Compared to the foreign policy that is concerned with the national interests at the international level, the domestic policy is focused on that within the country. Overall, the diplomatic missions directed at the promotion of national values can be conducted at the domestic, regional, and global arenas. The promotion of security, prosperity, and stability is the primary objective of both types of policy.
Foreign policy can be analyzed based on the decision-makers involved and the influences they undergo. For example, an individual decision maker’s perspective can be influenced by such variables as personality, cognition, affect, group, social milieu, and time. As opposed to individual decision-making, there is a bureaucratic model that operates through the standard procedures and lacks an individual approach. An example of a scenario where the individual decision-maker and a bureaucratic model worked in a combination is the case of the War in Iraq. In that scenario, the individual decision was made by President George Bush under the influence of cognition, affect that occurred after the attacks of 9/11, and social milieu.
Further, the decision traveled the bureaucratic ladder downwards to the National Security Advisor under President Bush, the State Secretary, and the Defense Secretary. Reflecting on this decision and the policy and followed today, one may notice how many biases were in place to impact the decision-makers. Also, as soon as the decision was sent from the top down the bureaucratic pyramid, it became unstoppable and lost individuality. However, after the events of 9/11, the analysis traced the decision back to President as the primary acting figure and the gateway through which the decision made its entrance. As a result, regardless of the involvement of the bureaucratic model, President is still recognized as the main actor in the escalation of the conflict and the beginning of the Iraq War.
Another approach to the foreign policy analysis apart from the individual decision-maker, and the bureaucratic model, is the Neorealist Unitary Rational Actor model. The latter view the states as unitary rational actors assuming the rationality and unity of their decisions; at the same time, the personality influences, individual variables, and quirks are seen as epiphenomenal (or secondary and not as important). Within the paradigm of the Neorealist Unitary Rational Actor model, the status of power is perceived as relative. In other words, the direction of the power is seen differently compared to the bureaucratic and individual paradigms. The collective power carried by the state is seen as dominant over those of an individual in charge of the system. The Black Box analogy works through the example of a hypothetical black box that is a device without any characteristics of how it works internally. The black box is the transistor, a mechanism that receives input information (that is, in our case, the environmental condition or a scenario) and produces an output or a response (that is, in our case, the collective behavior or a state reaction in the form of a decision).