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인투폴 9/15

Shared on October 9, 2026

05:21:37

We can do this sort of brainstorming and then go out into the real world and try to see which is accurate. Do you remember on the first day of class when we talked about the tree growth on our side and on the unsafe side of the street? We came up with different ideas about why our tree is taller. And then after we come up with these hypotheses or ideas about why one tree is healthier than the other, we might go out into the real world and check and see, okay, what's really going on here? And this is what the three by three matrix will allow us to do. This is what we're filling in today to help us.

05:22:08

understand, okay, we've got realism, liberalism, constructivism, now we're going to have individual, domestic, and international or systemic levels of analysis. And it isn't just about filling in nine boxes, right, which we will be doing, but it's also trying to understand the explanation, right? So if this, then that, okay, how does that work? Right? If Trump declares such and such, then such as it happens.

05:22:42

So what's the story? Like what connects cause and effect? Or where is this going? Where is this coming from? We need to look at some of the psychological and institutional factors for decisioning. And so that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna introduce these levels of analysis. We're gonna understand a bit of the psychological and institutional factors. And then next time we'll start to apply these tools to history, right? So next time we'll start using IR theories

05:23:14

understand history. So that's looking forward. Today, there he is. Today, let's start with the individual level of analysis. Why do we call it that? The individual level of analysis. We have different levels. So at different levels, the actor is a different type of actor.

05:23:45

So at the international level of analysis, we're going to see in a few slides, the actors are like states, nation, state governments, or international organizations. At the domestic level of analysis, the actors are domestic. We saw that on the welcome slide, on the cover slide. We saw sometimes people are mobilized in the street, or sometimes public opinion matters a lot, or sometimes a country is at war with another country and using the military. So these are different levels of analysis. And sometimes a leader

05:24:17

is saying this is the decision, or I'm giving the speech, or I'm explaining the policy. And we might look at that at the individual level of analysis. So let's start at the individual level of analysis where the causes of international political outcomes, trends, or phenomena, where the causes of international outcomes, patterns, trends, or phenomena, are specific to a person. or maybe to that person's

05:24:47

group of advisors right if a leader if she's making a big decision all right she's the individual level of analysis we're focused on but she probably has some key advisors she probably has some key assistance or she has a cabinet to help implement the decisions and so often at the individual level analysis we're not just looking at one individual we're looking at the main decision making individual but also the decision making

05:25:05

Does that make sense? So it's not just one person. - Right. - We would have the individual analysis. Question. - Um, so how do you say you're doing?

05:25:49

So if we go so far as to look at the relationship between Donald Trump and the Republican Party, we're probably getting into the domestic level of analysis. Because political parties are often a unit that we would study at the domestic political level, right? Domestic level of analysis. So when you get into that, like Trump's relationship with Republicans or Trump's relationship with Congress, right, a major institution of government, of a democracy.

05:26:21

We're at the domestic level of analysis. So you're getting ahead of me. If you ask me, okay, what about the conversation between Marco Rubio and Donald Trump? I'm like, okay, we can look at that at the individual level of analysis. Right, because Marco Rubio is National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, or J.D. Vance is the Vice President. These are members of the President's most inner circle and decision-making process.

05:26:53

Right? So you talk about Trump and his closest advisors, I think that's the individual level of that. But if you think about Trump and the State Department, which Rubio is the head of, but like some friction between the State Department, which is filled with career trained diplomats, most of them not appointed or hired by Trump, and the White House, which is the building, but also how we kind of refer to the executive and it stays like, it's all blue leaves here,

05:27:26

That would be at the domestic level of analysis because we're talking about the relationship between the executive and the bureaucracy or the president and his or her advisors and the secretary of state and his or her organization and all the different ones, right? So that would be at the domestic level. But at the immediate inner circle of the decision-making, I think that's pretty firmly in the individual. Does that make sense?

05:27:57

If you're getting the feeling that like, Professor, there could be kind of a gray area here. Like sometimes we might be looking at the individual level and it might kind of cross over to domestic. And then maybe we talk about domestic politics, but then domestic politics interact with international politics. That's the point, actually. Right? As you start to think about those sort of gray areas and interactions, that means you're using the tools. That's good. But let me talk about the tools first. - Really ask that question.

