Alex Mintz
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 300451 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Alex Mintz |
| NOMBRES | Alex |
| APELLIDO | Mintz |
| FIRMA | MINTZ A |
| AFILIACIONES | Texas A&M University |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 53 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 806 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 50 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 5 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1981 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2022 |
| ÍNDICE H | 16 |
Groupthink, Polythink, and Con-Div
In this chapter, we introduce a coherent framework for analyzing small group dynamics. We first discuss three leading models of group decision-making dynamics: Groupthink, Polythink, and Con-Div. We show how analysts can determine group decision-making dynamics by identifying specific symptoms across a continuum of possibilities. We provide three cases on foreign policy decisions made during the Obama administrations to explain and illustrate the…
Beyond Rationality
The Effects of Rudeness on Nicu Medical Teams Studied by a New Tool for the Assessment of Decision-Making Group Dynamics
This is a first attempt at using quantitative methods to evaluate decision-making group dynamics in medicine, by adapting symptoms of Groupthink and Polythink as items in a structured assessment tool. It suggests a new approach to understanding decision-making processes of medical teams. The assessment tool seems to be a promising, feasible and reasonably reliable research tool to be further studied in medicine and other disciplines engaged in de…
Beyond Rationality
How and why do people make political decisions? This book is the first to present a unified framework of the Behavioral Political Science paradigm. – BPS presents a range of psychological approaches to understanding political decision-making. The integration of these approaches with Rational Choice Theory provides students with a comprehensible paradigm for understanding current political events around the world. Presented in nontechnical languag…
Terrorist Decision-Making
Public Policy Perspective on Group Decision‐Making Dynamics in Foreign Policy
Research on decision making in foreign policy and national security has had little interaction with the field of public policy. This review connects the two fields. We utilize a key public policy concept, the policy cycle, to provide a framework for our review of group decision‐making dynamics in national security and foreign policy. We describe key stages of the policy cycle followed by a review of the leading models of group decision‐making dyn…
The Polythink Syndrome and Elite Group Decision‐Making
How do presidents and their advisors make war and peace decisions on military intervention, escalation, deescalation, and termination of conflicts? How do groups make decisions? Why do they often make suboptimal decisions or appear to be frozen in inaction? The leading concept of group dynamics, Groupthink, offers one explanation: cohesive policymaking groups, such as advisors to the president, often make suboptimal decisions due to their desire …
Political Psychology
Political Psychology has experienced a marked increase in the number of submissions, downloads, citations, and global exposure over the past few years. It is also a more influential journal than it was at the beginning of the decade. Specifically, the journal is now available in more than 4,200 libraries worldwide, compared with 2,200 five years ago; the number of downloads has recently increased to more than 620,000(!), compared with about 100,0…
Policy Perspectives on National Security and Foreign Policy Decision Making
This article reviews major decision‐making models with an emphasis on basic theoretical perspectives as well as on how these models explain foreign policy decision making and national and international security decisions. Furthermore, we examine how these models have been utilized in explanations of various international crises. Specifically, for each model, we present examples drawn from the literature on applications of the respective model to …
Experimental Approaches to International Relations
A growing number of studies in international relations use experiments.Roth (1995) discusses at least three purposes for experiments: (i) testing theoretically derived models, or ''speaking to theorists''; (ii) data generation, which he called ''searching for facts,''; and (iii) ''searching for meaning,'' referring to policy applications, which he described as ''whispering in the ears of princes.''Experiments in international relations have typic…
Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making
Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making presents a psychological approach to foreign policy decision making. This approach focuses on the decision process, dynamics, and outcome. The book includes a wealth of extended real-world case studies and examples that are woven into the text. The cases and examples, which are written in an accessible style, include decisions made by leaders of the United States, Israel, New Zealand, Cuba, Iceland, Un…
Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making
Methodological Issues in Studying Suicide Terrorism
Why Behavioral IR
Journal Article Why Behavioral IR? Get access Alex Mintz Alex Mintz Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, IDC-Herzliya, IsraelDepartment of Political Science, Texas A&M University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Review, Volume 9, Issue 1, March 2007, Pages 157–162, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2486.2007.00669_1.x Published: 25 May 2007
Behavioral IR as a Subfield of International Relations
Editor's Note: The core ideas for a new subfield in International Relations (IR)—that of Behavioral IR—were developed and proposed by the editor of this Forum at a panel at the 2005 annual meeting of the International Studies Association in
The Bush Administrations and Saddam Hussein
The authors present a vital analysis of the foreign policy-making processes of the two Bush administrations prior to the attacks on Iraq. In a thorough comparison, they show how both presidents used h
Blank Check or Marching Orders? Public Opinion and the Presidential Use of Force
Abasic assumption in democratic societies is that government policy is shaped by the preferences of the citizenry. This belief concerning the influence of public opinion applies to the realms of both domestic as well as foreign policy. Moreover, in the case of the United States, no other foreign policy issue is more provocative and salient to the public than those concerning the use of military force abroad (e.g., Mueller 1973; Hurwitz and Peffle…
Can We Generalize from Student Experiments to the Real World in Political Science, Military Affairs, and International Relations
The authors conducted an experiment with a group of military officers and replicated it with a group of students at a public university in the United States. The experimental scenario dealt with a decision problem in the area of counterterrorism. The authors found that while more than one-third of students recommended doing nothing, the overwhelming majority of military officers (more than 90 percent) recommended doing something. Also, military o…
Applied Decision Analysis
Journal Article Applied Decision Analysis: Utilizing Poliheuristic Theory to Explain and Predict Foreign Policy and National Security Decisions Get access Alex Mintz Alex Mintz Texas A&M UniversityYale University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Perspectives, Volume 6, Issue 1, February 2005, Pages 94–98, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1528-3577.2005.00195.x Published: 26 January 2005
What Happened to Suicide Bombings in Israel? Insights from a Terror Stock Model
An analysis of three years of suicide bombing data in Israel reveals an increase in such attacks through March 2002 followed by a steep decline through the end of 2003. The authors propose a terror-stock model that treats the suicide bombing attack rate as a function of the number of terrorists available to plan and execute suicide bombings. The intent of Israeli tactics such as targeted killings and preemptive arrests is to reduce the capacity o…
Foreign Policy Decision Making in Familiar and Unfamiliar Settings
The concept of policy makers’ familiarity with a decision task has received considerable attention in recent years in the literature on decision making by analogy, intuitive decision making, and dynamic versus static decision making. The effect of familiarity on the decision strategy change of high-ranking officers of the U.S. Air Force is tested to see whether and how familiar versus unfamiliar decision tasks affect decision strategy change duri…
How Do Leaders Make Decisions
Poliheuristic theory (PH) bridges the gap between cognitive and rational theories of decision making. PH postulates a two-stage decision process. During the first stage, the set of possible options is reduced by applying a “noncompensatory principle” to eliminate any alternative with an unacceptable return on a critical, typically political, decision dimension. Once the choice set has been reduced to alternatives that are acceptable to the decisi…
Integrating Cognitive and Rational Theories of Foreign Policy Decision Making
There are two dominant approaches to political decision making in general and foreign policy decision making in particular: rational choice and cognitive psychology. The essays here introduce and test
Framing Effects in International Relations
Decisionmaking on War and Peace
How Do Leaders Make Decisions
Poliheuristic theory (PH) bridges the gap between cognitive and rational theories of decision making. PH postulates a two-stage decision process. During the first stage, the set of possible options is reduced by applying a “noncompensatory principle” to eliminate any alternative with an unacceptable return on a critical, typically political, decision dimension. Once the choice set has been reduced to alternatives that are acceptable to the decisi…
Why Don't Democracies Fight Each Other
