Actors's (mis) perceptions in international relations
| Autor | Felipe Cuamea Velázquez |
| Páginas | 55-70 |
55
INTRODUCTION
¿How can we properly identify the political actors in international relations?
¿Who are the key players? ¿How do they perceive each other? ¿What factors
foster or inhibit communication? ¿Do they (we) learn from history and own
(others) experiences? ¿In what way values, beliefs, social images and signaling
influence the behavior of political actors in international relations?
In order to address these guiding questions, this paper will focus on one
level of analysis in international relations, that of the individuals and how they
perceive their stimulus from the environment, how their beliefs are for-
med and changed. It is not the assertion of this paper that individual-analy-
sis level is more relevant than other levels; it is just the particular interest
to explore how political actors, statesmen or diplomats behave in particular
circumstances towards particular events, in order to understand what fac-
tors lead to what decisions and consequences.1
Analyzing individual beliefs and perceptions will require addressing
the issue of how people perceive certain historical events, departing from a
1 The definition of political actor in this paper makes reference to individuals or persons as poli-
tical agents or someone who “acts for, or in the place of, by authority from him, or at least with mutual
recognition of intent”. This definition poses the problem of autonomy among actors and whether an
individual acting as political actor is completely autonomous from other actor or to what degree that
can be possible. In any event the analysis will focus on individuals or decision-makers as political actors
in international relations. Frederick W. Frey, “The problem of actor designation in political analysis”.
Comparative Politics, January, 1985: 128-129.
Capítulo III
Actors’s (mis) perceptions
in international relations
FELIPE CUAMEA VELÁZQUEZ
56 Felipe Cuamea Velázquez
comparative assessment of two key scholars: Stanley Hoffman and Robert
Jervis. Therefore we will study: First, how belief systems are formed and
changed, and what elements inform them; Second, in order to analyze speci-
fic cases we will need to address the problem of how political actors percei-
ve events and interpret other actors’ intentions and actions; Third, the pro-
blem of studying historical events or facts, ideas and subjects, since both
Hoffmann and Jervis (like most students of international relations) rely on
historical examination of events and individuals as a means to understand
and explain political actors’ behavior. Fourth, I will attempt to arrive to
some preliminary conclusions about the examined arguments and their
probable usefulness to grasp a better understanding and explanation of inter-
national relations.
PART ONE: BELIEF SYSTEMS
The relevance of studying political actors or decision-makers as one level
of analysis to understand international politics stems from the fact that “it
is often impossible to explain crucial decisions and policies without refe-
rence to the decision-maker’s beliefs about the world and their images”.2
Defining a particular political actor will influence the analysis of a political
situation because of that actor’s cognition and perception of the situation or
event. Furthermore, designating an actor may well lead towards a particular
“definition” of the situation given the influence of actors’ theoretical mind-
set, which in turn could stimulate some expectations a priori. Of course
those theoretical influences are regarded as probabilistic in the sense that
an actor’s mind-set may influence the perception of an issue or situation,
but we are not implying here that this will be the determinant factor or the
only factor intervening.3
2 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, Princeton, Princeton University
Press, 1976, p. 28.
3 Or as Hewitt and Stokes suggest, “The thematic organization of meanings by interactions
usually depends upon their ability to interpret each other’s actions as manifestations of particular
identities … [and] … in their relations with one another, people search for and make use of specific
clues from others as means of typifying them”, quoted by Frey in “The Problem of Actors…” op. cit.,
p. 135. I would add that actors will not only act as a response to other actors’ actions: they can also
react to intentions, whether or not those intentions have practical consequences.
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