Discussion Questions for 9 March

1. How satisfying do you find the first category of organizational hypotheses on misperception (i.e., those that point to government bureaucracies and private organizations as the sources of misperception)? Do you find them more or less persuasive than the psychological hypotheses? How would you test these organizational hypotheses?



2. How convinced are you by the claim that nationalist mythmaking is a significant cause of war? Why should lies and distortions in school history textbooks matter? How would you test this hypothesis?



3. A perennial debate in American foreign policy (albeit never explicitly stated as such), is over the applicability of the spiral and deterrence models. Some argue that threats against misbehaving states elicit good behavior, while others argue that threats simply provoke and antagonize those states, while positive inducements work best. Who's right? What works better, the carrot or the stick? Under what conditions do you think one works better than the other? Review Van Evera's handout on this point. Do you agree or disagree with the criteria? Is there something you would add or change?

The "Spiral Model"
The "Deterrence Model"
Munich
Appeasement
Robert Jervis
"Status quo power"