05:28:28

Okay, so at the individual level of analysis, we're looking at the leader. And we're looking at the leader's issues. Right? Because this is not AI. Sometimes it might feel like we're in some sort of reality TV AI generating world, but human beings are not algorithms. Human beings generally are.

05:29:03

You can have the most intricate, detailed, complex cost-benefit analysis to predict what a person will do. And people will often choose a job that pays $100,000 over a job that pays $50,000. People will often choose a free dinner at a five-star restaurant over a free dinner at a three-star restaurant. I mean, that's normal. But people do all sorts of things that you might not predict. Remember last time we were talking about non-rational behavior?

05:29:35

irrational, but people have different reasons for doing what they do. Some of them are related to human nature. I feel, I want to. Some of them are related to human limitations. I just can't deal with that right now. Or that's beyond my capability. Or I don't have the bandwidth for that at the moment. Or it might be related to human desires. People want to be seen as great or

05:29:46

generous or smart or capable or have a legacy.

05:30:20

So these sort of human nature issues, desires, limitations, those are sort of things we look at at the individual level. Personal roles and networks. Now you all don't remember this, but I remember a time when presidents did not tweet. Presidents did not send out social media messages. Presidents did not do YouTube videos. Presidents read speeches that were carefully written. Presidents made appearances that were carefully scripted. A lot of things were done by a PR team

05:30:56

Now we're in the world, right? So this individual level analysis, there's maybe a little bit more of it now. It was always important because, of course, if a leader is making a decision, that's important, right? But that used to be a little bit maybe more behind the scenes. But nowadays, there's a lot for us to study, right? So we look at the personal roles and networks, right? Who is the leader listening to? If a leader likes a post,

05:31:30

media organization, or a leader retweets a post by a political analyst or advocate or NGO leader or celebrity, we might read into that a little bit. Maybe we don't want to over-interpret it, but sort of like, hmm, that's interesting. Who is the leader listening to? What are her networks? Does she just listen to people who went to the same university as her?

05:32:03

Or does he just listen to people of the same socioeconomic standing as him? Right? If there's something going on in the world, does he tend to listen more to military voices? Or if there's some sort of a crisis, does she tend to listen more to social or economic leaders' voices? So these sort of personal roles and networks are important, as are values and beliefs, ideology and psychology.

05:32:34

These are important things to look at at the level of analysis. And I don't think that President Trump would like my article. Because I go through-- some of you laughed because you looked at it. Thank you for reading it. But I go through all these different things that might be, shall we say, influential from the individual level of analysis perspective. But as many examples as we have, these are kind of still just hypotheses. We have to actually go out in the real world and see if these things really matter.

05:33:13

There are biographers who work on that, there's obviously a lot of media people who work on that, but there's all kinds of bias in trying to understand, report on, and evaluate. What else at the individual level is? So we're not just looking at an individual and saying, are they rational or not? Are they sort of like normal or not? Are they a good guy or a bad guy, as my seven-year-old boy likes to say. My seven-year-old sees this picture, he's like, ooh, bad guy. Bad Korea. We live in the good Korea, but that's the bad guy. I'm like, hey, son, it's not that simple.

05:33:46

So the individual level of analysis is not that simple. We're not just labeling, right? We're not just making generalizations. We're not just trying to fit somebody into a box. We're trying to understand the decision-making process. Does that make sense? Right? So if someone is a leader of an autocratic dictatorship, authoritarian regime, hereditary, you know,

05:34:21

system, their decision making is probably different than someone who's a leader of democracy. There's a different decision making system. And their experience is different. Their expectations are different. Their identity is different. Their many things are different. So we want to look at that. We want to look at how decisions are made. Are they very careful and deliberating? Are they idiosyncratic and kind of inconsistent? I mean look at the way that Trump decided, oh we should downscale these military exercises with South Korea.

05:34:55

Was that part of a long, deliberative, strategic process, or is that from making a social media post? These are the things we look at at the individual level of analysis. We look at cognitive issues, consistency. Is someone consistent in their behavior, in their explanation, in their logic, in their principles, in their reasoning? Do they practice some forms of wishful thinking? The street of our mouth is open.

