Learning and foreign policy
Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6270891 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jack S Levy (0000-0003-3278-9088, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 279-312 |
| Publication date | 1994-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Organization (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-8183 • E-ISSN: 1531-5088 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0020818300028198 |
| OpenAlex | W2041685217 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 329 |
| References cited | 86 |
Do political leaders learn from historical experience, and do the lessons of history influence their foreign policy preferences and decisions? It appears that decision makers are always seeking to avoid the failures of the past and that generals are always fighting the last war. The “lessons of Munich” were invoked by Harry Truman in Korea, Anthony Eden in Suez, John Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, and George Bush in the Persian Gulf War. The “lessons of Korea” influenced American debates about Indochina, and the “lessons of Vietnam” were advanced in debates about crises in the Persian Gulf and in Bosnia. Statesmen at Versailles sought to avoid the mistakes of Vienna and those at Bretton Woods, the errors of the Great Depression. Masada still moves the Israelis, and Kosovo drives the Serbs. Inferences from experience and the myths that accompany them often have a far greater impact on policy than is warranted by standard rules of evidence. As J. Steinberg argues, in words that apply equally well to the Munich analogy and the Vietnam syndrome, memories of the British capture of the neutral Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1807 (the “Copenhagen complex”) “seeped into men's perceptions and became part of the vocabulary of political life,” and it influenced German decision making for a century
Art history · Economic history · Foreign policy · German · Mythology · Paradise · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Vietnam War · Balkan and Eastern European Studies · Classics · History · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law
Difficult Partnerships
Learning from Foreign Models
Kennedy, Kroutchev et les missiles de Cuba (Partie 4)
Thumos, War, and Peace
Scorecard Diplomacy
Military Threats
Shrinking the State
Cognitive Approaches to Foreign Policy Analysis
Who matters for memory
Introduction
Blocked Learning in Greece
Role Identities and the Operational Codes of Political Leaders
Warning about War
Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making
War and Peace in International Rivalry
Towards a theory of inter-organizational networking
Conflict Management Trajectories in Militarized Interstate Disputes
Argument and Change in World Politics
Introduction
Social-ecological Resilience and Social Conflict
Competence Development and Evaluation Dynamics in the Context of Learning
Opposition learning in the Middle East and North Africa
Policy Learning
Fact or fear? Elite and public opinion on the misuse of foreign aid
Embracing the Maverick
From crisis to inquiry
Experimentation, policy learning, and China's education reforms
An analytical framework for postmortems of European foreign policy
Can Germany learn from Ukraine? Resilience in a time of polycrisis
The 2017 incidents in the Aegean and Turkish foreign policy
The Forum on China–Africa Cooperation
Understanding Intelligence Community Innovation in the Post-9/11 World
The Power of Deterrence
Public Inquiries, Policy Learning, and the Threat of Future Crises
Neoclassical realism, policy paradigms and strategic change
Cultural images and foreign policy learning
Fighting Past Economic Wars
The Limits and Potential of Authoritarian Adaptiveness in Volatile Political Orders
Intelligence and Strategy
Nudging through Consensus
History vs. Neo-realism
Norbert Elias y el análisis de las relaciones internacionales
A supranational regime that nationalizes social conflict
Realism and America's Rise
Learning from Ukraine
Neutral Diplomacy in a Divided Europe
Leadership in international populism
Why American grand strategy has changed
Learning in European Union peacebuilding
Understanding renewable energy policy adoption and evolution in Europe
Politics, audience costs, and signalling
Fear and Loathing
Experience counts
From Europe’s past to the Middle East’s future
The Reform of the Lisbon Strategy’s Governance Framework - is ‘New Governance’ the Way Forward
The reputation trap of NGO accountability
Looking forward to the past
Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change
Learning for Legitimacy
The 1920-1945 Shift in US Foreign Policy Orientation
Foreign Policy Analysis
Emotion and Strategic Learning in War
Psychological Characteristics of Leaders (PsyCL)
