Political Science 252 Lectures
Foreign Policy Analysis
Week 1: Introduction and Overview
● Focus:
○ What does foreign policy refer to?
○ What does the foreign policy domain encompass?
○ Actors
○ Sources of foreign policy
○ Foreign policy for what?(purposes)
● The high politics of our era (pre-covid):
○ Apparent re-ordering of international power balance
○ Multipolar or bipolar? US and China? US and Russia?
○ Questions about the future of liberal, rules-based international order established under
US hegemony post-WWII.
○ A general shift in states’ foreign policy orientation in line with geopolitical shifts.
○ Trump’s populist, nationalist challenged the liberal hegemony created by the US - return
of authoritarianism
● The high politics of our era 2022:
○ Effects on Russian invasion of Ukraine - economic collapse
○ Pronounced geopolitical shifts
● Two viewpoints re: states’ orientation to international politics:
○ Interests come first, and cooperation with other states merely enable a state to maximise
their best interest (realist; unilateralism - e.g. Trump, Biden withdrawing troops from
Afghanistan).
○ More multilateralism; it’s important to seek global solutions to global challenges - the
structural condition of interdependence dictates this.
● Foreign policy events on the home front:
○ July 2022
■ Ramaphosa convenes SADC Extra-Ordinary Organ Troika Summit + Eswatini.
■ Minister Pandor attends 41st Ordinary Session of African Union Executive
Council.
○ Visit to RSA by UK’s foreign minister for Africa.
○ RSA presents candidature to UN Human Rights Council
, ○ Why has the president not produced anything concrete about the Russian invasion of
Ukraine?
● From these example we can deduce:
○ Foreign policy straddles numerous levels of actorship and decisionmaking (i.e. state,
non-state, individuals etc) as well as issues (climate, conventional security threats).
○ Traditional channels of diplomacy are important (e.g. multilateral & bilateral summits), but
increasingly too the non-traditional (social media - Trump twitter).
○ Everyday events that can have major ramifications for states’ foreign policies.
● As a research field, Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) tries to:
○ Explain how and why states conduct themselves the way they do in the international
arena - diplomacy, intelligence, trade negotiations and cultural exchanges all form part of
the substance of foreign policy between international actors. At the heart of the field is an
investigation into decision-making, the individual decision makers, processes and
conditions that affect foreign policy and the outcomes of these decisions.
○ Makes sense of the interplay between a state’s domestic and its external environments
and relatedly, the state's international conduct.
● Foreign policy:
○ States and other actors’ explicit articulation of their international goals and objectives
addressed to others in the international system.
■ Foreign policy White Papers
■ Voting or abstaining from voting indicates states’ positions
■ Foreign policy strategy documents
■ Statements by head of state or senior government officials
■ Communiques (e.g. BRICS Summit or G20 Summit agreements)
■ Speeches (e.g. PW Botha’s “Rubicon” speech of 1985)
■ Voting positions in multilateral forums (e.g. UN)
● Diplomacy:
○ The practical articulation of an actor’s external aspirations, purposes and policies, and
entails the official.
● Theoretical approaches:
○ Levels of analysis:
■ Foreign Policy Analysis is a subfield of International Relations (IR) therefore it
reflects the intellectual traditions and strands of IR.
● Means we see the same kinds of theoretical frameworks dominating in
the field of FPA.
● Similar debates and issues concerning epistemology, methodology
and/or the role of values.
, ● Can class approaches in terms of IR’s major perspectives > realism //
liberal-pluralism // critical perspectives.
■ There is a key difference however, from questions only about international
economy and warfare etc (IR is state-centric, focused at a systemic
explanations), FPA is multilevel in terms of its focus of analysis at the micro
(individual), meso, and macro.
● Micro: the role of individual leadership (powerful people in charge of
affairs of the state, not the ordinary individual) in foreign policy; analyses
psychology, cognition, personality in leaders’ development of foreign
policy; also known as the study of foreign policy decision-making (FPDM)
(the process of decision-making at an individual level).
● Meso: domestic context and determinants of foreign policy (between
individual and state level); role of domestic politics or public opinion, of
domestic interest groups, of bureaucracies in foreign policy decision-
making.
● Macro: foreign policy as shaped by systemic factors; explains foreign
policy as an outcome of power distribution in the international system,
state attributes (e.g. Russia’s foreign policy reflects its size, power), state
(national) interests (e.g. Russia’s Putin’s interest).
○ Theoretical frameworks:
■ In chronological terms, FPA was first dominated by insights from Realism and
neo-Realism (i.e. macro-perspectives).