05:35:28

We're winning, right? Do they take mental shortcuts? This country, ally. This country, enemy. This party, good. That party, bad. Right? Do they take these sort of mental shortcuts? Do they seem to be affected by emotions? Right? I mean, again, human beings, not AI. - Well people can be,

05:36:01

by emotional pleas. Trump was in Ireland recently and he said some things about Irish unification that normally the US president don't say. He kept getting asked, can the United States please reduce the tariffs on Irish whiskey? He was in front of a big room and he said, I've been asked so many times about Irish whiskey and people want me to take the tariffs on Irish whiskey. People in Ireland are like, Yeah, yeah. And he's like, okay, we'll do that. And it's like, what?

05:36:32

And he gets all these cheers, it's like, wait, is that how you make the policy? It seems to be something of a show, maybe something of emotions, something personal. And then again, we look at these sort of factors at the individual level now. Yes? - If I may, I don't agree with you about the individual analysis level because I think I'm going ahead of the class, but if we read Graham and Son, you can see that the individual is not very relevant.

05:37:08

The individual analysis level is not very relevant if you read Graham Allison. Ah, and Graham Allison is a very important author. But we're not there yet, right? Bureaucratic model of politics, where you sit is where you think. And I don't think Graham Allison is maybe right about everything. Because as important as the bureaucratic model of politics is, and we're going to get to that. Thank you for previewing. President Trump is very different than President Biden.

05:37:43

It's not just the difference between a Republican and a Democrat. President Trump is very different than some other democratically elected leaders from other countries. And it's not just because Trump is from the United States and Macron is from France. And so there's something at the individual level of analysis that this perspective will help us get. Is it always the most important level of analysis? No. In fact, many realists would argue

05:38:16

that the international structural level analysis is often the most important, right? Like Trump can do what Trump wants to do, and Xi Jinping is a different type of leader, but at the end of the day, it's US-China power dynamics that matter in this upcoming summit, more than the international level analysis. And oftentimes liberals, not always, because liberals often care about the international level analysis, but oftentimes liberals look at institutions, And a lot of those institutions matter at the interface of domestic and international

05:38:47

So they'll say, if you have democratic institutions, if you have certain bureaucratic functions, like Graham Allison focuses on, that's really, really important, right? And constructivists care about the international level analysis and the domestic level analysis too, but oftentimes constructivists are operating at the individual level of analysis, because this is where a lot of identity and psychology comes into play. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, Thank you for getting ahead for us.

05:39:21

But what we wanna do is we wanna make sure we're familiar with all three levels of analysis and all three theoretical approaches so we can fill in the nine boxes and then start to weigh which ones we think are the best explanation to a given question in a given case at a given time. Does that make sense? Awesome. All right, so individual level analysis, psychological, biological factors, identity and perceptions, this all matters, right? I mean, as important as North Korea's power, nukes,

05:39:53

institutions, Korean Workers' Party, Korea People's Army, right? As important as hereditary succession, all these things are in North Korea. If this guy has a serious health issue, right, biological factors, and were to suddenly be incapacitated or die, that would be a really big deal for North Korean politics. It would be a really big deal for inter-Korean relations. It would be a really big deal for the international politics in East Asia, right? So we do care about

05:40:26

level of analysis. But of course, it's not everything. Let's talk about the domestic and state level of international politics. Here, we're focused on state characteristics. State characteristics. Could someone give me some examples of state characteristics? What do we mean when we say state characteristics? Example? Yes? - I'm a technical one. - Yeah, like what? Can you give me an example?

05:40:59

Interesting. We can have hybrid. Absolutely. So the kind of regime type, the type of state government, right, is part of state characteristics. What are some other state characteristics? Yes. Yes. The economic system, do they have a capitalist system? Do they have more of a socialist system? Or is it a socialist democracy?

