What is the essence of group decision-making? How does group dynamics affect policy outcomes? This chapter contributes to foreign policy analysis and national security decision-making by advancing a comparative group dynamic perspective. Specifically, we examine three models of group decision-making: Groupthink, Polythink, and Con-Div, and apply each model to the Kennedy administration’s decision to impose a naval blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We claim that applying different group decision-making models to real-world cases presents a new way of explaining governmental decisions. Based on our comparative analysis of the three models, we find that the Con-Div model performs best in explaining the naval blockade decision.

So far in this book, the emphasis has been on the role of psychological constraints on individual decision makers. In many areas of political science, however, theories deal with interactions between states or within a government bureaucracy, not the multitudes who live within a nation’s borders. The literature, in other words, treats states as unitary actors. In nearly every case of national level decision making, however, we see very interesting dynamics when we look a little closer. We review the challenge presented by principal-agent problems that are common in large and complex organizations such as national governments. BPS helps us understand a host of these influences on state level decision-making, including domestic public opinion, bureaucratic norms and practices, organizational constraints, advisory group structures, and the dynamics of group decision-making, including groupthink and polythink.