Strategic Choice Theory “The Strategic Choice Framework for Teaching IR”

Slantchev shows how he teaches international relations and foreign policy using game-theoretic tools and what is commonly called the “rational choice” approach. The chapter motivates the use of the strategic choice framework and describes how the instructor can encourage students to learn the tools of mathematical analysis. The author explains how the course builds on basic 2 × 2 games of conflict and cooperation toward a simple (but fundamental) dynamic model of crisis escalation, and how that model is extended and developed to produce substantive insights about foreign policy behavior. The chapter offers a sampling of the crises and international interactions explored in detail during the course of learning the history of US foreign policy, and concludes with the main evaluation tool for these courses, the policy memo, in which students have to analyze fictitious crises constructed from real-world events.