Johnson and Thayer 16
(Dominic D. P. Johnson (Co-Director of the Oxford Martin School Natural Governance Programme and an Alistair Buchan Professor of International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford) and Bradley A. Thayer (associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and co-author of America's Achilles' Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons Terrorism and Covert Attack), June 21 2016, "The evolution of offensive realism", Cambridge Core, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-the-life-sciences/article/evolution-of-offensive-realism/56B778004187F70B8E59609BE7FEE7A4) Julia T
A recurrent criticism of any theory of international relations based on the role of individuals is why we should expect individual behavior to tell us anything about state behavior. We recognize that many factors may affect the behavior of states, including bureaucracies, types of government, culture, international institutions, or the international system itself, but we also recognize, as traditional theories of international politics have from the time of Thucydides, that humans affect state behavior as well.Reference Levy202 Many factors come between an individual leader and the behavior of a state, but that does not mean leaders have no effect at all. We see several reasons why human behavior is an important predictor of state behavior in the context of this article. First, the preferences of individual citizens are, at least to a degree, represented in those elected to—or tolerated in—office, and those preferences may also be seen in the goals of the state. Second, bureaucracies and organizations are designed, run, and led by human beings, whose own dispositions influence how they function. Third, state leaders are the actors who make important strategic decisions from a set of options, and they are potentially affected by their human dispositions and those of their advisers, even if their actions are tempered by checks and balances. Fourth, group decision-making may actually amplify the influence of human dispositions; it is groups of men that are especially prone to behaviors associated with dominance, aggression, and coalitionary psychology.Reference Baumeister, Boden, Geen and Donnerstein203,Reference Janis204,205,206,Reference Wrangham and Wilson207