatic moves with which we are mainly concerned. As the crisis reaches a climax, it will engage ever-higher levels of officialdom, until the chief executive is actively and frequently involved. A crisis also illuminates the "policy network" attached to the foreign relationship in question.
