Psychology and aggregation in International Relations
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120938830 |
| Subject Matter | 25th Anniversary Special Issue |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120938830
European Journal of
International Relations
1 –18
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066120938830
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E
JR
I
Psychology and aggregation
in International Relations
Ross James Gildea
University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
Theories of decision-making grounded in political psychology have experienced a dramatic
rise in the study of International Relations. There is widespread recognition of the
benefits of incorporating insights from the behavioural sciences into analyses of political
behaviour. However, some scholars have argued that the theoretical and empirical
scope of these perspectives remains hampered by an unresolved issue: aggregation.
While the fundamental unit of interest in psychology is the individual, most International
Relations models concern patterns of collective decision-making in aggregate units such
as states, bureaucracies, armed groups, transnational networks and institutions. This
article contributes to the aggregation debate by providing a more optimistic portrait of
its implications for interdisciplinary work. I argue that aggregation may be an overstated
problem in International Relations and that a disciplinary preoccupation with it may
hinder rather than pave the way for interdisciplinary theorizing.
Keywords
Political psychology, aggregation, International Relations, agent-structure problem,
rationality, explanatory theory
Introduction
Theories of decision-making grounded in political psychology have experienced a dra-
matic rise in the study of International Relations (IR). Related research agendas, such as
those associated with the affective ‘turn’ in IR, have also gained growing traction (Hall
and Ross, 2015; Lopez and McDermott, 2012). Despite widespread recognition of the
utility of incorporating insights from the behavioural sciences into analyses of political
Corresponding author:
Ross James Gildea, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Manor Road
Building, Manor Rd, Oxford, OX1 3UQ, UK.
Email: ross.gildea@politics.ox.ac.uk
938830EJT0010.1177/1354066120938830European Journal of International RelationsGildea
research-article2020
25th Anniversary Special Issue
2 European Journal of International Relations 26(S1)
behaviour, the theoretical and empirical scope of these perspectives in IR may be limited
by an unresolved issue: aggregation. Although the difficulty of moving from models of
decision-making at the individual level to higher levels of analysis is not confined to
political psychology – being a feature of micro-foundational debates in IR theory more
generally – the issue of aggregation is seen as a recurring challenge for psychological
approaches to the examination of international politics.1
For psychologists the fundamental theoretical unit of interest is the individual. This
characteristic has made psychological insights readily compatible with the methodologi-
cal individualism of fields such as microeconomics, contributing to the successful emer-
gence of the sub-discipline of behavioural economics (Thaler, 2018). In contrast,
incorporating psychological findings into IR may present a more difficult challenge.
While theoretical and empirical work at the individual level may be quite straightfor-
wardly adapted to analysis of the political behaviour of individual actors or the ‘first-
image reversed’,2 most IR models concern patterns of collective decision-making in
aggregates such as states, bureaucracies, armed groups, institutions and transnational
networks (Powell, 2017: S265). Much of these forms of social and political organization
are designed to include checks and balances aimed at mitigating the effects of individual
preferences. Decision-making processes in group and institutionalized settings can also
be cumbersome and take time, providing further opportunities to counteract individual
judgements and biases (Johnson, 2015: 760). How psychological mechanisms, which are
primarily individually embodied, may operate and exercise influence within complex
group and institutional environments remains a crucial and contested question.
The renewal of social scientific work which draws on psychological findings, indica-
tive to some of a ‘behavioural revolution’, appears to be an auspicious time to revisit this
challenge. Failure to resolve or plausibly circumvent problems of this kind has been
viewed as an impediment to the broad diffusion of psychological insights to IR during
previous waves of behaviourally informed research (Stein, 2017: S255).3 Some scholars
predict that the way aggregation is addressed in coming years will affect whether interest
in psychological approaches diminishes over time or if this research programme exerts a
more systematic, integrated and lasting influence on the field (Hafner-Burton et al.,
2017). This article contributes to the aggregation debate by providing a more optimistic
portrait of its implications for interdisciplinary work.4 I argue that aggregation may be an
overstated problem and that a disciplinary preoccupation with it in IR may hinder rather
than pave the way for interdisciplinary theorizing.
The article proceeds in the following manner. In the first section ‘Problematizing the
aggregation problem’, I provide a brief overview of existing analytical strategies to
tackle the aggregation problem as well as highlighting potential criticisms of these
approaches. The article then addresses each objection, positing that the supposed limit-
ing effect of aggregation on the diffusion of psychological insights to IR may be over-
stated. The second section ‘Psychology as a complex base’ develops the latter argument
more fully. It first examines the nature of psychology as a complex base for theory gen-
eration, one that is beset by individual-level factors that can move in multiple and con-
tradictory directions. I argue that a theory of aggregation that rests on such a base, and
that seeks to bridge multiple levels of analysis across different actor types, will likely
suffer from weak foundational claims. In light of these challenges, I then suggest that the
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