Foreign Policy Analysis Literature Research Articles

Should I Pay, Or Should I Quash? The Role of Governments’ Ideology in Ransom Payment

ABSTRACT Does governments’ ideology influence the likelihood of ransom payment? Despite a steady interest in hostage-taking events, this question remains unanswered. In this article, I argue that ideology contributes to explaining governments’ decisions to pay or not pay ransoms: guided by individualising moral foundations, left-leaning governments are more likely to concede to terrorists to save lives. I test the theoretical argument through a quantitative analysis of abductions between 1970 and 2020 whose victims are citizens of OECD member states. Two results stand out. The presence of leftist governments increases the likelihood of ransom payment, but the abduction of statesmen mitigates its impact. This work contributes to hostage-taking and Foreign Policy Analysis literature by covering an apparent gap in these fields. It also fosters studies on the role of ideology in security issues and moral dilemmas by focusing on a peculiar event that scholars have largely overlooked.

2022 FRANSA CUMHURBAŞKANLIĞI SEÇİMİ: DIŞ POLİTİKA ANALİZİ ÜZERİNE BİR DEĞERLENDİRME

Assessments over the results of April 2022 Presidential Election in France will guide the scholars of foreign policy analysis on the future of internal and external policies of France and the European Union (EU). Within this framework, the aim of the paper is to identify the foreign policy approaches of the presidential candidates and the political parties they have represented in France. The paper adopts a diverse approach from traditional foreign policy approaches which take internal and external factors separately as units of analysis in foreign policy-making processes. Contrary to the traditional perspective, the authors focused on the interaction of internal and external factors, because it is argued in the paper that this interaction creates mutual impacts on agents and shapes foreign policy-making procedures. Methodologically the paper elaborates the interaction through an analysis on the discourses of seven presidential candidates and programs of the political parties they have represented. It is concluded in the paper that the interaction between internal and external factors in French foreign policy has currently concentrated on the themes such as migration, security, economy, climate change, Islam, NATO membership and the future of the EU. The article tries to contribute to the foreign policy analysis literature through a comprehensive analysis on the combination of internal and external factors and to illuminate the probable reflections of presidential election process in France.

Updating the Study of Foreign Policy Crisis: The Case of the Mavi Marmara Flotilla

Abstract The study of foreign policy crises (FPC) is integral to foreign policy analysis (FPA). However, since the end of the Cold War, debate on FPC has stalled. The present article seeks to update the existing FPA literature on FPCs. It uses a deductively driven approach to identify gaps in the current FPC literature and demonstrates their relevance for a real-world case of FPC, namely, the Mavi Marmara flotilla. The latter is identified as a “least likely” case study which is representative of a broader set of what we refer to as asymmetrical FPCs. Maximizing the inferential leverage entailed by this research design, we advocate for an updated FPA approach to study asymmetrical FPCs that includes actor hybridity, performativity, and social media.

The Evolution of Turkey’s ‘South Asia Policy’: Continuities and Ruptures in Outlook, Roles, Actors and Constraints

Turkey’s South Asia policy remains an underexplored area of research in Turkish foreign policy literature despite a rich history of Turkish activism in the region. While bringing to surface Turkey’s perception of South Asia, this article utilises insights from foreign policy analysis literature to make sense of international and domestic drivers behind Turkey’s South Asia policies during and after the Cold War. Using primary resources drawn from Turkish, American, Indian and Australian archives, memoirs by retired Turkish generals and diplomats, and interviews the author conducted with retired Turkish diplomats serving previously as ambassadors to New Delhi and Islamabad, the article argues that Turkey has felt most motivated to be involved in the region when encouraged by and had the ability to coordinate its policies with its western partners. I highlight Turkey’s mediation missions in inter- and intra-state disputes in the region, attempts to shift its South Asia policy and discuss Turkey’s approach to various hot conflicts within and between states in the region. I finally provide the place of South Asia in Turkey’s recent ‘Asia Anew Initiative’ and seek to explain an actor-based evolution of Turkey’s South Asia policy under the AKP governments over the last two decades.

