Foreign Policy Beliefs Research Articles

Theorizing Far-Right Foreign Policy: Insights From Germany

What is the far-right’s foreign policy outlook? Although International Relations scholarship has provided important insights into the foreign policy preferences of far-right actors, it has predominantly analysed these political actors under the label of populism and focused on the effects of populism on foreign policy positions. Consequently, we lack a clear understanding of the impact of far-right ideology on foreign policy beliefs and preferences. This article provides a theorization of far-right foreign policy by deriving its key characteristics from far-right ideology. It tests this theoretical framework through a comparative analysis of the foreign policy preferences of the populist radical-right Alternative for Germany and the extreme-right, Neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany. The comparative analysis of primary textual data reveals a shared far-right foreign policy outlook characterized by (1) ultra-nationalism, (2) group-based enmity, (3) authoritarianism, (4) revisionism and reactionism and (5) producerist-nationalistic economic positions, but also some important variations in the pursuit of these positions.

Do Campaign Speeches Predict Foreign Policy? An Operational Code and Leadership Trait Analysis of Donald Trump’s MENA Policies

This article investigates whether campaign speeches during the US presidential elections can help predict foreign policy behavior. We use speeches made by Donald J. Trump during his bid for president in 2016. We compare the analysis from 2016 with his actual foreign policy decisions during his tenure, 2017-2020. Operational code analysis and leadership traits analysis approaches are used to analyze candidate Trump’s foreign policy beliefs and strategies associated with them. We use Profiler Plus software to conduct content analysis which produces OCA and LTA results. We use three separate datasets to analyze Trump’s beliefs and traits focusing on his general foreign policy speeches, the MENA region, and a third one only about Islamic State and Syria. Our results show that Trump’s profile indicates a foreign policy orientation that avoids involvement in affairs that are perceived as beyond immediate interests. The consistency between his beliefs and traits during the 2016 campaign and his actual foreign policy behavior leads us to conclude that individual level analysis, and specifically OCA and LTA approaches, are useful tools to analyze, explain and predict foreign policy.

Exploring public support for extraterritorial jurisdiction over natural resource extraction: Survey insights from the United States

Over the past two decades, a number of national policies have been implemented with the aim of holding companies accountable for their actions abroad. While previous studies have examined the political processes leading to the formulation of these policies, there remains a significant gap in our understanding of public support for such measures. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining the extent to which domestic audiences endorse the concept of extraterritorial jurisdiction concerning the conditions under which natural resources are extracted abroad. The analysis presented in this paper is grounded in a representative online survey conducted in the United States, encompassing a sample size of 660 respondents.Overall, the survey findings reveal widespread public endorsement for the notion that U.S. companies should be held answerable under domestic regulations for their activities conducted overseas. When presented with the specific case of conflict minerals and various policy options, approximately half of the respondents identified the governments of end markets as one of the top three responsible actors for addressing this issue. While individuals' political ideologies exhibited a certain degree of correlation with their likelihood of supporting these policies, the link with their broader foreign policy beliefs was stronger. Those individuals who espoused a more cosmopolitan outlook and exhibited less isolationist tendencies were found to be more inclined to support extraterritorial jurisdiction policies.In conclusion, the study's results underscore the fact that the promotion of policies designed to hold domestic companies accountable for their overseas actions enjoys substantial public backing, transcending partisan lines. Furthermore, these findings emphasize the significant role played by broader conceptions of a country's role in international affairs in shaping public opinion on this matter.

The Beliefs of the Blob

The conventional wisdom of US foreign policy has at its core a set of widely held yet underexamined beliefs. Together, these notions constitute the essence of what has become tendentiously known as “the blob,” or the official mind of US national security. Debates and analyses can proceed more productively if foreign policy beliefs, rather than the people who hold them, are moved to the center of analysis. The blob is a mindset, not a group of individuals—one that is based on a few basic assumptions about the world and the United States’ place in it. This article describes what those beliefs are and how they influence US foreign policy.