05:41:36

communist system, a totalitarian system, right? And think about the ways that countries are different in, you know, different dimensions, right? Like some countries are really big. Some are medium-sized countries. Like Singapore are basically city-state, quite small, right? So when you think about some of the things we've talked about in the last couple weeks, right? Like the size of the GDP, the size of your population, the size of your territory, you know, these different characteristics, right?

05:42:07

important to a state. So we're considering how states are different and how they're working, how they're operating. We might look at these different state characteristics. A big, big country like China probably works differently in domestic politics than a country the size of Singapore. Now we also look at domestic power politics. That sounds like realism. Professor, I thought she said, "Mila doesn't care about China's power versus America's power."

05:42:40

But realism might also care about the Republicans' relative power compared to the Democrats. And that might change in November, right? So we have to care about that at the domestic level of analysis, right? The balance of power between or among different domestic political groups or political parties, right? We look at that. We look at the domestic institutional structure. Some countries

05:43:12

very centralized. The capital has a lot of power. What Seoul says affects what goes on in the whole country. But some countries have more of a federal system. So oftentimes Washington D.C. says this or decides that. And California is like, "Uh-huh. Let me tell you where to to go with that. We have our own plan. Right?

05:43:45

And so there may be different levels of autonomy. You could probably think of many countries where there are local areas that have more or less autonomy. You could probably think of other countries that have more or less local institutions or friction between the local and the national. Like all that's super interesting when it comes to domestic institutional structure and interaction. So we study that at the domestic level. We also care about national identity.

05:44:19

It's not shared. Ideology. And you see how this also overlaps with some of the things you've already said about the type of market system, democracy or non-democracy, right? But under national identity-- I actually just had dinner with a couple female leaders from Singapore last night, experts in security issues. I should have them come speak to all of you sometimes. very impressive female leaders.

05:44:50

and we were talking about differences in identity, culture, and ideology in East Asia. And they asked me whether Korea is often seeing itself as a mono-ethnic country. Korea is mostly made of Koreans who are ethnically Korean, who speak Korean, who like Korean things, right?

05:45:22

And I'm like, yeah, like, cricket's still kind of thinking like that. Even though there's a lot of variation, there are a lot of international people, like my students, right? And there's more and more multicultural families, there's more and more globalization, right? But it's not like Singapore, where some people are ethnically Chinese, some people are ethnically Malay, some people are ethnically Indian, some people are ethnically from some other group, but they're all Singaporean.

05:45:55

It's not like the United States, a country of immigrants. An identity that maybe MAGA tries to deny sometimes, but a very diverse place. Korea is also quite diverse, but maybe the national identity still has quite a lot of the ethnic Korean characteristic to it. Like look at Japan and China, many different ethnicities in China. But the Han Chinese identity

05:46:18

the dominant culture. And this interacts with ideology and many other characteristics. So we look at these things at the domestic level of analysis and sometimes we're referencing a specific state like Singapore

05:46:24

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05:46:30

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05:47:53

But I think it might be helpful to consider this. If we're trying to understand an individual's values, principles, decision-making, if their religion is a big part, apparently, of who they are, or at least how they communicate or how they want to be viewed, we might study that at the individual

05:48:24

level of analysis. I remember during Trump 1.0, his vice president was Vice President Pence. And when Vice President Pence visited Korea, my job was to take him to church on Sunday. And so I took him to church on Sunday, I sort of like guided him around, everything like that. He didn't have any money in his pocket to put in the, you know, the

05:49:00

So I handed him some money because he asked for something. So I was just taking care of Vice President Pence. And spending a few hours with the Vice President, I realized that going to church was not a photo opereant. Like, this was really important to him, to not miss church on Sunday. And I saw from the U.S. soldiers that we were going to church with, that they also recognized that his Christian identity is a big part of who he is and how we talk. And it's very interesting. Of course, not in the...

05:49:34

church, but when we had lunch afterwards, he gave some remarks. And basically, the Americans assembled going to church together for this event. We're really in tune with what he was saying. But when the vice president would mention Trump's name, you'd almost get this like cold feeling or even maybe some blues. But when Pence was talking about values and things that resonate with Christianity, which he really seems to believe, he would get applause for that.

