دیدگاه خط مشی عمومی در گروه پویای تصمیم گیری در خط مشی خارجی Public Policy Perspective on Group Decision-Making Dynamics in Foreign Policy

Introduction The fields of foreign policy and public policy have had very little interaction, yet a vast trove of scholarly work in the discipline of public policy exists alongside great contributions to foreign policy decision making (FPDM). The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the literature within the discipline of FPDM which is focused on key group decision-making models, enriched by the application of a well-known public policy concept, the policy cycle. Both public policy and foreign policy deal with group decision-making analysis, yet their toolkits are quite distinct. By engaging in cross-fields efforts, scholars can fill gaps and bring new insights in the respective fields. Specifically, we demonstrate an association between stages of the policy cycle and leading models of group decision-making dynamics. We first lay the public policy foundations for our review by providing a brief summary of the policy cycle broadly and then more precisely the stages of policy formulation, decision making, and implementation. We then highlight a new framework (the group decision-making continuum) and summarize three leading models of group decision-making dynamics within the literature of FPDM: groupthink, polythink, and con-div. We discuss the foundations and current trends in the application of each model to foreign policy and national security decision making. We will demonstrate how scholars have utilized these leading models to explain foreign policy decisions. However, these scholars have not yet linked group dynamics to stages in the policy cycle. Likewise, none of these scholars have demonstrated how group dynamics may shift through stages of a foreign policy decision. Our review constructs a bridge between stages of the policy cycle and specific group decisionmaking models to expand on our understanding of foreign policy decision making. To illustrate the applicability of this interdisciplinary endeavor, we provide a brief example of group decision-making models within the context of policy stages of the Obama administration’s actions in the 2016 Raqqa Campaign against the Islamic State.