The Psychological Assessment of Political Leadersconstrained by cultural norms generated within and between soci-
eties. These schools of thought do not have a strong theory of agency,
which would allow for the possibility that individual differences
among leaders may make systematic and important differences in
world politics.
In response, the decision-making school of foreign policy theory
has long argued on behalf of the need for a robust theory of agency.
These theorists would limit universal structural propositions to con-
tingent generalizations based on intervening causal mechanisms
linking structural conditions with foreign policy decisions and inter-
national outcomes (Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin 1954; C. Hermann
1969; Allison 1971; Tetlock 1998; Hagan 2002). George (1993,
107—14) is also an advocate of this position within academic circles.
However, until very recently this argument has not received much
attention from structural theorists of international relations. Some
realists and their critics have begun to wrestle with the desirability
of limiting neorealist knowledge claims to emergent processes and
outcomes among states at the systemic level of analysis (Waltz 1979;
Elman 1996; Christenson and Snyder 1997; Schweller 1998).
Neoliberal institutionalists have also started to recognize the impor-
tance of processes and conditions at the individual level of analysis
(Keohane and Martin 1999). Constructivists are currently divided
into conventional and critical camps over the wisdom of whether and
how to solve the agent-structure problem (Katzenstein, Keohane,
and Krasner 1998; Wendt 1987, 1999). Even so, this attention has
not bridged the gap between the decision-making approach and
structural paradigms within the academy.
In sum, the irony is that decision-making theorists view struc-
tural theories as underspecified models that generate weak general-
izations based on inadequate data. This knowledge can lead to irrel-
evant predictions and a false sense of confidence in the ability to
understand and control foreign policy (Hagan 2002)—which is the
same critique of academic work by practitioners noted earlier by
George (1993). This shared view of the shortcomings of general
international relations theory should provide common ground for a
fruitful dialogue between decision-making theorists and actual deci-
sion makers about specific actors in world politics.