05:50:07

So it's very interesting for me to see this because we're like, wow, his Christian identity is a big part of who he is, and it's also a big part of how Americans perceive him. So we're looking at that. That's at the individual level of analysis. But we're talking about something like the Charlie Kirk phenomenon, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the polarization in American society and politics, the interaction of political parties and that sort of evangelical movement. That's at the domestic level now.

05:50:39

Because it's bigger than the individual's decision-making. It's bigger than the individual's ideology or belief system. Or it's bigger than the individual's perceptions. We're actually looking at social movements. We're actually looking at religion as part of national identity and political polarization or groups' interactions. That's the domestic level of analysis.

05:51:29

Sorry, we don't have any time, so I gotta move on. But I hope that's helpful to think about. Remember, the interaction is actually what we're interested in, so you're on the right path for sure. But let me say a few more words about the domestic state level analysis. When we look at these different state characteristics we're talking about, democracy, autocracy, different regime types, this is something that we might use at the international level analysis, like how do democracies get along with other democracies, or how do democracies get along with non-democracies, but we're actually analyzing the state's democracy or its system, the different branches of government, whether they have checks and balances, these interest groups which could of course involve

05:52:07

political ideology, religious ideology, gender issues, environmental issues, I mean you can imagine all sorts of different things. We're at the domestic level of analysis, right? And when we look at legislative politics, right, does the representative from California get along with the representative from Texas? Probably not. But does the representative from California get along with the representative from Illinois? And these sort of legislative coalitions, voting blocks, voting behavior,

05:52:39

the bureaucratic politics that were raised earlier. Oftentimes, if you're in a bureaucracy, what if you're in the Department of Agriculture? I know you guys are thinking like, oh, I can imagine what it's like to be in the Department. But imagine you're in the Department of Agriculture. That's your job. And the legislature, the National Assembly, the Diet, the Congress, is debating cutting the budget.

05:53:11

for farm subsidies, or cutting the budget for food and nutritional research, or cutting the budget for infrastructure development in the food supply chain. What are you going to say as someone who works in the Department of Agriculture? Are you going to be like, yeah, I see you. That's the way it is, I guess. We'll make do. What are you going to do? Oh, you're gonna fight against them?

05:53:52

Because you're like, I know why what I work on is important. I know why the funding for these programs is necessary. You're not just fighting for your own salary. You're not just fighting for your own job. You're fighting for your institution. Because where you stand, like your position, I'm going to stand up for this, depends on where you sit. That is, where you work, what you do, what your role is. And so that is really important in bureaucratic politics. You can imagine that people who are in the defense department want more budget for...

05:54:26

for weapons, for the military. People who work in the Environmental Protection Agency want stronger regulations against pollution. And they can explain to you very clearly, probably very convincingly, why. But that would be a different position than someone else, somewhere else in the bureaucracy. So bureaucratic politics is very important. Local politics, public opinion, that is important to the domestic level of analysis. And also,

05:55:05

political culture. How many of you have been to Taiwan? More people on this side of the room. That's interesting. So when I say Taiwan, what do you think of? Cute bear, anime type thing, bubble tea, good Chinese food. What do you think of when I say Taiwan? Language, very important, right? Or you might think of a beautiful island with warmer weather than here. What else do you think of when I say Taiwan?

05:55:40

a complex political relationship with the People's Republic of China. You might think of a democracy in Asia. You might think of a relatively progressive and liberal place in Taiwan. I remember a couple years ago when I was visiting Taiwan, a professor was walking me through the park, and I'm like, so where are we going and why are we walking through the park? He's like, I want to show you something. We walk through the park and there's this beautiful, newly constructed restroom in the middle of the park.

05:56:13

And he's like, this is what I want to show you. And I was like, thanks, but I don't need to use the bathroom. I did drink a lot of bubble tea, but I don't need to use the bathroom. He's like, no, no, look closely. And then, you know, there's like the women's restroom, the men's restroom, the transgender restroom, you know, like a restroom with different choices, different options. And he was very proud of this. He wanted to show the Californian, we have bathrooms of different types.

