Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12323/3349
Title: A Defence on the Prominence of Rational Actor Model within Foreign Policy Analysis
Authors: Shahryarifar, Sadra
Keywords: RAM
FP theory
decision-making
rational theory
analytical tool
utilitymaximiser
Issue Date: 2016
Publisher: Khazar University Press
Citation: Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences
Series/Report no.: Volume 19;№ 1
Abstract: “That rational and most excellent work of nature, Man” (Hobbes, 1997: 81). This is how Hobbes bases his introductory account on the creation of the Commonwealth. A politics founded upon rationality and thus an unnatural product of man. Years later this principle came to underpin the mainstream school of thought in International Relations (IR) i.e. the classical Realism. As a subfield of IR, Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) reflected the assumptions of classical Realism into an analytical theory known as Rational Actor Model (RAM). While limitations to the human rationality in the process of decision-making contested its applicability to international politics, it still remains a fundamental analytical tool. In fact, it can be a powerful analytical model only if the scholarship correctly appreciates its theoretical ground. Knowing what the theories are for, and how they are supposed to be applied are necessary prerequisites to their proper efficacy as helpful analytical tools. That is to say, if RAM had not wrongly been applied to the problems, it would not have misguided the FPA theorists.
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12323/3349
ISSN: 2223-2613
Appears in Collections:2016, Vol. 19, № 1

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