● Note: IR is a young discipline from around post-war 1920s (why did WWI
and WWII take place etc; why it was state-centric), drawing from
classical theories > realism is a dominant viewpoint from this. FPA is
thus even younger (around 1960s onwards).
■ Especially shaped by the work of Hans J. Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, and
Henry Kissinger.
■ Realism: power politics.
● Foreign policy is determined by two main factors - maintaining a balance
of power (especially under the conditions of the Cold War and MAD), and
to always serve national interest first (ideology is important, but so too is
pragmatism).
■ Neo-realism:
● Power rivalries are a function of the nature of the international system =
anarchy.
, ● Therefore, foreign policy should accommodate relative distributions of
power in the world - states should strive to maximise their power vis-á-vis
other states.
■ The “billiard ball” view of foreign policy - interests dictated by an anarchic system
and states don’t have much motivation to cooperate with each other. Foreign
policy is developed as a result of state actors’ deliberation of how they can
maximise gains and minimise costs (utility maximisation).
■ Realism and neo-realism are very powerful explanations in our current world but
there are other ways of understanding. Later, other scholars began to criticise the
assumptions and claims of realism.
■ From the viewpoint of foreign policy, arguments were made that:
● 1. The behaviouralist approach does not give satisfactory explanations;
behaviouralism focuses on measurable and observable things = foreign
policy outputs (such as actions or decisions) - looking at, for example,
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - does an analysis of output etc give us the
full picture?
○ What about things not accounted for by this?
■ Intangibles in foreign policy decision-making.
■ Role of individual leaders’ personality or psychology
(e.g. JFK, Fidel Castro or Kruschev in the 1960s).
■ Important to also study the process, not merely the
output of foreign policy decisions.
● 2. Critique of rationality / the Rational Actor Model
○ Who’s to say that states are rational actors driven by utilitarian
(cost-benefit considerations?)
● 3. Important to unpack the “black box” of foreign policy decision-making -
not a unitary, monolithic actor but many actors; realisations that states
are complex machines.
○ Bureaucracies/ministries of foreign policy
○ Executive vs legislative vs judicial authority in a given state
○ Interest groups, the media and public opinion
○ Psychology and cognition
● 4. Through influence of neoliberalism
○ Important to factor in complex interdependence
○ Categorise the international system not only as anarchic, but
also characterised by interdependence; states have to rely on
each other for survival - not can function purely individually.
Foreign Policy Analysis
Week 1: Introduction and Overview
● Focus:
○ What does foreign policy refer to?
○ What does the foreign policy domain encompass?
○ Actors
○ Sources of foreign policy
○ Foreign policy for what?(purposes)
● The high politics of our era (pre-covid):
○ Apparent re-ordering of international power balance
○ Multipolar or bipolar? US and China? US and Russia?
○ Questions about the future of liberal, rules-based international order established under
US hegemony post-WWII.
○ A general shift in states’ foreign policy orientation in line with geopolitical shifts.
○ Trump’s populist, nationalist challenged the liberal hegemony created by the US - return
of authoritarianism
● The high politics of our era 2022:
○ Effects on Russian invasion of Ukraine - economic collapse
○ Pronounced geopolitical shifts
● Two viewpoints re: states’ orientation to international politics:
○ Interests come first, and cooperation with other states merely enable a state to maximise
their best interest (realist; unilateralism - e.g. Trump, Biden withdrawing troops from
Afghanistan).
○ More multilateralism; it’s important to seek global solutions to global challenges - the
structural condition of interdependence dictates this.
● Foreign policy events on the home front:
○ July 2022
■ Ramaphosa convenes SADC Extra-Ordinary Organ Troika Summit + Eswatini.
■ Minister Pandor attends 41st Ordinary Session of African Union Executive
Council.
○ Visit to RSA by UK’s foreign minister for Africa.
○ RSA presents candidature to UN Human Rights Council
, ○ Why has the president not produced anything concrete about the Russian invasion of
Ukraine?
● From these example we can deduce:
○ Foreign policy straddles numerous levels of actorship and decisionmaking (i.e. state,
non-state, individuals etc) as well as issues (climate, conventional security threats).
○ Traditional channels of diplomacy are important (e.g. multilateral & bilateral summits), but
increasingly too the non-traditional (social media - Trump twitter).
○ Everyday events that can have major ramifications for states’ foreign policies.
● As a research field, Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) tries to:
○ Explain how and why states conduct themselves the way they do in the international
arena - diplomacy, intelligence, trade negotiations and cultural exchanges all form part of
the substance of foreign policy between international actors. At the heart of the field is an
investigation into decision-making, the individual decision makers, processes and
conditions that affect foreign policy and the outcomes of these decisions.
