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The research scope of this dissertation ranges from 1981
when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the President of the
United States to November 1986 when the Iran-Contra Scandal was
disclosed. In this dissertation, the author analyzes and
evaluates the Reagan administration''s decisions to provide aid
tothe Contras, and to divert proceeds resulting from the
indirect arms sales toIran to the Contras. The author adopts
the Crucial Case Study and Decision-Making Approach to
conduct his research on the case of the Iran-Contra Scandal.The
author also invokes the decision-making approaches presented by
James N.Rosenau and William C. Vocke to sort out the factors
influencing foreign poli-cy decision-making,and merge those
factors into four major variables: interna-tional situation,
domestic politics, the individual factor of the decision-
makers, and bureaucratic politics. To analyze the decision-
making process ofthe Reagan administration''s decision to
provide aid to the Contras, the authorinvokes two sets of
theories.The first set of theories are Structural Neoreal-ism
and Elite''s Beliefs. The second set of theories are Graham T.
Allison''sRational Policy Model, Organizational Process Model,
and Bureaucratic PoliticsModel. The author aspires to achieve
the following goals: (1) To find out thevariables influencing
the Reagan administration''s decision to provide aid tothe
Contras, and analyze the interaction between these variables;
(2) To ana-lyze and evaluate the Reagan administration''s
decision to provide aid to theContras thoroughly and
objectively, and to understand clearly the historicalcourse of
the Iran-Contra Scandal by applying the decision-making
approaches;(3) To examine the errors the Reagan administration
committed in making thedecision to provide aid to the Contras;
(4) To find out who has to take themajor "political
responsibility"; (5) To present the major findings of
thisresearch.
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