The Strategic Culture of Foreign and Security Policymaking: Examining the Southern African Development Community

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the effects of strategic culture on the parameters of the decision making elite in the Southern African Development Community. By examining the contemporary southern African foreign and security decision making track record, it also addresses the question of convergence. The article examines the theoretical and conceptual state of research relating to strategic culture and adopts a constructivist understanding of the concept. Before applying it to the Southern African Development Community case, it examines the context of African decision making by highlighting a range of issues that act to constrain choices, and it explains the Southern African Development Community decision making structures and examines the state of research relating to Southern African Development Community members’ foreign policy and national security policy behavior. The summary offers an outline of a southern African strategic culture. It finds that despite signs of extensive convergence, in reality, Southern African Development Community exercises partial convergence, frequent but mostly unsystematic interaction characterized by partially compatible interests.