Building upon the work of Maoz and Russett, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman, and Morgan and Campbell, the authors evaluate the “democratic peace” phenomenon in an experimental setting. They first introduce the “political incentive” explanation of why democracies don't fight each other in the context of the diversionary theory of war, and then report results based on experiments with three groups of subjects: American students, nonstudent adults, and…
Can We Generalize from Student Experiments to the Real World in Political Science, Military Affairs, and International Relations
The authors conducted an experiment with a group of military officers and replicated it with a group of students at a public university in the United States. The experimental scenario dealt with a decision problem in the area of counterterrorism. The authors found that while more than one-third of students recommended doing nothing, the overwhelming majority of military officers (more than 90 percent) recommended doing something. Also, military o…
The Effect of Dynamic and Static Choice Sets on Political Decision Making
Previous studies of political decision making have used only "static" choice sets, where alternatives are "fixed" and area prioriknown to the decision maker. We assess the effect of adynamicchoice set (new alternatives appear during the decision process) on strategy selection and choice in international politics. We suggest that decision makers use a mixture of decision strategies when making decisions in a two-stage process consisting of an init…
Guns versus Butter
Studies of the guns versus butter trade-off found no evidence for the existence of a trade-off in the pre-Reagan era (see Russett 1982; Domke, Eichenberg, and Kelleher 1983; Mintz 1989). This study extends prior research by examining not only the direct, immediate effects of defense spending but also the indirect impact of arms expenditures on education spending. A three-equation model is specified and empirically estimated using data from 1953 t…
The Decision to Attack Iraq
This article attempts to explain the decision to use force against Iraq using a noncompensatory theory of decision making. Rather than choosing an alternative that maximizes utility on the basis of a holistic comparison process as suggested by the expected utility model, or selecting an alternative that “satisfices” a certain criterion as predicted by the cybernetic model, the noncompensatory theory suggests that decisions on the use of force are…
Foreign Policy Decision Making in Familiar and Unfamiliar Settings
The concept of policy makers’ familiarity with a decision task has received considerable attention in recent years in the literature on decision making by analogy, intuitive decision making, and dynamic versus static decision making. The effect of familiarity on the decision strategy change of high-ranking officers of the U.S. Air Force is tested to see whether and how familiar versus unfamiliar decision tasks affect decision strategy change duri…
"Defense Expenditures, Economic Growth, and the "Peace Dividend
Recent developments in Eastern Europe have created expectations of a "peace dividend" associated with reduced levels of U.S. defense expenditures. We present and empirically estimate a two-equation model for assessing the direct and indirect, immediate and delayed effects of changes in defense spending on economic growth in the United States
What Happened to Suicide Bombings in Israel? Insights from a Terror Stock Model
An analysis of three years of suicide bombing data in Israel reveals an increase in such attacks through March 2002 followed by a steep decline through the end of 2003. The authors propose a terror-stock model that treats the suicide bombing attack rate as a function of the number of terrorists available to plan and execute suicide bombings. The intent of Israeli tactics such as targeted killings and preemptive arrests is to reduce the capacity o…
Defense Expenditures, Economic Growth, and The “Peace Dividend
Despite the proliferation of studies on the impact of military spending on economic growth, it is still not known whether defense spending hinders or promotes growth. Most analysts attribute the lack of consistent/robust findings to three problems: the lack of a sound theory of defense-growth trade-offs, an inadequate research design, and a failure to account for the externality effects that defense spending might have on other parts of the econo…
The Political Economy of Military Spending in Israel
Prior scholarly analysis of Israeli military spending has focused on national security questions. We present a mathematical model incorporating security threats as well as electoral cycles and corporate profits. The parameters are estimated empirically. The results support the idea that in Israel the military budget at the margins is also employed as a political-economic instrument to help manage the economy and to provide a favorable election cl…
The political incentive explanation of “democratic peace”
