Unit 2: Foreign Policy Analysis and Theoretical Approaches

Introduction

It is generally accepted that foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) has developed as part of and along with the International Relations (IR) discipline around 1950s.

The main actors of FPA are states, but it is not limited to them and include other sub and supra state actors.

Levels of Analysis in Foreign Policy

Foreign policy is an interaction between the actors and their environment, be it domestic or international. The first level of analysis is the international level. According to analyses that attempt to explain foreign policy on this level, international system is the strongest if not the only determinant of foreign policy decisions. The analyses on state level have to take into consideration material dynamics such as the size of the country, geopolitical positions, resources, economy and population as well as the nature of the state such as the political system and institution. Although these three levels are instrumental and explanatory in analysing foreign policy, the rise in the number and density of transnational actors (TNAs) has transformed the international system, making interconnectivity outside of traditional state-to-state conduct more likely.

Theories of Foreign Policy

There are different theoretical approaches that aim to analyse foreign policy. The traditional theories of IR, idealism and realism are among these theories.

Traditional Approaches

Before FPA analysis has developed as a discipline, it was still an area widely studied within IR. They base their explanation of foreign policy on systemic factors, that is they believe foreign policy decisions are influenced by the nature of the international system.

Idealism

Being formulated after the First World War, idealist theory of IR has been concerned with ways to prevent wars. Consequently, they opt out war as a foreign policy instrument in their analysis.

Realism

Realism is considered to be the foundational approach to IR in the sense that many other approaches and theories are formulated either in response or in support to it. The relative power of states in the international system vis-a-vis other states is determinant on their foreign policy decision in a way that would secure their national interests.

Behavioural Approaches

Behavioural approaches are those aiming to explain how foreign policy decisions are made. Behaviouralism as a scientific approach has first appeared in psychology. The most common methodologies in this context are decisionmaking approach, comparative foreign policy approach, case study approach, event data approach, prospect theory approach and role theory approach.

Decision-making Approach

Decision-making constitutes one of the core aspects of FPA. There are different stages of decision-making from problem recognition, framing, and perception to more advanced stages of goal prioritisation, contingency planning, and option assessment. The individual level does not necessarily mean that there is a single individual decision maker. In many cases, there may be a small group of individuals making the foreign policy decisions. Indeed, according to some scholars, foreign policy decisions and processes cannot possibly be formulated by a single person, and are inevitably outcomes of groupthink at different levels. Some analyses further this approach by also investigating the impact of public opinion and interest groups on decision making.

Comparative Foreign Policy Approach

Comparative foreign policy approach has developed through the way Rosenau opened for reaching testable generalisations by cross-national analysis. That is why the foreign policies of each state should be studied separately without attempting to find out similarities that would enable generalisations. Therefore, there is not a single methodology that can be applied to this approach. But, studying the histories of states could overcome this methodological problem and enable the analysis of unique foreign policies of individual states.

Event-Data Approach

Event data is a quantitative methodological approach in the study of international politics. It is initiated by Charles McClelland as a link between the general systems theories of international behaviour and the textual histories which provided an empirical basis for understanding that behaviour .

Prospect Theory Approach

Prospect theory is an approach that focuses on decision making under risk. It was developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979 and was later applied to foreign policy decision making in the late 1980s and 1990s by several scholars.

Role Theory Approach

Role theory in FPA was initiated by K. J. Holsti with his article National Role Conceptions in the Study of Foreign Policy (Holsti, 1970). According to Holsti, “those responsible for making decisions and taking actions for the state are aware of international status distinctions and that their policies reflect this awareness.”

Contemporary Approaches

By the end of 1980s with the critical turn in IR, traditional approaches of IR have been criticised in many aspects. The critical turn in IR has generated several approaches ranging from Critical IR to poststructural approaches and from constructivism to new versions of realism. The neoclassical realism, on the other hand, along with social constructivist assumptions, has provided a way for integrating individual level factors to traditional realist assumptions, or in other words, for breaking the chains of the rationality assumption of realism by integrating unitlevel behavioural determinants to its analyses.

Constructivism

Constructivism in the broadest sense refers to theories that see the world as being socially constructed. Socially constructed world means that the existence of patterns, cause-and-effect relationships, and even states themselves depend on webs of meaning and practices that constitute them (Hurd, 2008, 300). This means that nothing in social life, and accordingly in the international system, is given and exists with the meanings attributed to them.

Synthesis: Neo-classical Realism

Neo-classical realism occupies a middle ground between pure structural theories, which implicitly accept a clear and direct link between systemic constraints and unit-level behaviour and constructivist theories, which deny that any objective systemic constraints exist at all and argue instead that international reality is socially constructed.