PUTİN VE MEDVEDEV’İN DIŞ POLİTİKALARININ KARŞILAŞTIRMALI ANALİZİ: SURİYE VE LİBYA ÖRNEĞİ

This article explains the shift in Russia’s foreign policy strategy towards the Middle East. Particularly, it aims to address the question of why Russia supported the UNSC Resolution 1970 towards Libya in 2011 but refused to cooperate with the West in Syria. In this article, it is argued that the West’s use of the authorization of the no-fly zone as a green light for military intervention in Libya paved the way for Russia’s obstinacy in Syria. To test this hypothesis, this article focus on the foreign-policy decision-making mechanism in Russia regarding these two events. In this article two decision-making processes are compared to provide an alternative explanation of Russia’s Middle Eastern policy. This article contributes to the existing literature on Russian foreign policy and Foreign Policy Analysis literature.

Analogy-based collective decision-making and incremental change in international organizations

We examine how analogy-based collective decision-making of member states contributes to the endogenous emergence of informal rules and the incremental change of international organizations (IOs). Decision-making by analogy is an important characteristic of day-to-day decision-making in IOs. Relating current decisions to previous ones through analogies drives incremental change and simultaneously reinforces organizational resilience. Whereas the foreign policy analysis literature shows that analogies can be used as cognitive shortcuts in fuzzy and complex foreign policy situations, we focus on their use to overcome social ambiguity (indeterminacy) of coordination situations in IOs. Drawing on psychological conceptions, we develop two micro-level mechanisms that elucidate the effects of analogy-based collective decision-making in member-driven IOs. Analogy-based collective decisions emphasizing similarity between a current situation and previous ones follow an established problem schema and produce expansive and increasingly well-established informal rules. Collective decisions that are analogy-based but emphasize a crucial difference follow different problem schemas and trigger the emergence of additional informal rules that apply to new classes of cases. The result is an increasingly fine-grained web of distinct organizational solutions for a growing number of problems. Accordingly, an IO can increasingly facilitate collective decision-making and gains resilience. Empirically, we probe these propositions with a documentary analysis of decision-making in the Yugoslavia sanctions committee, established by the United Nations Security Council to deal with a stream of requests for exempting certain goods or services from the comprehensive economic embargo imposed on Yugoslavia in response to the War in the Balkans.

Teaching foreign policy analysis in Australia: on cultivating an ‘FPA disposition’

ABSTRACTThe United States-centric nature of the Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) subfield poses a range of pedagogical challenges, especially when the subject is taught outside North America. The preponderance of FPA literature written by US scholars and examining US cases can frustrate non-US students, who often wish to study decisions they consider more directly relevant to their own region and experience. I this piece, I reflect on how I have grappled with this tension in teaching a postgraduate FPA course at the Australian National University. I discuss my choice to prioritise cultivating an ‘FPA disposition’ among students and how, as a means of doing so, I chose to design a curriculum based on a semester-long case study examining the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003. While this pedagogical approach may initially seem contradictory to my long-term aim of contributing to the expansion of FPA beyond North America, it reflects my conviction that instilling an ‘FPA disposition’ in the next generation of graduate students is essential to growing and enriching the subfield in the long term.

Non-state actors and change in foreign policy: the case of a self-determination referendum in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

This article bridges the gap between referenda and foreign policy, emphasizing the role of non-state entities as (f)actors of change in the formulation of foreign policy. Using a multi-layered (rather than a normative) analysis, it examines the Kurdistan Region of Iraq as a novel, non-state case in the international relations and foreign policy analysis literature. It argues that referenda can be pursued by non-state entities, not just state actors, and analyses the parameters of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG’s) unilateral declaration and conduct of the 2017 referendum. It perceives referenda as tools for the formulation and possible facilitation of foreign policy objectives and, in particular, claims to the formation of statehood undertaken by a non-state entity. The study, therefore, pursues a multi-level analysis looking at the contributing dynamics at the domestic, regional and international levels which demonstrate the impact of referenda on foreign policy-making and examines the catalyst role of the unit level that stands out as a determining factor.

Transatlantic relations in the run-up to Pearl Harbor: The Dutch East Indies at Stake

This paper provides an extensive historical reconstruction of the diplomatic exchanges between the United States, the Netherlands and Great Britain regarding the 1941 oil embargo on Japan. Based on new multi-archival evidence, it interrogates Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s foreign policy and allied cooperation in the Far East during this time, and sheds new light on the question whether FDR aimed to provoke or deter Japan at the onset of the American entry into World War II. This research contributes to the diplomatic and transatlantic history literature, foreign policy analysis literature, and speaks more specifically to the debate on deception and the American entry into the Second World War.