In this paper, we summarize a series of experimental studies that show that democracies don't fight each other because their leaders have very few political incentives to do so. The use of force against other democracies is perceived by the public and by leaders of democratic states as a failure of foreign policy. The reliance of democratic leaders on public support decreases therefore the likelihood of the use of force against other democracies
Framing Effects in International Relations
Experimental Approaches to International Relations
A growing number of studies in international relations use experiments.Roth (1995) discusses at least three purposes for experiments: (i) testing theoretically derived models, or ''speaking to theorists''; (ii) data generation, which he called ''searching for facts,''; and (iii) ''searching for meaning,'' referring to policy applications, which he described as ''whispering in the ears of princes.''Experiments in international relations have typic…
The Military-Industrial Complex
Following the conceptual framework proposed by Slater and Nardin (1973) for identifying and judging a military-industrial complex, this article addresses the major features of the Israeli complex (its components, scope of activity, roots, autonomy, motivation, and transition patterns among its heads and influence), considering the extent of the American concept's compatibility with Israeli realities
Guns Versus Butter
Prior studies of the guns-versus-butter trade-off have focused on total military expenditures and subcomponents of welfare spending (education, health, and housing). I extend the analysis to include the major subcomponents of the defense budget. The results are consistent with Clayton's; Domke, Eichenberg, and Kelleher's; and Russett's findings of a lack of defense-welfare trade-off in the 1947-80 era but reveal very specific trade-offs during th…
Military Keynesianism in the United States, 1949-1976
This paper examines "... Military Expenditures in the United States, 1949-1976" at a less aggregate level than was done by Griffin, Devine, and Wallace. Assuming that distinctive and independent causal processes generate each of four subcategories that include nearly all military spending, Griffin, Devine, and Wallace's model can be transposed with little modification to the two most generously financed subcategories, equipment and personnel. How…
Electoral Cycles and Defense Spending
This article compares the impact of electoral cycles on military spending in Israel and the United States. The analysis of the three major components of the Israeli military budget reveals that elections do influence military expenditures in Israel, though in a very different way than in the United States. Based on these findings, a number of theoretical modifications for the argument about “electoral cycles and defense spending” are proposed
Applied Decision Analysis
Journal Article Applied Decision Analysis: Utilizing Poliheuristic Theory to Explain and Predict Foreign Policy and National Security Decisions Get access Alex Mintz Alex Mintz Texas A&M UniversityYale University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Perspectives, Volume 6, Issue 1, February 2005, Pages 94–98, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1528-3577.2005.00195.x Published: 26 January 2005
Policy Perspectives on National Security and Foreign Policy Decision Making
This article reviews major decision‐making models with an emphasis on basic theoretical perspectives as well as on how these models explain foreign policy decision making and national and international security decisions. Furthermore, we examine how these models have been utilized in explanations of various international crises. Specifically, for each model, we present examples drawn from the literature on applications of the respective model to …
The `Noncompensatory Principle' of Coalition Formation
This paper introduces the `noncompensatory principle' of coalition formation. This principle states that in a choice situation, a negative or low score on the political dimension cannot be compensated for with a positive score on other dimensions (see Mintz, 1993; Mintz and Geva, 1994a, b; Mintz et al., 1994). The link between the `noncompensatory principle' and the size of coalitions is then discussed. Based on the `noncompensatory' logic I prop…
The Conditional Probability Analysis of International Events Data
Despite the large amount of systemic data available in international event data sets, those data have been primarily used in national or dyadic studies. This article explores the possibility of using events data to study event interdependence throughout an international system by examining the conditional probabilities of interactions between the dyads as a function of interactions between other dyads. As an illustration of this technique, region…
Military-Industrial Linkages In Israel
Israel's military-industrial sector has undergone rapid expansion. This empirical study of military-industrial linkages in Israel posits the following hypotheses: • Israel's industrial sector is highly dependent on military production; • Israel's industrial sector is flooded with numerous former highranking military officers placed in key decision-making posts. Analysis is based on comprehensive data on Israeli governmental defense concerns and a…
Arms imports as an action‐reaction process
