Cognitive or Individual Approach. The cognitive or individual approach in analyzing political elites in foreign policy making is anchored within the perspective of the individual participants in the decision-making process. The major premise of this approach stipulates that what is important is not the actual reality that decision-makers face, but what those decision-makers think reality is (the psycho-milieu) within the context of the whole process of how policy is made. In the cognitive approach to foreign policy analysis, individuals and their mental states, therefore, do matter. Or, as Xxxxxxx (1972, 11-12) puts it, ‘decision-makers act in accordance with their perception of reality, [and] not in response to reality itself.’ A fundamental, albeit natural, consequence of employing this approach would mean accepting the premise that for the purpose of analysis, ‘state action is the action taken by those acting in the name of the state’ (Xxxxxx et al. 2002, 59). Quite simply, analysis of foreign policy must occur at the individual level-of-analysis while at the same time Xxxxxx et al.’s (2002, 58) continued emphasis on the nation-state as the ‘significant unit of political action’ is employed. In juggling what may seem to be two distinguishably separate levels of analytical focus that may not even be placed on the same analytical plane, we must assume that the concept of ‘national interest’ remains unitary. There is a need to incorporate Holsti’s (1967, 122) term of a ‘national role conception’ into how policy-makers define the ‘general kinds of decisions, commitments, rules, and actions [that are] suitable to their state, and of the functions their state should perform in a variety of geographic and issue settings.’ Otherwise, it would be impossible to begin analysis when the political players under the microscope of differing levels of analysis have different conceptions of what constitutes raison d’etat (national interest). Present- day definition of state interest requires that interests be grouped into: first, those that are derived from the individual state; second, into interests that are shaped in or represented by cooperation with closely associated and allied states; and third, into those interests that are held in common with all of international society (Xxxxxxxxxx 2006, viii). Nevertheless, this lack of clarity as to where state interest is properly grouped poses a challenge in the application of this cognitive or individual framework in analyzing foreign policy making.
