ABSTRACT
With the exception of the extreme form of messaging in which the diplomat is reduced to delivering a message from one capital to the next, every diplomatic task listed in Chapter 6 requires from the diplomat to make up his or her mind about what to do. How do diplomats come to compose a message? How do they arrive at a stance to defend at a negotiation table? How do they make up their minds about how to mediate in a conflict? How do they figure out how to frame their talk? This chapter, taking a broad view of decisions and decision-making, casts its net widely. It draws from the social sciences to introduce the reader to different perspectives on explaining the making of decisions. This requires us to switch gears. While the previous chapters were first aimed at describing the evolution of diplomacy (Part II) and then outlining an analytical frame for analysing diplomatic processes (Part III), this chapter begins to explain the work of the diplomat in greater detail. In doing so, we introduce the reader to a broad analytical toolbox, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. We take the tools of this toolbox from various disciplines, including political science, economics, psychology and sociology. Since the tools we discuss are at times rather abstract, we frequently refer to important twentieth-and twenty-first-century events and the diplomatic decisions made in order to deal with them as illustrative cases. These events share in common that they pushed decision-makers into addressing the balance between diplomatic and military responses, which helps us to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches we discuss. This chapter is organised into five sections. First, we deal with rational choice and discuss its strengths and weaknesses by taking a look at the Cold War logic of deterrence. Second, we provide an overview of contending approaches in political psychology. Here, our illustrative case is the diplomatic run-up to the Second Gulf
War in 2003. Third, we address the logic of appropriateness and employ it to analyse continuities and discontinuities of German foreign policy since re-unification. Fourth, we direct our attention to the logic of argumentation and evaluate its explanatory power by putting the driving forces of the end of the Cold War under scrutiny. Fifth, we outline the logic of practice and probe its explanatory strengths and weaknesses by applying it to France’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Africa.
