A Defence on the Prominence of Rational Actor Model within Foreign Policy Analysis

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.