Irish Foreign Policy during World War II: a Test for Realist Theories of Foreign Policy

Abstract

This paper sets out to test theories of foreign policy against the case of Irish foreign policy during World War II. The paper focuses on two theories that stem from the realist paradigm: neorealism and neoclassical realism. Both theories divide politics into domestic and international realms and say foreign policy is the product of a country's international realm. Both also affirm that a state's paramount concern?operating as it does in an anarchic, self-help system?is for survival. Ireland duly followed this realist script. Preceding and during World War II, policy-makers were deeply cognizant of the state's vulnerability in an unstable international environment. Irish foreign policy was a manifestation of this Hobbesian perception. Yet, theories of neorealism and neoclassical realism underachieve in important ways. Neorealism predicts that states will balance against a threatening power. Small states, according to neorealist doctrine, will band-wagon when faced with a comparable threat. Ireland did neither and yet successfully survived the war, thus blunting neorealist explanations of Irish strategy. Neoclassical realism tells us that domestic politics and a leader's perceptions also have causal significance for the type of foreign policy a country adopts. Yet it fails to demonstrate how such factors translate, in Ireland's case, into a policy of 'non-balancing'. To this end, realist foreign-policy theories cannot wholly account for Ireland's wartime foreign-policy behaviour.