Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of Information and Advice (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 173 The challenge to U.S. policy is to deal effectively with the Catch-22 among the three elements. To restrict imports because ofhuman rights violations could not only be inflationary, but could also deter the development of the exporting country's economy, resulting in stricter political measures. To allow the entry ofthese imports, however, would be, in a diplomatic sense, to condone human rights violations. The success of human rights policy should not be expected in the short term, but over an extended period of time. In this context, it is useful to examine how human rights concerns have become an integral part of international law. The UN Charter, an early foundation of human rights law, has been followed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, the international covenants of 1966, and the Helsinki Final Act, among others. Examined separately, each could be criticized for its generality, lack of signatories, etc. Together, however, these documents represent the progress ofinternational awareness ofhuman rights. Human rights policy, like law itself, must be viewed as a process. The success of U.S. policy, as Vogelgesang concludes, depends on the reexamination of assumed "national interests" from which contradictions arise. Such changes require time and a clear, consistent, though not necessarily forceful, voice from our national policymakers. Robert Russell Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of Information and Advice. By Alexander George. Boulder: Westview Press, 1980, 267 pp. In his most recent book, Alexander George has succeeded in bringing together diverse sources ofcross-disciplinary material and relating them to an important aspect ofdecisionmaking. By focusing on the task of "improving the quality of information analysis available to a president and his leading policy advisers," Professor George has been able to utilize recent studies from a wide variety offields: sociology, economics, organizational and decision theory, political science, and especially psychology . George clearly and coherently establishes a contextual framework ofpresidential decisionmaking. Within this structure, he identifies both the "procedural tasks" critical to the development of high-quality decisionmaking and a relatively simple model of the policymaking system. George notes, however, that the model discussed, because it focuses on the role of the individual, the small group, and the organization, "fails to account for the interaction of other subsystems" such as Congress, public opinion, or international actors. This slight shortcoming does not 174 SAIS REVIEW detract from the work's overall value. The data discussed by George are most effectively dealt with in his chosen framework. The book follows two major lines of inquiry. First, the author examines the sources of impediments to information processing in a decisionmaking framework. Much of this section deals with current studies in psychology and social behavior, particularly the dynamics of individual and group behavior. Then he relates the importance ofcognitive processes, including cognitive aids to the decisionmaking process, and the dynamics of small group interactions to the overall context of presidential decisionmaking. George suggests that, insofar as the sources ofimpediments to high-quality information processing are rooted in patterns of individual and organizational behavior, they may not be removable. What is required, he believes, is a list of the symptoms in order to create "preventive measures to reduce or minimize the impact" of such impediments on the quality of decisions made by high-level policy planners. In the second part ofthe book, George describes various presidential "management models," notes the differences in personal style and performance among presidents, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each model. He concludes that none of the systems mentioned is fully effective in acquiring and digesting information necessary for high-quality decisionmaking. This section ofthe book seems to be the least useful. Much of the material has been dealt with in other studies and, as George himselfnotes, the various management models overlap considerably. Consequently, efforts to improve the performance of any particular system would face clear limits. The real need, argues the author, is to develop "more discriminating ways ofimproving information processing." Next he discusses in greater detail several "procedural tools" that might be of value in improving the range of data, analysis, and options available to decisionmakers. None of the tools examined—the devil...