Domestic Contestation and Presidential Prerogative in Colombian Foreign Policy

The study of Colombian foreign policy emphasises external constraints and presidential prerogative in foreign policymaking. Drawing on insights from recent foreign policy analysis literature and evidence from several cases (Plan Colombia, US military bases, free trade talks with China, and ICJ arbitration of a maritime border with Nicaragua), this article challenges commonplace presidentialist assumptions. A novel model of ‘contested presidentialism’ better captures how Colombian domestic actors mobilise to raise political costs to block or modify presidential preferences. When the opposition fails to raise costs, presidentialist assumptions apply. Otherwise, presidents respond strategically by abandoning policies or substituting second‐best alternatives.

Clarity of responsibility and foreign policy performance voting

AbstractDo voters’ assessments of the government's foreign policy performance influence their vote intentions? Does the ‘clarity of responsibility’ in government moderate this relationship? Existing research on the United States demonstrates that the electorate's foreign policy evaluations influence voting behaviour. Whether a similar relationship exists across the advanced democracies in Europe remains understudied, as does the role of domestic political institutions that might generate responsibility diffusion and dampen the effect of foreign policy evaluations on vote choice. Using the attitudinal measures of performance from the 2011 Transatlantic Trends survey collected across 13 European countries, these questions are answered in this study through testing on incumbent vote the diffusion‐inducing effects of five key domestic factors frequently used in the foreign policy analysis literature. Multilevel regression analyses conclude that the electorate's ability to assign punishment decreases at higher levels of responsibility diffusion, allowing policy makers to circumvent the electoral costs of unpopular foreign policy. Specifically, coalition governments, semi‐presidential systems, ideological dispersion among the governing parties and the diverse allocation of the prime ministerial and foreign policy portfolios generate diffusion, dampening the negative effects of foreign policy disapproval on vote choice. This article contributes not only to the debate on the role of foreign policy in electoral politics, but also illustrates the consequential effects of domestic institutions on this relationship.

Islamically oriented humanitarian NGOs in Turkey: AKP foreign policy parallelism

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to contribute to the growing Foreign Policy Analysis literature by focusing on the role of non-state actors in foreign policy implementation. Special attention is paid to the case of Turkey, which has emerged as a ‘humanitarian state’ in the last decade. In Turkey, relatively new Islamically oriented humanitarian NGOs (HNGOs) have been providing ever-increasing amounts of humanitarian aid throughout the former Ottoman lands including the Middle East and Africa. Employing a constructivist-realist perspective, this paper asserts that a ‘parallelism,’ if not a complementarity, exists between Turkey’s Islamically oriented HNGO discourse and practice and AKP foreign policy implementation process. Based on primary qualitative data acquired from interviews, this study has identified various degrees of parallelism between the two, calling into question the status of these HNGOs as purportedly non-governmental entities.

Lithuania’s foreign policy under Grybauskaite: change or continuity?

In 2009, Lithuania’s incoming president was signaling that the country’s foreign policy priorities were about to change. Under what circumstances and to what extent can a high-ranking political leader change a state’s foreign policy singlehandedly? This study, drawing on insights from foreign policy analysis literature, integrates individual decision-makers profiling to offer explanations of initiated changes in Lithuania’s foreign policy. We argue that personal preferences, worldviews, and leadership style allowed Grybauskaite to become the main initiator of foreign policy changes, but that personality-driven foreign policy changes were temporary and were eventually subdued by domestic and international structural factors.

Complexity, strategy and the national interest

In 2010, and in anticipation of a controversial and contested Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), the UK House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) issued a stinging critique of strategy making in the UK, accusing the government of having ‘all but lost the capacity to think strategically’ (PASC 2010, p. 3). Two years later, in 2012, it was still lamenting ‘the government’s inability to express coherent and relevant strategic aims’ (PASC 2012, p. 38). These criticisms have been echoed in the strategic studies and foreign policy analysis literature, including calls for a revival of grand narratives of national interest to drive strategic practice (Layton 2012, pp. 59–60), for a new relationship between political decision-making and professional expertise in strategy making (Strachan 2006, pp. 77–80) and the reinvigoration of institutional capacities for strategic thinking and action in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and elsewhere (Cornish and Dorman 2010, pp. 408–409). Related themes are apparent too in the burgeoning literature on risk, which identifies distinct challenges of strategic practice associated with contemporary patterns of complexity, uncertainty and interdependence and calls for better strategy making in response (Rasmussen 2006, pp. 203–206).