Lessons (to be) learned? Germany’s Zeitenwende and European security after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT In Germany, the Russian war on Ukraine is widely perceived as a “Zeitenwende,” a watershed moment undermining key foreign policy beliefs. Despite mounting evidence contradicting them, German elites previously failed to adapt core beliefs regarding Russia and the use of force because these beliefs were not only deeply embedded in largely uncontested identity constructions but also shaped the definition of economic interests, which in turn made ideational adaptation more costly. Moreover, Germany’s extraordinarily beneficial geopolitical situation in the post-Cold War era meant that the country could afford not to learn. Although the “Zeitenwende” will trigger significant change, it is unclear which lessons exactly Germans will now be learning and how far that adaptation will go. Given Germany’s key position in Europe and its previous role in shaping the European and transatlantic policy toward Russia, the results of these learning processes will significantly shape the emerging European security order.

U.S. Public Support for the U.S.-NATO Alliance

Abstract While previous research has thoroughly investigated the structure of Americans’ foreign policy beliefs, existing literature tells us far less about the determinants of public support for U.S. military alliances. In the following paper, we examine whether former President Donald Trump’s framing altered public support for the U.S.-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military alliance. First, using survey data from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, we show that support for NATO became polarized after 2016. Second, employing a survey experiment, we test two causal mechanisms that might explain these shifts: (1) a framing model positing that reframing the alliance to emphasize financial costs decreased public support and (2) a cue-taking model positing that opinion on NATO realigned to conform to (or reject) former President Trump’s stated positions. Our experimental results reveal that reframing the alliance decreased support for NATO while the presence of a partisan cue had little or no effect.

A Role Theory Approach to Grand Strategy: Horizontal Role Contestation and Consensus in the Case of China

AbstractThis paper develops a framework for examining the grand strategies of great powers through the use of the role contestation literature. We first identify national role conceptions advocated by leaders and political factions, and then compare them to detect contestation between their favored foreign policy roles. We argue that long-term consensus on certain roles may coalesce into the enduring ingredients of grand strategies, while the existence of a high amount of role contestation between leaders and political factions over roles may suggest foreign policy is guided by more temporary foreign policy beliefs. We explore this argument through an illustrative case of contemporary China. Our findings identify substantial variation between the national role conceptions of China's leaders and their factions over time. Of particular note, we find that (1) President Xi Jinping seems to be experiencing a much higher amount of role contestation within the party on more nationalistic and aggressive roles than his predecessors, and (2) certain roles, such as developer, Tianxia, regional leadership, and internal developer, are very consistent among both leaders and their factions over time such that these roles can be considered as part of China's grand strategy. This study shows how role theory might inform the analysis of grand strategy by offering a means of observing enduring features of grand strategy that could be applied more broadly to other countries.

Is There a Public–Military Gap in the United States? Evaluating Foundational Foreign Policy Beliefs

The presumed “gap” in fundamental foreign policy beliefs between what Huntington (1957) described as “liberal society” and the “conservative military mind” lies at the core of research on civil–military relations. However, we still know surprisingly little about the precise nature of differences between the two groups’ core foreign policy orientations. This study presents the first empirically grounded evaluation of the public–military gap. We deployed a unique survey to directly compare the views of 470 active-duty US military officers against a representative sample of the American public. Our study included beliefs concerning the appropriate role of military force and of US engagement in global affairs, the likely direction of US national security in the coming decade, and the causes and costs of future military conflicts. While we confirm aspects of Huntington’s dichotomy, we also observe critical differences between the two groups that diverge from the traditional conceptualization of a “civil–military gap.”

