Overconfidence and Risk Taking in Foreign Policy Decision Making (eBook)

Imran Demir is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations in the School of Political Science, Marmara University, Turkey. He earned his PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri, USA, and holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

Overconfidence and Risk Taking inForeign Policy Decision Making 3
Preface 6
Acknowledgments 8
Contents 9
List of Abbreviations 10
List of Figures 11
List of Tables 12
1 Introduction 13
2 The Relevant Literature on Past Outcomes, Overconfidence and Risk Taking 20
Manifestations of Overconfidence 21
Sources of Overconfidence 23
Past Outcomes and Decision Making 23
Case-Based Probability Judgments and Overconfidence 25
Self-Serving Attribution Bias and Overconfidence 26
Overconfidence and Risk Taking 27
Risk Taking and Failure 27
3 Modeling the Relationship Between Past Outcomes, Overconfidence and Risk Taking 29
Model Specification 31
Research Design 37
Case Selection and Data Collection 38
Variables and Their Operationalization 39
Political Shock 39
Foreign Policy Behavior 40
Perception of Performance in Past Outcomes 40
Use of Past to Resolve Uncertainty 42
Overconfidence 43
Risk 44
Policy Performance 46
4 The Turkish Policy to Remove Syrian President Assad: Overconfidence Obscures Risks and Magnifies Failure 50
Introduction 51
Historical Background 51
Past Outcomes Inform Future Actions 58
Manifestations of Overconfidence 61
Unrealistically Favorable View of Turkey 62
Better-Than-Average Effect 63
Excessive Reliance on Their Information 64
Unrealistic Optimism 66
Heightened Sense of Capacity to Control Outcomes 71
Risk Taking 72
Miscalibrations in Turkish Foreign Policy 73
Failing to See the Limits of Knowledge and Capacity to Control Outcomes 73
5 Why Turkish Overconfidence Was Too Obvious 89
Capability-Aspiration Gap 90
Weak Domestic Consensus: Polarized Society, Contentious Politics and Retrogressive Democracy 95
Regional Competition and Foreign Policy Obstacles 100
A Critical Assessment of the Outcomes of the Policy 107
Were Turkish Policy Makers Aware of the Fact That They Were Taking Risks? 114
Elimination of Alternative Explanations: What Impelled Turkey’s Overconfidence? Sense of Success Before the Uprisings, or in the Uprisings? 115
Wrapping Up: Overconfidence Obscures Risk and Magnifies Failure 118
6 Conclusion 123
Bibliography 130
Index 143