05:56:47

You don't find this in Asia. So maybe you think of these different things in Taiwan, type of political culture. But I remember one day, and this was years ago, when I was in the Legislative UN, the legislature of Taiwan. And I was interviewing a member of the legislature. And an assistant ran into the room and said, we have to get our guests out of here, like in a sort of emergency sort of tone. And the first thing I think is like, missile attack from China? Terrorists? Cyber?

05:57:23

What's going on? And I said, well, I'm sure everything's OK. What's going on? And she says, oh, there's violence in the chamber. We need to get our international guests off the premises for safety. I said, seriously? And there was a fight in the legislature, and someone had thrown their cell phone at another person and hit them in the eye and blood. And some people were throwing shoes and things like this. And I'm just like, wow, Taiwan's democracy is a little spicy. I was literally let out of the building because there was a fight.

05:57:58

among elected officials. Like that was something else. Now this is not Taiwan's legislature. Where is this? Does anyone recognize this place? This is the Japanese diet, which is not like go on a diet and get into shape. The Japanese diet is the national legislature of Japan. And from the reading, there's this interesting concept in the reading called Nemawashi. Does someone have from the reading if you control F or if you just ask your favorite AI, what does Nemawashi translate?

05:58:30

What is Nemawashi? Yes. Yes. So literally, Nemawashi means going around the roots. So if you have a tree with lots of roots, you go around and give attention to the different roots. And this is a sort of metaphor for informal talks. So oftentimes when something comes to a vote in the Japanese diet, the vote is not very close. because they've already

05:59:07

They've already talked about, well, if you vote for this, maybe I can support you on this other thing. Or, in order to get you to vote for this, we can change the wording a little bit. Or, in order to get you to vote for this, we can do a favor in something else, right? And so these informal talks happen, and oftentimes the votes are not that close, right? Now, Japanese politics may be these days becoming increasingly polarized, so it's not quite as simple as the Nemo-Ashi culture. But it's not, in Japan, like the Prime Minister's questions in the UK.

05:59:40

Does anybody watch Prime Minister's Questions in the UK? People are like in that really tight space, almost like this, and then people stand up, and they sit down, and they sit down, sit down, and then they clap, and the Prime Minister's getting up and down and up and down and saying all these things. And it's really entertaining television if you're a politics otaku like me. You should watch Prime Minister's Questions sometime. It's nothing like the Japanese politics, right? Different political culture. So these are different levels of analysis, right?

06:00:13

And then at the international or systemic level of analysis, we're looking at factors, variables. Remember, independent variables are causes. Dependent variables are effects. Factors or causes might have outcomes that we want to study. So we're looking at these causes or factors specific to how the international system is structured.

06:00:44

or related with actors at the international level of analysis. So the causes are specific to how the international system is structured and how states interact. And structure is concerned with relative positions. How powerful are different countries? How large are different countries? Where are countries geographically located relative to each other? If you are a small country that shares a border of a very large country.

06:01:20

That is different than being a small country that is an island. Right? And this interaction, the process of moves and responses, that's something we study at the international level of analysis. And typically, this level of analysis helps us predict systemic outcomes. Right? We sometimes look at how whether there's a Cold War or whether there's a bipolar order or whether there's a World War affects domestic politics or affects which leader gets elected or what an individual leader does.

06:01:55

But oftentimes we're looking at these big factors like what is the relationship between the US and China? Or how powerful are China and Russia? We're looking usually to try to predict some systemic outcomes like war and peace and balance of power or alliances, right? Rather than just trying to explain one state's policy. Because oftentimes if we're trying to explain foreign policy we do need to look at the domestic level analysis or even the individual level of analysis.

06:02:27

When we look at the systemic and international level analysis, we're often looking at the interaction between militaries or phenomena like arms races or the signing of treaties and free trade agreements and the like. So at the international level analysis, we study things like the number of great powers. So if you have a system, if you have a structure to international politics where there is

06:02:59

really like one superpower, we call it what? Polarity. One is uni, so we call it unipolarity. But if you have two superpowers, like during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States and countries aligned with or normally aligned with those two, we have two.