German Foreign Policy Rules for Action during the 2011 Libya Crisis

This article presents the conceptualization of fundamental foreign policy beliefs of 62 German decision-makers and experts from the executive branch, parliament, think tanks, media, and academia concerning the March 2011 un Security Council resolution on Libya. The actors’ perceptions were abductively inferred from qualitative interviews using the reconstructivist theoretical framework. Four types of respondents were identified: Realists, Normalizers, Traditionalists, and Pacifists. While they shared the general imperatives of military restraint, alliance solidarity, multilateralism, and upholding values, their specific partisan-ideological interpretation of the application of those rules for action in the case of Libya differed. Both Normalizers and Traditionalists perceived Germany’s UN vote abstention and non-participation in the NATO-led intervention as a break with German foreign policy and a costly mistake, whereas the Realists and Pacifists were in support of the German center-right coalition government’s policy of military restraint, although for very different reasons.

EXPLORING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FOREIGN POLICY IN MALAYSIA: DEFINITIONS, PREMIERSHIP AND FOREIGN POLICY DECISIONS

Academic discussion on the fundamentals of foreign policy often draws a debatable argument in International Relations research. Yet, the effort to unravel the core definition of foreign policy is limited and largely unobserved. Regardless of any foreign policy beliefs, understanding the fundamentals is crucial to make informed decisions related to international affairs. Therefore, this paper seeks to explore the fundamentals of foreign policy in twofold namely; (1) Working on outlining the definition of foreign policy and (2) Factors that influence foreign policy decisions. By employing secondary data, the systematic review was conducted based on past literature with respect to foreign policy studies and premiership; extracted from reputable databases. The literature search was limited to English sources, published in Scopus, ScienceDirect, and indexed in Google Scholar from 1960 to 2020. Accordingly, five factors emerged from the review which revealed the significant influence of individual, position, government, society, and system in formulating foreign policy decisions. These factors are considered as drivers in the foreign policy landscape and evidently shaped the Malaysian principles in collaborating with international cooperation. Finally, this paper provides insights into the existing literature with a detailed definition of foreign policy and narrates the way foreign policy decisions have effects on Malaysian political affairs. A set of recommendations were proposed as a brief agenda for future research.

Greater Goods: Morality and Attitudes toward the Use of Nuclear Weapons

Recent research into the public’s attitude toward the use of nuclear weapons repeats long-standing mistakes in how international relations theorists think about morality. Falsely equating consequentialism with state egoism and normative obligations with restrictions on the use of weapons of mass destruction implies that ethically motivated beliefs about foreign affairs must be other-regarding and that other-regarding behavior is not utilitarian in character. Drawing on empirical research into moral psychology, we argue that liberal, other-regarding morality is only one kind of ethical foundation. Alternative moral concerns such as retribution, deference to authority, and in-group loyalty also help to determine foreign policy beliefs. We find that all three are associated with support for the use of nuclear weapons in the American public. Our survey respondents act as moral utilitarians who weigh different ethical considerations in forming their judgments.

European populist radical right leaders’ foreign policy beliefs: An operational code analysis

Despite the significance of the subject, studies on the foreign policy preferences of European populist radical right leaders are scarce except for a handful of examples. Are European populist radical right leaders more hostile than other world leaders or comparatively friendly? Do they use cooperative or conflictual strategies to achieve their political goals? What are the leadership types associated with their strategic orientations in international relations? Using the operational code construct in this empirical study, we answer these questions and depict the foreign policy belief systems of seven European populist radical right leaders. We test whether they share a common pattern in their foreign policy beliefs and whether their foreign policy belief systems are significantly different from the norming group of average world leaders. The results indicate that European populist radical right leaders lack a common pattern in terms of their foreign policy belief systems. While the average scores of the analysed European populist radical right leaders suggest that they are more conflictual in their world views, results also show that they employ instrumental approaches relatively similar to the average group of world leaders. This article illuminates the microfoundations of strategic behaviour in international relations and arrives at conclusions about the role of European populist radical right leaders in mainstream International Relations discussions, such as idealism versus realism. In this sense, the cognitivist research school complements and advances structural accounts of international relations by analysing leadership in world affairs.

