Role analysis in international politics: a causal hypothesis

Abstract

This article explores the processes, and the influences thereon, underlying foreign policy decisionmaking. Three mutually interdependent influences are identified as fundamental to the causal sequence of the foreign policy decisionmaking process, namely; national capability, ego-role perception and the external environment. It is suggested that these three areas may be incorporated in the concept in an effort to conceptualize the causal sequence in international interaction. The traditional purpose of viewing a particular state's foreign policy action within a certain designated ro.le perspective is to enable those with an interest in foreign policy to capture the general trend and direction of the policy of a specific state. Such a role perspective is generally vague and abstract, and the result of the ex post facto analysis of a series of foreign policy actions of the state concerned. For example, one way of analysing British foreign policy during the nineteenth century is to focus on Britain's role as 'balancer' restraining the 'power struggle' between the contending European alliances. Similarly, the role of the United States has been more recently defined as that of a 'world policeman'. One alleged advantage of the role perspective approach derives from its usefulness as a method of analysing a state's present and future foreign policy. This predictive notion makes the role perspective particularly relevant in contemporary terms, since underlying assumptions about the world political order are based on the past and projected actions of states. However, as the number of states active in international politics has multiplied and the destructive capacity of the major world powers has escalated, the arbitrary description of role perspective solely on the basis of hindsight cannot suffice. Role perspective, in so far as it seeks to conceptualise a state's external interactions in contemporary terms, must seek to delineate the causal sequence of events and procedures which serve to determine and regulate external interaction. This it must do if it is to be of more thanlimited historical value. In seeking the core explanation of the concept of 'role' in international politics, it is proposed to develop a dynamic model of the sequence of causation in international interaction. (These interactions occuring over time constitute a state's international role.) The notion of a dynamic process, a series of interactions, or mutually influential interacting variables suggests a degree of dynamic systemic order and continuity. It is primarily for this reason that it *Dr Michael Sinclair is a lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.