ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a dynamic theory of conflict and cooperation among contemporary nation-states based on a simple model of memory and how it is incorporated in the foreign policy process. Interactions among nation-states that are included range from those that are primarily diplomatic and verbal to those that entail a greater and more immediate commitment of resources, such as war. Unlike many theoretical efforts, this study focuses upon the ways in which the perceptions of foreign policy decision-making elites evolve, incorportating and weighting information from the past and recalling it and applying it in the future. Contextual information plays 440an important part, not only in terms of when and if such information is recalled, but also in terms of how it is weighted. This memory is conceptualized as a stock of perceptions akin to Richardson’s “grievance” terms, which are built up from the flow of interactions among nation-states. Such a model also is similar in thrust to that proposed some twenty years ago in The Nerves of Government (Deutsch:1963).
