Ideas Interests feedback loop

As the class dissected the readings this week the consensus was, this was a dense set of reading.  Goldstein and Keohane separate Ideas and interests into separate discreet categories that international actors use to decide a course of action. While this is a very useful way to analyze and predict the behavior of an actor it over simplifies a much more complex process. This technique simplifies the variables and makes assumptions to a manageable analysis.  Weldes and Laffey use a model that does not view ideas and interests as separate. They view both as building blocks that influence one another.  This use of ideas as symbolic technology can pull together seemingly separate motives that are actually based on the same idea. They way they define ideas as being something social not just as an individual and not a constant creates a model with much more flexibility to encapsulate the complexity of human nature inherent in International relations.

While reading Christopher Hemmers, Historical Analogies and the Definition of Interests: The Iranian Hostage Crisis and Ronald Reagan's Policy Toward the Hostages in Lebanon, I think he does an excellent job of delving into the nature of human decision making in a way that supports Weldes and Laffey. He demonstrates how Ideas and interests are not separate. He looks closely at analogies as an idea and how they affect not only interest but the underlying idea of what a country’s interests are.  First, he introduces the way that analogies have been used in rationalist theory

“Taking its cue from psychological studies of analogical reasoning, this literature departs from purely interest-based explanations by maintaining that decision-makers need cognitive constructs, like the lessons of history, to figure out what policies will best advance their interests. However, despite this difference, the existing literature has remained squarely within the rationalist explanatory framework by assuming that an actor's interests are unaffected by the process of analogical reasoning and are simply deducible from the actor's position in a given material structure (Goldstein & Keohane, 1993).” 268

Which I agree is a critical flaw. He goes on to explain exactly why this is a flaw and exemplify a different development of critical policy choices.

 “-it ignores the possibility that certain actors may, as a result of a certain historical analogy, come to define their interests from the interests in a way that is different from the interest imputed to them by any rationalist theory. Policy makers may take on certain interests as a result of lessons they draw from specific historical events, which can affect the policies they pursue” 269

Hemmers proposes a sort of feedback loop in analogies and decisions making that keeps the two from being completely separated. It is the international relations equivalent of the chicken and the egg argument.  Basically, we look at an idea and the outcomes and the actor may realign their interests based on consequences.  In his example he uses the Lebanon hostage crisis. To summarize, in the most economical version, is that Reagan  seeing the resultant issues from the Iranian hostage crisis and rifts it created within prior administrations, realigned his priorities to make the Lebanese hostages a high priority for himself.  You can see the idea/interest feedback loop. Reagan had the idea that his situation was similar and chose to realign his interests based on the results of the situation.

I think this is a much better model due to following a learning pattern and real time analysis of growth and change. It creates the situation for real world feedback to effect change within administrations and their posture. I think this model will be the best fit for the current information/technology age where ideas and information travel more rapidly and lead to a more dynamic environment.

Hemmer, Christopher. "Historical Analogies and the Definition of Interests: The Iranian Hostage Crisis and Ronald Reagan's Policy toward the Hostages in Lebanon." Political Psychology 20, no. 2 (1999): 267-89. http://www.jstor.org.proxyau.wrlc.org/stable/3792077.

Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, “Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework,” in Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Cornell University Press, 1993).

Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, “Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 3:2 (1997).