Reluctance in World Politics

Abstract

World politics is, in many cases, a chaotic field: international actors frequently adopt indecisive, hesitant, muddling-through approaches instead of clear-cut foreign policy decisions – in other words, they are reluctant. This also applies to powerful states, which frequently disappoint the expectations of those who want them to decisively contribute to the solution of pressing problems. Surprisingly, despite being a widespread phenomenon, ‘reluctance’ has not been studied systematically in the field of International Relations (IR). This book fills this gap by asking why international actors, including powerful states, are often reluctant in their foreign policies. It develops a conceptualization of reluctance and a theorization of its causes by building on a range of approaches from Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and related fields. Reluctance emerges if governments face difficulties in their domestic processes of preference formation (driven by political weakness, limited capacity, cognitive problems or normative struggles), and if external actors confront them with strong and competing expectations. This theory is applied to in-depth qualitative analyses of varying degrees of reluctance in regional crisis management on the part of three powerful regional countries: India’s reluctant approach to crisis management in Afghanistan (2014–21) and Nepal (2015–17); Germany’s reluctant crisis management with regard to Libya (2011) and its more determined and responsive approach to the Ukraine crisis of 2014–15; and Brazil’s non-reluctant approach to crisis management in Haiti during the first Lula presidency (especially its leadership of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH) as well as its consistent but low-key approach to the civil war in Colombia.