Poliheuristic Theory and Crisis Decision Making: A Comparative Analysis of Turkey with China

Abstract

Foreign policy crises, as the last stage of interaction for states between peace and war, have received a great deal of attention vis-à-vis the study of decision making. The present study will seek to add to understanding crises in world politics through application of poliheuristic theory~PH! to decision making for two important states, Turkey and China. Both became critical actors during the Cold War in opposing ideological camps. In recent decades, both China and Turkey followed secular and pragmatic foreign policies. Each is a rising power in its region, with continuing efforts to integrate into the international community. These factors render China and Turkey the most challenging cases to PH theory and the differences between these two countries facilitate an interesting comparative analysis.This research builds on a previous analysis of Chinese crises, which found a considerable degree of agreement with predictions derived from PH~James and Zhang, 2005!. The present study moves that work forward in three ways. First, it introduces a new case, Turkey, to the analysis. Second, some additional hypotheses from PH are tested on both states.

Turkey and Cyprus: A Poliheuristic Analysis of Decisions during the Crises of 1964, 1967, and 1974

“…Their work is an example of decision units' effects on the decision-making process. Sandal et al (2011) compares Chinese and Turkish decision-making during international crises by using PH theory. They conclude that out of nine analyzed crises, Turkish leaders used two-stage decision-making in eight of them.…”

“…Based on this discussion and the PH literature (Mintz 1993(Mintz , 2002James and Zhang 2005;Sandal et al 2011), we form our hypotheses about Turkey's decisionmaking in the three Cyprus crises as follows:…”

Policy Perspectives on National Security and Foreign Policy Decision Making

“…She found that leaders used cognitive heuristics that eliminated various policy options en route to choice and that their choices surrounding this environmental treaty were often not motivated by environmental concerns but by domestic political calculations. James and Zhang () and Sandal, Zhang, James, and James () examined crisis decision making in China, and comparatively in China and Turkey, respectively, using poliheuristic theory and found that it does quite well in explaining leaders' crisis decision making.…”

Key Concepts in the Poliheuristic Theory of Foreign Policy Decision Making: A Comparative Examination Using Systemist Theory

“…For nearly thirty years, the poliheuristic theory of decision making has been used by scholars to explain leaders' decision-making processes and choices. Poliheuristic theory has been applied to fields of study such as terrorism (see, e.g., Mintz et al 2006;Chatagnier et al 2012), international bargaining (see, e.g., Astorino-Courtois and Trusty 2000;Beckerman-Boys 2014), the diversionary use of force (see, e.g., Mintz 1993;DeRouen 2001), coalition formation (see, e.g., Mintz 1995), international environmental agreements (see, e.g., Below 2008Below , 2009, nuclear proliferation (see, e.g., O'Reilly 2012), how foreign policy decisions are made at the domestic level (see, e.g., Brummer 2013;Redd 2002;Mintz 2004;Kinne 2005;Goertz 2004;Mintz 2005;Dacey and Carlson 2004;Yang 2008, 2016;Christensen and Redd 2004;Mintz et al 1997), and international crises (see, e.g., Mintz 1993;Redd 2005;DeRouen 2003;DeRouen and Sprecher 2004;Kinne 2005;Keller and Yang 2009;Sandal et al 2011;Taylor-Robinson and Redd 2003;James and Zhang 2005;Özdamar and Erciyas 2020;Westcott 2019;Ye 2007), as well as many others. The studies cited above have also used different methodological approaches to test the tenets of poliheuristic theory, including experimental, formal, statistical (large-N), and case study methods.…”