Images, Process and Feedback in Foreign Policy: Israel's Decisions on German Reparations

This paper attempts to operationalize the concept of a foreign policy system and to test the utility of one path to empirically oriented theory: The approach is designated “structured empiricism.” The research design incorporates some of the recent innovations in political science—the concept of system, the distinction between operational and psychological environment, the notion of issue-area and the attitudinal prism or lens through which decision makers' images are filtered. The focus is on one of the most significant Israeli foreign policy decision clusters—German Reparations 1950–2. Following the designation of the decision-making group, the dissection of their psychological environment, and the analysis of the decision-making process, the critical dimension of feedback is examined. The decision flow and feedback flow illustrate the dynamic character of a foreign policy system in action. Finally, a selection of hypotheses on the behavior of decision makers is tested, and the findings summarized.