Habits and Policy: The Social Construction of Foreign Policymaking Processes

Abstract

AbstractThis article offers an alternative explanation for the processes by which foreign policy is made. It does so across three different countries, across different governments, across issues that had real “blood and treasure” at stake, across different domestic and international contexts, and while holding the target of policy, the United States, constant. Available theories argue that formal political institutions or norms determine who will influence the making of policy and how they will do so. However, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—countries with strikingly similar formal rules for making foreign policy—have been following, for decades, fundamentally different foreign policymaking processes, and they have been doing so without resorting to any normative justifications. The article contrasts the theoretical expectations of rational choice institutionalism and norm-based arguments on foreign policymaking with a logic of habit not captured by the logics of consequences or appropriateness of rational choice institutionalism and norm-based explanations. The article makes two contributions. First, it furthers the theoretical development of the concept of habit in international relations and offers a means of studying habits empirically. Second, it challenges the assumption that the power of domestic actors in foreign policy is a function of formal institutions or prevailing norms.