Episode 8: Is President Trump a Rational Actor?

I’m going to spend the next two episodes broadening the discussion on IR theories I introduced last episode – realism, liberalism, constructivism – by first introducing an additional theory this week: Rational Actor Theory. Next week, we’ll look at a particular story in the news and consider how these different theories inform our understanding of it. For both of these episodes, I’ll use President Trump and his foreign policy forays as a case study, which brings me to today’s main question: Is President Trump a rational actor? Get the show notes at www.timtalkspolitics.com.