Reasoning with Madmen: How Beliefs about Adversary Judgment Impact Diplomacy

• In Event: Psychology and Diplomacy in International Relations

Abstract

Fundamental to strategic interactions are beliefs about how counterparts think. While intuitive, and foundational to 'Madman Theory,' political science lacks conceptual or empirical work on this phenomenon. This paper introduces the novel framework of beliefs about judgment, beliefs about a counterpart's objectivity and competence, into international relations. It theorizes how variation in these beliefs influence preferences and choices in diplomacy with interstate adversaries; people are less likely to attempt reasonable persuasion of those perceived as biased, less inclined to compromise with those perceived as incompetent, and may abstain from all diplomacy with those they believe are biased and incompetent. These hypotheses are tested using two survey experiments; one presents a crisis between the US and North Korea, and a second presents an identical crisis between the US and a hypothetical state. Subjects see factorially randomized articles about the judgment of adversary leadership, then answer questions about US policy in the crisis. Results support the hypotheses at the level of individuals in the mass public. The plausibility of applying this theory to elites is probed through an illustrative, within-case comparative study of US officials’ beliefs about the judgment of, and diplomatic preferences towards, their adversaries in the Korean War.

Author

• Nicholas Campbell-Seremetis, University of Chicago