Rethinking weak state behavior: Mongolia’s foreign policy toward China

This article calls into question the efficacy of systemic accounts of weak state foreign policy behavior through a case study of Mongolia’s foreign policy behavior toward China. In particular, it challenges the contention within international relations and foreign policy analysis literature that weak states’ foreign policy is structurally determined. Employing James Rosenau’s five-part typology of foreign policy, the article demonstrates how Mongolia’s – a prototypical weak state – foreign policy toward China is driven by domestic factors. It also considers the case study’s implications for both the study of weak states and Northeast Asian regional dynamics.

British-Iranian Relations, The Satanic Verses and the Fatwa: A Case of Two-Level Game Diplomacy

Embedded within foreign policy analysis literature, this article analyses the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and its impact on British-Iranian relations during the period 1989–1998. What constituted an unprecedented event in international relations history, affected bilateral relations for almost a decade. The article sheds light on how both sides perceived the issue at hand as well as interpreted respective diplomatic signalling and behaviour. The argument put forward is that Iran's maze of power centres continued for the most part to jeopardise confidence-building measures and concessions forwarded by the Iranian government and foreign ministry. The narrative indicates to what extent diplomacy and negotiations were influenced by domestic constituents (referred to as the ‘two-level game’ in international relations theory) in Iran.

Synthesis and reformulation of foreign policy change: Japan and East Asian financial regionalism

AbstractWhat explains major foreign policy changes? Why and when does the state change its foreign policy? Despite the importance of foreign policy change, which can (re)shape the nature of a given state's international relationsvis-à-visother states and international systems, explanations of foreign policy change have received only sporadic attention in foreign policy analysis literature. Against this backdrop, I offer in this article a new framework designed to capturebothmotivational and processual aspects of foreign policy change. I develop the framework by critically examining and synthesising two recent systematic explorations of foreign policy change: one framework within the tradition of rationalism (broadly defined) – David Welch'sPainful Choice: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change(2005) – and the other within constructivism – Jeffrey Legro'sRethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order(2006). For the motivational analysis, I link the role of crisis-defining ideas tothreat perceptionto sharpen prospect theory. I illustrate this reformulated synthesis with an example of Japan's policy shift toward East Asian financial regionalism.

From Stop to Go in Foreign Policy

Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change. By David A. Welch Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 312 pp., $35.00 (ISBN: 0-691-12340-3). Given the dramatic institutional and policy changes in response to September 11 and the policy debate regarding when, why, and how the United States should withdraw its forces from Iraq, nothing could be more timely than David Welch's Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change . In particular, this important book addresses two crucial questions: when will dramatic policy change occur and why do states resist change? Explanations of foreign policy change have received only sporadic attention in the foreign policy analysis literature—most notably in the classic statements of foreign policy change by Charles Hermann (1990), Jerel Rosati, Joe Hagan, and Martin Sampson (1994), and James Rosenau (1981). Nonetheless, this question remains central for policy analysts and political leaders alike. The conventional wisdom in international relations is that inertia is the default setting for governments. Thus, continuity in policy is interrupted only occasionally, and then only by such crises as failed policies and the rise of political instability. Welch takes this assumption as a starting point but specifically grounds his approach in organizational theory, cognitive and motivational psychology, and prospect theory. Collectively these three perspectives suggest that foreign policy change should be rare. First, as Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow (1999) outline in their work, organizational routines favor continuity over change because information is …

Centralizing Advisory Systems: Presidential Influence and the U.S. Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process

This study is motivated by a simple yet vitally important question for an understanding of U.S. foreign policy. Quite simply, how does a president's choice of management style influence the U.S. foreign policy decision-making process and decision outcomes? Presidents play a critical role in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy; however, the presidential studies literature and foreign policy analysis literature arrive at very different conclusions regarding how presidents influence the policy process and both are often inaccurate. This study develops an Advisory Systems Typology to address how presidents influence the decision-making process. In addressing this question, this study overcomes the deficiencies of both the presidential studies and foreign policy analysis literature. Four different types of decision-making processes are produced by a president's choice of advisory structure and level of centralization. In addition, the study identifies “unstructured solutions” that indicate how the presidential advisers and president choose to resolve policy disagreements, thereby providing an indication of the decision outcome. The identified decision-making processes and their associated decision outcomes are explored using four cases of decision making on security policy drawn from the Nixon (Vietnam War), Carter (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II), Reagan (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks I), and Clinton (Bosnia conflict) administrations. The case studies are constructed using the method of structured–focused comparisons, whereby a set of theoretically based questions and anticipated observations to those questions are made in order to guide the research and allow for comparison of decision making within and between cases.