ABSTRACT
Approaches in various subfields of microeconomics, e.g., finance or marketing, which emphasize the importance of these additional internal constraints within the firm, constitute instances of “behavioral economics” as an approach to economic analysis. Approaches in various subfields of International Relations, e.g., foreign policy analysis, which also emphasize the importance of “individualsas-actors” within the state, can similarly become the core of “behavioral IR” as an approach to the micropolitics of foreign policy analysis (Wolfers 1962; Snyder et al. 1954; Mintz 2007). The case for this approach to the field of International Relations rests on the same arguments advanced on its behalf in an earlier era of political science and in other social sciences. Approaches that either limit their scope to the macroscopic level of analysis or rest on untested assumptions about empirical phenomena at the microscopic level of analysis yield explanations that are lacking, or at least limited, in validity.
