Collective political decision-making: Impacts of images on agenda setting and post-Cold War United States foreign policies toward Third World conflicts

This research examines the nature of the relationship between cognition and foreign policy decision making. The basic argument is that contrary to traditional, maximum-utility, rational models of decision making, there are a number of possible factors impacting the decision making process. For example, various psychological characteristics, such as the beliefs, images and stereotypes that policy makers have of states, are believed to have significant impacts on both information processing and foreign policy preferences.;This study is founded upon image theory and a number of studies which suggest that during the Cold War the grand strategy of containment was a product of well-defined enemy, ally and dependent images. According to these accounts, while the enemy image consisted of a set of mental images of a state(s) with evil motives, competitive capabilities and a sophisticated, yet distasteful culture; the dependent category consisted of mental images of a state(s) with good intentions, inferior capabilities and a simplified political structure and culture. Consequently, foreign policy preferences during the Cold War were characterized by strategies of control and confrontation.;Given these arguments and the possible changes in the enemy category with the demise of the Soviet Union, this research analyzes American intervention in Somalia and Haiti to examine the status of the dependent category in the post-Cold War era. The findings suggest that certain Third World states are still typically typed in the dependent category. Consequently, parallel to Third World policy preferences during the Cold War, post-Cold War policy preference toward certain Third World states are commonly characterized by strategies of control and domination.;The prospects of image change, the role of the mass media in image maintenance and policy implementation, as well as the role of the self image and its relationship with the dependent image are also explored.