Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making, and System Structure in International Crises

by Glenn H. Snyder, Paul Diesing, Glenn H. Snyder and Paul Diesing

Book Overview

How do nations act in a crisis? This book seeks to answer that question both theoretically and historically. It tests and synthesizes theories of political behavior by comparing them with the historical record. The authors apply theories of bargaining, game theory, information processing, decision-making, and international systems to case histories of sixteen crises that occurred during a seventy-five year period. The result is a revision and integration...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691100578
• ISBN13: 9780691100579
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 596 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Provocative work on crisis decision making

Paul Diesing and Glenn Snyder teamed up for a most provocative book on decision making in international crises. There is somberness to their analysis that ought to be attended to. They used a platoon of graduate students to analyze a series of international crises (e.g., Fashoda, 1898; Morocco, 1905-1906; 1914; United States-Japan, 1940-1941; Berlin, 1948-1949; Cuba, 1962) (Disclaimer: I sat in courses taught by both when I was in graduate school!). They analyze these different case studies to understand both why statesmen behave as they do in crises and to improve theory on international politics. In both respects, this volume succeeds quite nicely. Among the somber findings: the use of history by decision-makers to frame their responses to crises. The authors note at one point that they found zero (none, nada) cases in which history was properly used by decision makers. So, maybe, next time your leaders suggest that history is a slam bang way of knowing how to respond to crises, one might wish for a second opinion. There are also other crises where the cognitive limitations of decision makers created more problems than solutions. All in all, this is a nice volume that explores how leaders make decisions in crisis situations--what might work and what might not work. It is a professionally written volume, but interested lay readers can gain quite a bit from this work.