A common sense, colloquial definition of foreign policy decision-makers could be made as, units making decisions in the name of global political actors concerning their external environment. Apparently, it is not always an easy task to define who are the decision-makers. Especially in a democratic state, the decisions are usually taken as a result of a collective process based on collective deliberation. As a result, most foreign policy decisions could be viewed as taken by a group of individuals providing their ideas and insights, contributing their expertise and feedback and participating in the shaping of the outcome through a process of deliberation and negotiation. It is assumed that this process is characterized by rationality. As a result, the question and boundaries of whom the decision makers in foreign policy are shows variations in accordance with the internal and external factors pertaining to domestic political context.

However, there are issues to be tackled with, as rationality is what decision-makers strive for, or more often than not a justifier of the accuracy of their decisions, than a standard that defines decision making processes. After all, political leaders are decision-makers that are human beings like the rest of us. Much like the rest of us, they suffer from cognitive biases that distorts their minds, leading to deviations in their perception and judgment of the situation from the reality of the challenge before them. They usually are as vulnerable to cognitive dissonances. Therefore, when they are left in a position that leaves them in between their long held ideas, beliefs and values and circumstances contradicting the said ideas, beliefs and values, they try to resolve it by adapting their perception of the situation rather than adopting their behavior to the reality of it. This could be done by either creating a new cognition of the reality they face by adding new parts or ignoring and denying information that leads to the dissonance etc. Also, decision-makers resort to heuristics, or more simply put “rules of thumb”, like the rest of us. Human brain is “hardwired to find patterns in complexity” and finds solace in avoiding it. It naturally prefers simple explanations to complex ones as “logic and deductive reasoning take a lot of energy” (Hudson, 2007, p. 42). This is an important reason why it is easy for the general public and nonspecialists to subscribe to conspiracy theories. All of these factors make decision-makers prone to become cognitive misers as often as the rest of us, clouding, destabilizing and faulting the decision-making processes on foreign policy. “Cognitive Miser” is a concept that refers to the tendency of human beings to avoid spending computational effort and resorting to facile ways in solving problems. This phenomena is accepted as a natural tendency that is had regardless of the level of intelligence of the person.

As also understood from the information given, the arguments in the option II “Much like the rest of us, political leaders suffer from cognitive biases that distorts their minds, leading to deviations in their perception and judgment of the situation from the reality of the challenge before them.”, in the option III “Decision-makers resort to heuristics, or more simply put “rules of thumb”, like the rest of us.”, in the option IV “Human brain is “hardwired to find patterns in complexity” and finds solace in avoiding it. “ and in the option V “Human brain naturally prefers simple explanations to complex ones as “logic and deductive reasoning take a lot of energy” can be used by the one who has been explaining the cognitive miser concept, so the correct answer is E.

The argument in the option I “The decision maker has full or perfect information (a state where all data germane to a particular issue, decision, is known and available) on the circumstances of the situation and about the alternatives available.” is related to the rationality concept.