Foreign Policy Analysis: an overview Dr Chris Alden

Foreign Policy Analysis: an overview Dr Chris Alden LS

Aims & Learning Objectives • Identify the key concepts of FPA • Describe and define the centrality of the state and national interest to FPA • Understand the role of structure and agency in shaping foreign policy • Discuss the relationship between FPA and International Relations

What is Foreign Policy Analysis? • The focus on FPA is on intentions, statements & actions of an actor – usually a state but not necessarily – directed towards the external world and the response of other actors to these intentions, statements & actions (Gerner) • It is a ‘bridging discipline’ between boundaries (domestic/external)

FPA and its assumptions • FPA assumes the inter-connectedness of domestic factors and international factors – But privileges domestic processes as providing variables that determine & explain FP outcomes – This could include the range and choice of policies, the selection of FP instruments (diplomatic vs military) and/or their successful (or otherwise) implementation – Moreover, FPA holds a systems theory approach to interpreting policy making, that is that there are ‘feedback loops’ between policy initiators & their targets which operate and affect decision making & outcome

FPA and its assumptions • FPA assumes the state as a legitimate unit of analysis – Like the divide between domestic and international environments, which is necessarily ‘artificial’ (socially constructed) but at the same time meaningful – Though not explicitly declared as such, FPA scholars generally assume a pluralist depiction of the state as a site of competitive interests whose actions are structured by institutions, norms of conduct and law

FPA as ‘middle range’ theory • FPA research aims focuses first on the process of decision making itself and less the outcome – Believes that its focus on analysing ‘actor specific’ – that is to say the behaviour of particular actors (individuals/groups configured in informal or formal – bureaucracies — settings) – provides a fruitful source of generalisable theory w/ a measure of predictability – Contrast w/ ‘actor-general’ approach, which analyses actors’ behaviour in aggregate (game theory)

1. Realism and Rationalism: state, national interest & foreign policy decision making • A state’s national interest is synonymous with power and the proper object of a state’s foreign policy as well as a measure of its capacity – What constitutes national interest, how is it determined and by whom – The ‘whom’ is decision maker which becomes FPA object of investigation – Application of rational choice theory to modelling FP decision making

2. Behaviourism: the ‘minds of men’ & foreign policy decision making • Focus on decision making process rather than on outcomes • This places individual decision maker at the centre of study and the limits and constraints that they operate under • Group decision making

3. Bureaucratic politics & foreign policy • Believed focus on individual excessively narrow • Proper focus of study should be bureaucracies where decisions are actually formulated • Inter-play between leaders, bureaucrats, organisational culture and political actors central

4. Pluralism: linkage politics & foreign policy • Pluralists dispute the belief that the state forms the only significant actors in international politics • Linkages between sub-state and transnational actors increasingly supplementing if not sidelining state • The environment of complex interdependency & 2 level game

Conclusion: FPA & the study of International Relations • Valerie Hudson: ‘ The single most important contribution of FPA to IR theory is to identify the point of theoretical intersection between primary determinants of state behaviour: material and ideational factors. That point of intersection is not the state, it is human decision makers’