Samenvatting
International Relations Summary
- Instelling
- Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Summary for the course International Relations
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IR Notes:Week 5:
Jackson/Sørensen/Møller, Chap 10:
Foreign policy analysis is a study of the management of external relations and activities
of nation-states, as distinguished from their domestic policies.
Foreign policy involves goals, strategies, measures, methods, guidelines, directives,
understandings, agreements, and so on, by which national governments conduct
international relations with each other and with international organizations and non-
governmental actors.
Governments want to influence the goals and activities of other actors whom they
cannot completely control because they exist and operate beyond their sovereignty
(Carlsnaes 2002: 335).
Policymaking involves a means–end way of thinking about goals and actions of govern-
ment
Instrumental analysis involves thinking of the best available decision or course of
action—e.g., giving correct advice—to make things happen according to one’s
requirements or interests.
Foreign policy analysis ordinarily involves scrutinizing the external policies of states
and placing them in a broader context of academic knowledge.
Realists underline the value of national security: enhancing national military power
and balancing that of other states is the correct way of achieving national security.
Foreign policy theorists who are concerned with defence or security issues are likely to
take a realist approach, emphasizing the inevitable clash of interests between state
actors, the outcomes of which are seen to be determined by relative state power
International Society scholars emphasize the values of order and justice: a rule-based
and well-ordered international soci- ety is a major goal.
Freedom and democracy are the core values for liberals: they are con- vinced that
liberal democracies will support peaceful international cooperation based on
international institutions. Those concerned with multilateral questions are likely to take
a liberal approach, emphasizing international institutions—such as the United Nations
or the World Trade Organization (WTO)—as means of reducing international con- flict
and promoting mutual understanding and common interests.
Finally, scholars who emphasize the importance of socioeconomic wealth and welfare
as a central goal of foreign policy are likely to take an IPE approach.
, Approaches to foreign policy analysis: traditional approach, comparative foreign policy, bureaucratic
structure and processes, cognitive processes and psychology, the constructivist turn.
Rosenau identified numerous possibly rele- vant sources of foreign policy decisions and
grouped them into five categories which he called: idiosyncratic, role, governmental,
societal, and systemic variables.
The bureaucratic structures and processes approach to foreign policy fo- cuses on the
organizational context of decision making, which is seen to be conditioned by the
dictates and demands of the bureaucratic settings in which decisions are made.
Allison’s three models :
(1) a ‘rational actor approach’ that provides models for answering the ques- tion:
with that information what would be the best decision for reaching one’s goal?
The assumption is that governments are unified and rational; they want to
achieve well-defined foreign policy goals;
(2) an ‘organizational processes’ model, according to which a concrete foreign
policy emerges from clusters of governmental organizations that look after their
own best interests and follow ‘standard operating procedures’;
(3) a ‘bureaucratic politics model’ which portrays individual decision makers (as
bargaining and competing for influ- ence, each with their own particular goals in
mind)
Robert Jervis (1968, 1976) studied misper- ception: why do actors mistake or
misunderstand the intentions and actions of others?
several reasons: actors see what they want to see instead of what is really going on; they
are guided by ingrained, pre-existing beliefs (e.g., the tendency to perceive other states
as more hostile than they really are); and they engage in ‘wishful thinking’.
liberals study complex interdependence, the role of international institutions,
processes of integration, and paths of democratization. In the liberal view, all of these
elements contribute in their separate ways to foreign policies that are more orientated
towards peaceful cooperation for mutual benefit.
International Society scholars trace the three traditions (realism, rationalism, and
revolutionism) in the thought and behaviour of statespeople and ponder their
consequences for foreign policy.
In IPE neo-Marxists focus on the relationship between core and periphery, and they
identify the vulnerable position of underdeveloped, peripheral states in relation to
developed core states as the basic explanation of their lack of room for manoeuvre in
foreign policy.
,A focus on the role of ideas, discourse, and identity is characteristic of a social
constructivist approach to foreign policy analysis
Constructivists see for- eign policymaking as an intersubjective world, whose ideas
and discourse can be scrutinized in order to arrive at a better theoretical understanding
of that process.
The level-of-analysis approach was introduced by Kenneth Waltz in his study of the
causes of war
Waltz searched for the causes of war at three different levels of analysis: the level of the
individual (are human beings aggressive by nature?); the level of the state (are some
states more prone to conflict than others?); and the level of the system (are there con-
ditions in the international system that lead states towards war?). We can study foreign
policy at these same three levels of analysis:
● the systemic level (e.g., the distribution of power among states; their political
and eco- nomic interdependence);
● the nation-state level (e.g., type of government, democratic or authoritarian;
relations between the state apparatus and groups in society; the bureaucratic
make-up of the state apparatus);
● the level of the individual decision maker (his/her way of thinking, basic
beliefs, personal priorities).
Theories at the systemic level explain foreign policy by pointing to conditions in the
inter- national system that compel or pressure states towards acting in certain ways,
that is, to follow a certain foreign policy.
Realists focus on anarchy and the competition between states for power and security;
Liberals find more room for cooperation because of international institutions and a
common desire by states for progress and prosperity.
For many social constructivists, the goals of states are not decided beforehand; they
are shaped by the ideas and values that come for- ward in the process of discourse and
interaction between states.
realism; it proclaims a post-Cold War resurgence of great-power competition in an
anarchic world where states compete for power and security.
, Three conceptions of the international system: Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism.
« Britain was bound to balance against Germany in the First and Second World Wars
because Germany was the one state that had the potential to dominate the continent
and thereby pose a threat to the British Isles . . . Realism is less analytically precise
when the international system is not tightly constraining. A hegemonic state, for
instance, does not have to be concerned with its territorial and political integrity,
because there is no other state . . . that can threaten it. »
(Krasner 1992: 39–40)
‘it may be necessary to introduce other arguments, such as domestic social purpose or
bureaucratic interests. A realist explanation always starts with the international
distribution of power but it may not be able to end there’ (Krasner 1992: 41)
Defensive realists take a benign view of anarchy; states seek security more than power.
Offensive realists, such as John Mearsheimer, believe that states ‘look for opportunities
to gain power at the expense of rivals, and to take advantage of those situations when
the an- ticipated benefits outweigh the costs. A state’s ultimate goal is to be the
hegemon in the system’ (Mearsheimer 2001: 21). For defensive realists, states are
generally satisfied with the prevailing balance of power when it safeguards their
security; for offensive realists, states are always apprehensively looking to increase
their relative power position in the system.
Foreign policy is made not by the nation as a whole but by its government.
Consequently, what matters is state power, not national power. State power is that
portion of national power the government can extract for its purposes and reflects the
ease with which central decision makers can achieve their ends.
(Zakaria 1998: 9)
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