Arms imports comprise a major component of the military programs of Third World countries, as they serve as a primary channel for acquisition of virtually all their equipment stockpiles. In this paper, we attempt to determine whether arms imports of Third World nations follow an action‐reaction behavior pattern. Using Richardson's (1960) formulation, six major races are analyzed: three in the Middle East and the other three in East Asia. The majo…
Methodological Issues in Studying Suicide Terrorism
A Validation Study of Computer Simulations of the European “Major Power” System
Simulation is a partial representation of some “reality,” since it cannot be as complex and intractable as the “referent system”.The process of determining how well one system [simulation model] replicates properties of some other system [the “real world”] is called validation (Hermann 1967:216). This research is a validity study of two simulation models: the Simulated International Processor-SIPER (Bremer 1977), and the Choucri and North dynamic…
The military‐industrial complex
(1983). The military‐industrial complex: The Israeli case. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 6, Israeli Society and its Defense Establishment, pp. 103-127
Military Keynesianism in the United States, 1949-1976
This paper examines "... Military Expenditures in the United States, 1949-1976" at a less aggregate level than was done by Griffin, Devine, and Wallace. Assuming that distinctive and independent causal processes generate each of four subcategories that include nearly all military spending, Griffin, Devine, and Wallace's model can be transposed with little modification to the two most generously financed subcategories, equipment and personnel. How…
The Military-Industrial Complex
Following the conceptual framework proposed by Slater and Nardin (1973) for identifying and judging a military-industrial complex, this article addresses the major features of the Israeli complex (its components, scope of activity, roots, autonomy, motivation, and transition patterns among its heads and influence), considering the extent of the American concept's compatibility with Israeli realities
Military-Industrial Linkages In Israel
Israel's military-industrial sector has undergone rapid expansion. This empirical study of military-industrial linkages in Israel posits the following hypotheses: • Israel's industrial sector is highly dependent on military production; • Israel's industrial sector is flooded with numerous former highranking military officers placed in key decision-making posts. Analysis is based on comprehensive data on Israeli governmental defense concerns and a…
Theoretical Insights and Oversights in 'Methodological Problems
Arms imports as an action‐reaction process
Arms imports comprise a major component of the military programs of Third World countries, as they serve as a primary channel for acquisition of virtually all their equipment stockpiles. In this paper, we attempt to determine whether arms imports of Third World nations follow an action‐reaction behavior pattern. Using Richardson's (1960) formulation, six major races are analyzed: three in the Middle East and the other three in East Asia. The majo…
Dynamics of Military Spending in Israel
A model of military spending in Israel from 1960-1983 is developed. Domestic expenditures, U.S. military aid to Israel, and Israeli foreign defense purchases comprise the three main components of the model. Security concerns vis-a-vis the Arab states, war involvement, inflation, and election cycles are found to be exogenous influences on spending in Israel; equally important is the strong feedback that permits the domestic budget, imports, and mi…
Electoral Cycles and Defense Spending
This article compares the impact of electoral cycles on military spending in Israel and the United States. The analysis of the three major components of the Israeli military budget reveals that elections do influence military expenditures in Israel, though in a very different way than in the United States. Based on these findings, a number of theoretical modifications for the argument about “electoral cycles and defense spending” are proposed
The Conditional Probability Analysis of International Events Data
Despite the large amount of systemic data available in international event data sets, those data have been primarily used in national or dyadic studies. This article explores the possibility of using events data to study event interdependence throughout an international system by examining the conditional probabilities of interactions between the dyads as a function of interactions between other dyads. As an illustration of this technique, region…
The Evolution of Israel's Military Expenditures
While previous studies of defense spending in developed and less-developed countries have thus far treated defense expenditures, arms transfers, and military aid separately, this study combines and integrates these components into a single model of defense spending. A mathematical, simulation model of Israeli defense spending since 1960 is developed, its parameters estimated using data from official Israeli sources, and its empirical fit evaluate…
