PROSPECT THEORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE Jonathan Mercer

6 MERCER
from an aspiration for a new status quo is not always clear. In some cases, the
distinction may be unnecessary. Because knowing what is going on inside North
Korea is difficult, Cha (2002) settles for making a strong case that the North Korean
leadership must be in a domain of loss. If their reference point is the status quo,
then “the widening economic gap between North and South” puts Kim Jong Il in
a domain of loss (Cha 2002, p. 59). If the reference point is an aspiration for the
North’s domination of a North-South Union, then Kim Jong Il is even deeper in
a domain of loss. Knowing exactly how Kim Jong Il frames prospects might be
helpful, but knowing that he is probably in a domain of loss, and thus likely to be
risk acceptant, may tell policy makers all they need to know.
Taliaferro (2004) suggests that a careful analysis of an actor’s perceptions is
more useful than objective measures of determining an actor’s domain (such as
polling data or economic indices). Taliaferro draws on “realist” assumptions that
states care more about relative than absolute gains to argue that a focus on relative
power will reveal the reference point a political leader is likely to select. If a
state’s position relative to other states is ascendant, then the status quo becomes
the reference point; if the state is in a position of relative decline, then some future
aspiration becomes the reference point. An investigator can discover this reference
point by examining private deliberations that provide a “baseline of expectations in
planning documents, white papers on national security goals and strategies, public
pronouncements, instructions to subordinates, and diplomatic communications”
(Taliaferro 2004, p. 47). A nontautological assessment of an actor’s aspiration
level is easier said than done.
Were the Germans before the 1905 Moroccan crisis in a domain of loss primarily
because of the 1904 entente between France and England (Taliaferro 2004), or
because the Germans felt slighted that the French would attempt to steal Morocco
in violation of its treaty commitments and without compensating Germany (Davis
2000)? Davis suggests that the Germans pursued a policy that risked war over
territory of marginal value because they focused on changes from the status quo
rather than on the overall position of Germany. The only thing necessary for eventual
German hegemony in Europe was patience. If the Germans viewed French
moves in Morocco as a challenge to German prestige, then they should have been
satisfied early in the crisis with the forced ouster of French Prime Minister Delcassé
in April 1906 and a return to the pre-crisis status quo. However, if their true
aspiration was the destruction of the Anglo-French Entente, then even Delcassé’s
humiliating ouster would not satisfy. Taliaferro suggests that the Germans were in
a domain of loss even after their initial humiliation of France; thus, they continued
a risky policy that ended in failure. Because policy is often incoherent and evolves
with the situation, it is usually possible to find evidence for a variety of different
reference points. The detailed reconstruction of German decision making is necessary
to understanding how people make decisions, but it demonstrates as well
how difficult it is to establish a specific reference point.
For example, although I have posited that President George W. Bush was in a
domain of gain before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, maybe he was in a