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It is more useful, therefore, to regard an individual’s general beliefs as introducing two types of propensities, not determinants, into his or her decision-making: diagnostic propensities, which extend or restrict the scope and direction of information processing and shape the decision-maker’s diagnosis of a situation; and choice propensities, which lead him or her to favor certain types of action alternatives over others (but which may give way or be altered in response to decisional pressures).

Thus, psychological consistency theory cannot by itself provide robust support to conclusions from congruence method studies of the role of beliefs in decision-making. Causal interpretations in such studies must be disciplined by the methodological questions noted above.

STEPHEN WALKER’S STUDY OF HENRY KISSINGER

Confidence that consistency between an individual’s beliefs and actions is of causal significance is enhanced if it is encountered repeatedly in a sequence of decisions taken by an actor over a period of time. This observation played an important role in Stephen Walker’s pioneering study of the role of Henry Kissinger’s beliefs in his negotiations with North Vietnamese leaders.393 In this study, Walker developed highly systematic and explicit methods for employing the congruence procedure. He also addressed the important question of whether Kissinger’s actions were better explained by situational or role variables than by his beliefs. Walker advanced a plausible argument that Kissinger’s operative beliefs were idiosyncratic in important respects and not easily accounted for by situational or role variables. That is, the set of Kissinger’s beliefs and his policy actions consistent with those beliefs probably would not have been displayed by anyone else in his position. Walker noted that the Nixon administration’s policy on Vietnam was controversial and that there were policy preferences that competed with Kissinger’s. Moreover, the position of national security adviser that Kissinger occupied at that time was not precisely defined. This permitted the incumbent considerable latitude. For these and other reasons, Walker concluded, Kissinger’s role in the prolonged bargaining process with North Vietnamese leaders exemplifies both “action indispensability” and “actor indispensability” as defined by Fred Greenstein.394

KHONG’S STUDY OF HISTORICAL ANALOGIES

The causal role of beliefs in decision-making was the subject of an exemplary study by Yuen Foong Khong.395 Khong decided to focus not on operational code beliefs, as Stephen Walker had, but rather on the role historical analogies play in policymaking. Khong confronts the nettlesome problem of how the analyst can decide whether historical analogies are used by policymakers merely to justify decisions they take or whether analogies actually have a causal impact on the information processing that precedes decisions and the choice of a policy option. Drawing on Alexander George’s “Causal Nexus” paper, Khong assesses the role of several historical analogies held by top-level U.S. policymakers at critical junctures of the Vietnam crisis: the February 1965 decision to initiate slow-squeeze graduated air attacks on North Vietnam and the July 1965 decision to expand substantially the deployment of U.S. combat forces.

In analyzing these two decisions, Khong examines three historical analogies of previous crises that U.S. policymakers were familiar with: Munich, the Korean War, and Dien Bien Phu. He finds evidence in historical materials and from interviews that each of these analogies was present in the minds of U.S. policymakers in 1965. However, by means of an ingenious and complex research strategy that uses both the congruence method and process-tracing, Khong concludes that the Korean analogy played the most influential role in U.S. decisions to use slowly graduated air attacks and then to put in large-scale ground forces.

Only a brief account of the essence of his rich analysis can be presented here. First, Khong built on the distinction mentioned