06:03:43

You could have a tripolar system. You could have a multipolar system. By the way, what kind of system are we in now? Some people say we're in a multipolar system. Some people say we're going back to a bipolar system. Some people even say, well, we're still kind of in a unipolar system, but it's falling apart. It's not only that clear, right? So this is actually something that's worth talking about, debating, trying to measure, having different explanations about. And it's one of the things we study at the international level of business.

06:04:16

We also study international norms. National sovereignty. Is sovereignty respected? Is sovereignty upheld? Are international laws followed and upheld? Are actors paying attention to issues of human rights? International humanitarian law. I see some of you shaking your heads like, "No, no, that's not a thing anymore." but these are still open questions.

06:04:52

You may feel, reading the news these days, that international law or respecting sovereignty is not so much a thing. But that's not the case for all actors. Some actors may not be as focused on human rights these days or may not be as respecting of international norms. But other actors are. And that sort of variation, the sort of differentiation and different cases among different actors is what we study at the international level of analysis.

06:05:23

We also look at the role of, what's this? It's the United Nations. We look at the role of international organizations, like the UN or the WTO or the World Bank or international NGOs at the international level of analysis. And something that liberal institutionalists love, besides studying institutions, they love to look at. interaction.

06:05:56

interdependence, right? Who's trading with who? Whose people are traveling where? Right? Who's connected to what supply chains? Right? These sort of things we also study at the international level of analysis. Any questions about this before I move on? It's clear that these three levels sometimes overlap a little bit or like we were talking about

06:06:29

The line between them is not a solid line. Sometimes it's kind of a dotted line, or there's a gray area. And if you're thinking like that, you're thinking about the interaction, you're thinking about the overlap, that's good, because now you're starting to use the tools. These are just the basic building blocks to get us thinking about how to analyze international politics. And we'll talk about the complexities from now. So the theoretical perspectives-- realism, liberalism, constructivism--

06:07:02

look at the systemic level of analysis. Because in international politics, honestly, we're often studying the relationship between nation-states. So realists might say, well, how many nukes does this group have? How many nuclear weapons does that group have? Or liberal institutionalists might say, you're a member of these international organizations? You're not a member of those. You have different international organizations membership, or you trade a lot with them.

06:07:34

but they trade more with someone else. We might look at those questions in the international level analysis, and constructivists too. We might say, well, this group has an identity related to their democracy and their sense of human rights and their history and their ethnic background and their religion. And we might contrast that to the identity of another group. So oftentimes we are looking at the international level of analysis. But as we're trying to understand a particular

06:07:45

or a particular outcome in international politics. What's this a picture of?

06:08:12

So this is actually the special forces operation that tracked down and sought to capture but ended up killing Osama Bin Laden. Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind of the September 11th attacks 25 years ago against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon.

06:08:46

So you can see Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time, this picture of the site that's being raided by the special forces, and then what the special forces are doing, raiding Osama bin Laden's compound and shooting people, is causing her to go "boom". And then here's one of the primary military leaders, he's locked in on the laptop right. And look at President Obama. Isn't that interesting?

06:09:18

He's really watching. He's not giving directions. He's not responding this way. This is the Secretary of Defense. And here's some of the National Security Council folks. Another one of the top generals. But you just see these different interactions. Who gave the order to do this operation? That was him. But this picture, it really captures a moment in history. It's hard to understand this

06:09:50

decision to go after Osama bin Laden. Where was he, by the way? The United States was attacked on September 11th. A lot of the Al-Qaeda network was being harbored in Afghanistan, and so there was the war on terrorism that included a big focus on Afghanistan, and then there was the war in Iran. And these were - Thank you.

06:10:23

started under the previous administration, George W. Bush, and continued during the Obama administration. But where did Obama have the special forces go after and find Osama bin Laden to kill him? It was in Pakistan. Did Obama ask for Pakistan's permission to send in special forces and go after the terrorists? No. That's a big decision, to have a military operation violating the country's sovereignty to go after

06:10:57

September 11th. So it's hard to understand everything going on here just at the international level of analysis. Much of the decision making is actually going on because of the domestic and individual levels. So we need to look at the different levels of analysis to say how do domestic politics affect foreign policy. Consider actors and the structure of decision making procedures and constraints on policy. Is President Obama known for maybe respecting international norms and sovereignty and law more than President Bush?

