Predicting the timing of carter's decision to initiate a hostage rescue attempt: Modeling a dynamic information environment

To illustrate how a bounded rationality, indicator‐based, model designed to examine decision making in war applies to domestic political decisions, I analyze the timing of President Jimmy Carter's April 1980 decision to launch the Iranian hostage rescue. I argue that we can capture the primary domestic political forces that triggered this foreign policy shift by analyzing the rate of change of critical indicators monitored by a key group of presidential advisors. This analysis allows us to construct a powerful, ex ante, model of decision making that accurately predicts the timing of Carter's decision to launch the hostage rescue. The proposed model is a more effective explanation of Carter's decision than other general explanations, and can be applied to other decision making situations.