Perception and Misperception in International Politics by Jervis Robert

Perception and Misperception in International Politics by Jervis Robert

Author:Jervis, Robert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2015-02-27T16:00:00+00:00


IMPLICATIONS FOR DECISION-MAKING

If commitment to an image inhibits the development of a new one, those who are most involved in carrying out policies guided by the old image will be the least able to innovate. This, of course, is part of the rationale for a policy planning staff. Not having to solve immediate problems provides both the time and the intellectual flexibility to question established policies and to notice evidence that prevailing images cannot explain. Similarly, individuals newly assigned to a problem or to a foreign country should have perceptual openness.189

Another implication of this corollary is that review committees are more apt to see problems in a new light and recommend non-incremental changes if their members have not previously worked on the problem. Such a group may fail to give adequate weight to constraints well known to those more familiar with the area and so may design impractical or unbalanced proposals, but since most policy reviews are not characterized by an excess of imagination, this risk will usually be worth running. For example, a prime reason why the 1961 Ad Hoc Committee on Public Welfare appointed by the secretary of HEW did not consider basic changes in the system was that its membership was drawn from those who were “friends, colleagues, [and] coarchitects of current policy.”

What this meant was that the Ad Hoc Committee could take on faith as matters of agreement the very kinds of questions that most require reexamination and inquiry. The people whose professional lives were dedicated to services as a necessary element of welfare could neither fail to stress services nor be expected to think it necessary to wipe the slate clean and build a new empirical theory of public assistance.190

As a result, the committee did not, for example, ask whether the accepted goal of rehabilitation was a feasible objective for many programs. Nor did it try to determine whether the social and political changes that have taken place since 1935 required fundamental alterations of policy. Not only were the committee’s recommendations completely within the established framework, but the report would not enable others to judge this framework because the relevant questions were not asked nor the necessary data gathered. Similarly, when a new Japanese cabinet set out to re-examine foreign policy in the fall of 1941, the attempt to proceed with a “clean slate” was inhibited by the fact that “the holdovers from the [last] Cabinet exerted greater influence than the newcomers; they were also more imprisoned in their thinking by what had gone before. Despite their enormous personal responsibility for the welfare of their countrymen, these leaders of Japan, old and new alike, never once asked themselves why they were confronted by such a critical choice. They did not look at the record or otherwise seek in past policies an explanation for present difficulties.”191 These considerations can also be applied to the optimum relations between the foreign policy committees of Congress and the policy-makers in the Executive. The best route to influence may not be through extensive involvement in the implementation of policies.



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