International Treaty Ratification and Leader Turnover
Conceptualizing in the Minefield
Leaders' Cognitive Complexity, Distrust, and the Diversionary Use of Force
Foreign Policy Analysis and Armed Non-State Actors in World Politics
Live and Learn
Simple vs. Complex Learning Revisited
Coalitions and Foreign-Policy-Making
Analyser l'exportation des normes au-delà de l'Union européenne
The Shape of Elite Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy, 1992 to 2004
Crisis Management Europe
Transatlantic Relations after the Cold War
Political Leadership Changes and the Withdrawal from Military Coalition Operations, 1946-2001
The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 2)
The Korea Syndrome
The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 3)
The Guns That Didn't Smoke
Exploring the Keynesian–Ordoliberal Divide. Flexibility and Convergence in French and German Leaders’ Economic Ideas During the Euro-Crisis
Political transition, policy learning and failures to learn
Uncertainty and War Duration
Populist Foreign Policy
Trusting relationships, learning bureaucrats
Memory as the Return of the Repressed for Social Research
Coalitions of change
Mechanisms of Policy Change
Identity, status and role in UK foreign policy
Remember Iraq!’ Learning theory and the 2013 non-decision on air strikes against Syria
Testing the world order
Developing security community in the Western Balkans
Explaining the negotiation of EU foreign policy
Changing Commitments
Joining by Number
Understanding the EU’s Global Gateway through the lens of role theory
Embracing Humanitarian Intervention
Examining the impact of learning about a resolved conflict on attitudes in an ongoing conflict
Regional diffusion of post-Islamism? Ennahda’s lessons from Turkey’s AKP and Morocco’s PJD
Sino-Japanese Engagement in the Making of China’s National Champions
Statecraft and international intervention
Ambiguity and choice in organizations
History and human relations.
Children and Politics
Handbook of Social Psychology
The Cybernetic Theory of Decision
When Knowledge Is Power
Analogies at War
Nuclear Deterrence Theory
The War Puzzle
U.S. International Monetary Policy
Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions
Bayesian statistical inference for psychological research.
Organizational Learning
Behavior, society, and nuclear war
Knowledge, power, and international policy coordination
The logic of images in international relations.
An evolutionary theory of economic change
Social learning theory
Agendas, alternatives, and public policies
The Limits of Safety
Collective Learning
Ideas and Foreign Policy
Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
Ideas and Foreign Policy
Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy
Where Is the Schema? Going Beyond the “S” Word in Political Psychology
Origins of Containment
Preferences, Constraints, and Choices in July 1914
The Sources and Prospects of Gorbachev's New Political Thinking on Security
Mobilization and Inadvertence in the July Crisis
Accountability and complexity of thought
The Copenhagen Complex
The limits of safety
Neorealism and its critics
Origins of Containment
U.S.-Soviet Security Cooperation
Never Again
Myths of Empire
Nuclear learning and U.S.–Soviet security regimes
Handbook of social psychology
Theory of international politics
Internal Battles and External Wars
Ideas, Institutions, and the Gorbachev Foreign Policy Revolution
Divergent Learning and the Failed Politics of Soviet Economic Reform
What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 1900 to 1980
Ideology and Learning in Soviet Third World Policy
The “Lessons” of Vietnam and Soviet Foreign Policy
The Cognitive Structure of Peacemaking
Prospect Theory and International Relations
From London to Bretton Woods; Sources of Change in Bargaining Strategies and Outcomes
Political Conflict and Lesson-Drawing
Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816-1976
When Will They Ever Learn
Socialization and hegemonic power
The emergence of cooperation
Power and Interdependencerevisited
Integrative complexity of American and Soviet foreign policy rhetoric
When people ask "why" questions, and the heuristics of attributional search
Opportunity, Incrementalism, and Learning in the Extension and Retraction of Soviet Global Commitments
Changing Course
Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State
The Carter Administration's Quest for Global Community
Ideas and Foreign Policy
Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations
Ideas & Foreign Policy
Reputation and Hegemonic Stability
Crisis Learning Games
Decisions and Organizations
| Unique citing works | 329 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 10,28 |
| Citation span | 1994 - 2026 (33) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 325 |