The Political Economy of Military Spending in Israel
Prior scholarly analysis of Israeli military spending has focused on national security questions. We present a mathematical model incorporating security threats as well as electoral cycles and corporate profits. The parameters are estimated empirically. The results support the idea that in Israel the military budget at the margins is also employed as a political-economic instrument to help manage the economy and to provide a favorable election cl…
Guns Versus Butter
Prior studies of the guns-versus-butter trade-off have focused on total military expenditures and subcomponents of welfare spending (education, health, and housing). I extend the analysis to include the major subcomponents of the defense budget. The results are consistent with Clayton's; Domke, Eichenberg, and Kelleher's; and Russett's findings of a lack of defense-welfare trade-off in the 1947-80 era but reveal very specific trade-offs during th…
"Defense Expenditures, Economic Growth, and the "Peace Dividend
Recent developments in Eastern Europe have created expectations of a "peace dividend" associated with reduced levels of U.S. defense expenditures. We present and empirically estimate a two-equation model for assessing the direct and indirect, immediate and delayed effects of changes in defense spending on economic growth in the United States
Guns versus Butter
Studies of the guns versus butter trade-off found no evidence for the existence of a trade-off in the pre-Reagan era (see Russett 1982; Domke, Eichenberg, and Kelleher 1983; Mintz 1989). This study extends prior research by examining not only the direct, immediate effects of defense spending but also the indirect impact of arms expenditures on education spending. A three-equation model is specified and empirically estimated using data from 1953 t…
Defense, Welfare and Growth
Defense, Welfare and Growth
The dual economy and Arab-Israeli use of force
Guns” vs. “Butter”
Despite the vast number of studies of the guns‐butter tradeoff, we still do not know whether guns come at the expense of butter. In this article we attempt to clarify some of the major conceptual, measurement and statistical problems associated with this line of research
The political incentive explanation of “democratic peace”
In this paper, we summarize a series of experimental studies that show that democracies don't fight each other because their leaders have very few political incentives to do so. The use of force against other democracies is perceived by the public and by leaders of democratic states as a failure of foreign policy. The reliance of democratic leaders on public support decreases therefore the likelihood of the use of force against other democracies
Why Don't Democracies Fight Each Other
Building upon the work of Maoz and Russett, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman, and Morgan and Campbell, the authors evaluate the “democratic peace” phenomenon in an experimental setting. They first introduce the “political incentive” explanation of why democracies don't fight each other in the context of the diversionary theory of war, and then report results based on experiments with three groups of subjects: American students, nonstudent adults, and…
The Decision to Attack Iraq
This article attempts to explain the decision to use force against Iraq using a noncompensatory theory of decision making. Rather than choosing an alternative that maximizes utility on the basis of a holistic comparison process as suggested by the expected utility model, or selecting an alternative that “satisfices” a certain criterion as predicted by the cybernetic model, the noncompensatory theory suggests that decisions on the use of force are…
Mathematical models of foreign policy decision-making
Theories of budgetary tradeoffs
The literature on defense-welfare tradeoffs has not been characterized by an emphasis on theory development. Indeed, most work has concentrated on using increasingly sophisticated statistical techniques to isolate empirical relationships in spending data on various countries. Unfortunately, however, this empirical enterprise has proven inconclusive, with some studies finding trade-offs and others not. In this paper, we suggest that a greater focu…
The `Noncompensatory Principle' of Coalition Formation
This paper introduces the `noncompensatory principle' of coalition formation. This principle states that in a choice situation, a negative or low score on the political dimension cannot be compensated for with a positive score on other dimensions (see Mintz, 1993; Mintz and Geva, 1994a, b; Mintz et al., 1994). The link between the `noncompensatory principle' and the size of coalitions is then discussed. Based on the `noncompensatory' logic I prop…
Political science (38 obras) · Law (31 obras) · Economics (30 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Politics (20 obras) · Psychology (18 obras) · Computer Science (17 obras) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (15 obras) · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies (14 obras) · Sociology (12 obras)