Summit Diplomacy Under The Action Of A Two-tiered Psychological Mechanism

The research question that this thesis expects to study lies in: why states reorder their behavioral preferences after summit diplomacy? Through what kind of mechanism can the psychological factor or elements affect ultimate behavior preference in the process of summit diplomacy? A number of cases show that two countries find ways out of a stalemate after summit diplomay through readjustment of behavioral preference.High level interaction between Gorbachev and Reagan is the baromete of bilateral relationship in the cold war environment.The “stalemate” refers to the situation in which there is still room for possible agreements,yet neither sides,even the relative gainer,is prepared to compromise.The dual-level psychological mechanism,which has been developed in analyzing foreign policy decision-making,is adapted to explain the behavioral preference in summit diplomacy for the first time.The thesis holds that,during the process of the summit diplomacy,the decision maker depends on the casual attribution to identify the intention of the counterpart and then decision maker appeals to secondary psychology level to arrange strategies in order of behavioral preference under the guidance of strategic rationality.Therefore,this process can be understood as the dual-level psychological mechanism.The establishment of this dual-level psychological mechanism relies on two basic hypotheses.The first one is that in the environment changing from incomplete information system to imperfect information system,countries originally suffering from the strong information asymmetry gradually forms a certain amout of common knowledge.In the uncertain environment,decision-maker tends to be influenced by the coginition prejudice,exaggeratting the hostility of each other.This thesis believes that,during the process of the high level political communication,the information has graduallly been disclosed and the decision-making retures to rational track accordinglly.Secondly,the decision-maker is a psychological person under the guidance of principle of satisfaction instead of optimality.Considering the cognition capability of decisionmaker is restrained by the implete information system,the actor inevitably to some extent,deviates from the rational theory.The actor with bounded rationality hence is oriented by ceratin targets,meanwhile actors base their preferences on the result of the cognition.In fact,even the most comprehensive information services with most expidite communication channels are not capable of providing complete information for decision-makers.Therefore the result of preferences,in most cases,are not optimal solution,but a balanced satisfying option for both parties.In the first chapter,this paper focuses on clarifying and summarizing the concept of summit diplomacy and then framing the research scope to merely discussion/negotiation summit diplomacy.In order to clarify the discussion/negotiation summit diplomacy,this part also makes a simple analogy with the concepts of strategic dialogue and the statecraft.As the core part of the thesis,the following three chapters are organized in the order of behavioral chain,unlocking the casusal links between the independent variable and behavioral result and obersving the evidence of each part.The second chapter introduces the intention cognition as the main variable and then explores casuse of the cognitive bias regarding to intention and possible coginitive paths directing back to a more rational view of intention.The third chapter deals with the mediating variable in the process of political communication——diplomatic signals.Intentions lying underneath the behavior and languages,depends on diplomatic signaling to be revealed.And only through duly recognition by the signal receiver,can the the intention be properly understood.The fourth chapter attempts to develop the dual-level psychological mechanism to explain how psychological factors function during the discussion/negotiation summit diplomacy.The fifth chapter takes Reagan and Gorbachev's summit diplomacy practice,a most classic summit diplomacy case during the end of cold war,as an example to analyze how the dual-level psychological mechanism works on the result of behavioral preference in this specific case.In the end,the thesis turns from the conceptual model to realistic practices by pointing out some direction for further expoploration.