○ Makes sense of the interplay between a state’s domestic and its external environments
and relatedly, the state's international conduct.
● Foreign policy:
○ States and other actors’ explicit articulation of their international goals and objectives
addressed to others in the international system.
■ Foreign policy White Papers
■ Voting or abstaining from voting indicates states’ positions
■ Foreign policy strategy documents
■ Statements by head of state or senior government officials
■ Communiques (e.g. BRICS Summit or G20 Summit agreements)
■ Speeches (e.g. PW Botha’s “Rubicon” speech of 1985)
■ Voting positions in multilateral forums (e.g. UN)
● Diplomacy:
○ The practical articulation of an actor’s external aspirations, purposes and policies, and
entails the official.
● Theoretical approaches:
○ Levels of analysis:
■ Foreign Policy Analysis is a subfield of International Relations (IR) therefore it
reflects the intellectual traditions and strands of IR.
● Means we see the same kinds of theoretical frameworks dominating in
the field of FPA.
● Similar debates and issues concerning epistemology, methodology
and/or the role of values.
, ● Can class approaches in terms of IR’s major perspectives > realism //
liberal-pluralism // critical perspectives.
■ There is a key difference however, from questions only about international
economy and warfare etc (IR is state-centric, focused at a systemic
explanations), FPA is multilevel in terms of its focus of analysis at the micro
(individual), meso, and macro.
● Micro: the role of individual leadership (powerful people in charge of
affairs of the state, not the ordinary individual) in foreign policy; analyses
psychology, cognition, personality in leaders’ development of foreign
policy; also known as the study of foreign policy decision-making (FPDM)
(the process of decision-making at an individual level).
● Meso: domestic context and determinants of foreign policy (between
individual and state level); role of domestic politics or public opinion, of
domestic interest groups, of bureaucracies in foreign policy decision-
making.
● Macro: foreign policy as shaped by systemic factors; explains foreign
policy as an outcome of power distribution in the international system,
state attributes (e.g. Russia’s foreign policy reflects its size, power), state
(national) interests (e.g. Russia’s Putin’s interest).
○ Theoretical frameworks:
■ In chronological terms, FPA was first dominated by insights from Realism and
neo-Realism (i.e. macro-perspectives).
● Note: IR is a young discipline from around post-war 1920s (why did WWI
and WWII take place etc; why it was state-centric), drawing from
classical theories > realism is a dominant viewpoint from this. FPA is
thus even younger (around 1960s onwards).
■ Especially shaped by the work of Hans J. Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, and
Henry Kissinger.
■ Realism: power politics.
● Foreign policy is determined by two main factors - maintaining a balance
of power (especially under the conditions of the Cold War and MAD), and
to always serve national interest first (ideology is important, but so too is
pragmatism).
■ Neo-realism:
● Power rivalries are a function of the nature of the international system =
anarchy.
, ● Therefore, foreign policy should accommodate relative distributions of
power in the world - states should strive to maximise their power vis-á-vis
other states.
■ The “billiard ball” view of foreign policy - interests dictated by an anarchic system
and states don’t have much motivation to cooperate with each other. Foreign
policy is developed as a result of state actors’ deliberation of how they can
maximise gains and minimise costs (utility maximisation).
■ Realism and neo-realism are very powerful explanations in our current world but
there are other ways of understanding. Later, other scholars began to criticise the
assumptions and claims of realism.
■ From the viewpoint of foreign policy, arguments were made that:
● 1. The behaviouralist approach does not give satisfactory explanations;
behaviouralism focuses on measurable and observable things = foreign
policy outputs (such as actions or decisions) - looking at, for example,
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - does an analysis of output etc give us the
full picture?
○ What about things not accounted for by this?
■ Intangibles in foreign policy decision-making.
■ Role of individual leaders’ personality or psychology
(e.g. JFK, Fidel Castro or Kruschev in the 1960s).
■ Important to also study the process, not merely the
output of foreign policy decisions.
● 2. Critique of rationality / the Rational Actor Model
○ Who’s to say that states are rational actors driven by utilitarian
(cost-benefit considerations?)
● 3. Important to unpack the “black box” of foreign policy decision-making -
not a unitary, monolithic actor but many actors; realisations that states
are complex machines.
○ Bureaucracies/ministries of foreign policy
○ Executive vs legislative vs judicial authority in a given state
○ Interest groups, the media and public opinion
○ Psychology and cognition
● 4. Through influence of neoliberalism
○ Important to factor in complex interdependence
○ Categorise the international system not only as anarchic, but
also characterised by interdependence; states have to rely on
each other for survival - not can function purely individually.