06:11:31

People generally think so. But he still ordered the strike. And he still got the gun. That probably has a lot to do with American domestic power. So these are things we're thinking about, you know, in terms of levels of analysis to policy making. A couple more slides real quick because I know I'm tight on time. Who makes and influences policy? Obviously politicians, national, local leaders, and legislators. But also ministers, bureaucrats, NGOs, civil society, citizen advocacy groups, business lobbies.

06:12:03

media, TV, newspaper, social media, internet sources. The military industrial complex, the fact that there are some companies that are basically in the business of making weapons and they have an economic incentive to sell the weapons and their customer is the national government that provides the weapons to the military. And so there's a whole complex about this because these companies that make weapons,

06:12:34

They tend to set up factories in places where members of Congress need votes, right? And maybe swing votes in Congress for defense budgets. And all of a sudden, a politician that maybe is not in favor of overseas conflicts or getting into wars has a lot of jobs in their district that are related to

06:13:07

An arms or defense company, right? And this is what we call a military industrial company. So that's another thing to look at. Public opinion, of course, very important in influencing policy. So think about these different actors at different levels of analysis and what kind of policy decisions they make. Declaring war. I mean, if you go back to FDR's big speech after Pearl Harbor and the Roosevelt administration asking Congress for a declaration of war,

06:13:43

That's like the textbook way the country is doing. You ask for a declaration of war. But oftentimes nowadays, there's military intervention and military action without a declaration of war. So you may have declarations of war, that decided, or you may have decisions to use war short of a declaration of war. You may have decisions to maintain an alliance, sign a treaty, conclude a trade agreement, to join, support, or lead an international agreement or organization. These are all important policy decisions that we study

06:14:14

using our different theoretical approaches and levels of analysis. Because we want to understand what foreign policy decisions were made. What happened? What happened? What happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis? We didn't have a nuclear war. The Soviet Union and the United States did not end up exchanging fire, but it was pretty scary. It was pretty scary that the Soviet Union had a plan to deploy nuclear missiles to Cuba.

06:14:47

And the United States made some very serious threats to prevent them from doing that. And it looked like the countries were coming to the verge of a war. But ultimately, there was de-escalation from the Cuban Missile Crisis. So we want to understand not just how that decision was made, but why it was made. What was the process behind it, right? And what about the timing? How did that all work out? Some policies are successful, Others fail.

06:15:20

work out maybe as designed, others have unintended consequences. These are all things we're studying in the foreign policy making process. And we have to consider cognitive and psychological factors like, I said, identity, ideology, misperception, attribution bias, beliefs, norms, and values, we might call motivated biases, issues of rationality, limited information, did we have enough time and capacity to make the decision? A lot of times we fit our decision making process into an existing frame or scheme.

06:15:56

we should talk about this, the decision-maker should decide this, and then how the bureaucracy should implement this. But sometimes it's not that simple. Sometimes there's bias or existing frames affect our understanding of new information. We might get some information or intelligence that contradicts our plan or our process, but we might not update fast enough because we're stuck in an old scheme. Or we might be using prospect theory and really kind of misled by probabilities that are close to zero or 100%, and the psychological reference points might start to affect our decision-making.

06:16:29

Institutional and structure factors, from voting, election cycles, economic resources, you have the budget for something, external threats and crises. Path dependence, this is really important. I'll let you go in one minute. The decisions of the past affect the decisions of the future, right? Because we don't start from zero. We don't start from Taddeus Rasa. Oftentimes we are faced with the institutional constraints of previous decisions and also the institutional constraints of our constitutions, of legal frameworks, our chats and balances in our system.

06:17:04

So be concerned about these things like group dynamics, the organizational processes and standard operating procedures, the bureaucratic politics we talked about, the operational codes that people bring to their jobs. And that will help you better understand how to combine the theoretical approaches with these levels of knowledge to identify the source or the cause of an international phenomenon trend or . And we can tell the story by understanding the psychological framing and resource constraints looking at decision-making processes.

06:17:08

Sorry to go a minute over, but next week.