How Hawkish Is the Chinese Public? Another Look at “Rising Nationalism” and Chinese Foreign Policy

ABSTRACTChinese leaders often invoke the feelings of the Chinese people in international disputes. However, most survey research on Chinese public opinion on international affairs has looked at measures of nationalist identity rather than beliefs about foreign policy and evaluations of the government’s performance. Five surveys of Chinese citizens, netizens, and elites help illuminate the attitudes that the Chinese government grapples with in managing international security policy. The results suggest that Chinese attitudes are more hawkish than dovish and that younger Chinese, while perhaps not more nationalist in identity, may be more hawkish in their foreign policy beliefs than older generations. Netizens and elites are even more inclined to call on the Chinese government to invest in and rely more on military strength.

Understanding New Middle Eastern Leadership: An Operational Code Approach

Political Islam and Islamist organizations have broadly gained strength across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the post-Cold War era. Following the Arab uprisings, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), generally viewed as the world’s largest and most influential Islamist organization, has shaped the wider landscape of MENA politics. This study examines MB leadership by comparing M. Morsi of Egypt, R. Ghannouchi of Tunisia, and K. Meshaal of Gaza as examples of Islamist leaders to explain their political belief systems and predict their foreign-policy behavior. We use the operational code approach, a content-analysis software and statistical tests to conduct the study. Results show that the three leaders’ foreign policy beliefs are analogous to the averages of world leaders. Results also partially support the hypothesis that their foreign-policy propensities are similar to each other. We conclude that despite the conventional portrayal of MB leadership, these leaders use negotiation and cooperation to settle their differences in foreign affairs, and the best way to approach them is to engage in a Rousseauvian assurance game that emphasizes international social cooperation. Results also suggest important implications in terms of mainstream international relations theories.

Cues for Integration: Foreign Policy Beliefs and German Parliamentarians’ Support for European Integration

How do foreign policy beliefs affect German parliamentarians’ (MPs) support for European integration? Despite important advances, the literature has overlooked the effect of foreign policy beliefs on national representatives’ attitudes toward integration. This study provides a systematic investigation of the role foreign policy beliefs play in shaping German MPs’ support for European integration. I argue that given the complex and contentious character of European integration politics MPs derive heuristic cues from their foreign policy beliefs to form opinions on the desirability of integration. Using data from an original survey conducted with members of the seventeenth German Bundestag, I show that a belief in multilateralism increases support for European integration while isolationist and hawkish foreign policy orientations decrease support. These results indicate that support for European integration is not merely determined by party ideology, electoral pressure or economic considerations, but also has a psychological foundation shaped by politicians’ core beliefs about how the world of international politics operates.

The Origins and Consequences of US Nonintervention in Syria

The single most important external factor in the Syrian war's trajectory was the set of foreign policy beliefs Obama held well before the first shot was fired.

Taking Foreign Policy Personally: Personal Values and Foreign Policy Attitudes

Previous research shows that, when it comes to foreign policy, individuals have general orientations that inform their beliefs toward more specific issues in international relations. But such studies evade an even more important question: what gives rise to such foreign-policy orientations in the first place? Combining an original survey on a nationally representative sample of Americans with Schwartz's theory of values from political psychology, we show that people take foreign policy personally: the same basic values that people use to guide choices in their daily lives also travel to the domain of foreign affairs. Conservation values are most strongly linked to “militant internationalism,” a general hawkishness in international relations. The value of universalism is the most important value for predicting “cooperative internationalism,” the foreign-policy orientation marked by a preference for multilateralism and cosmopolitanism in international affairs. This relatively parsimonious and elegant system of values and foreign-policy beliefs is consistent across both high- and low-knowledge respondents, offering one potential explanation for why those people who are otherwise uninformed about world politics nonetheless express coherent foreign-policy beliefs.

Interpreting change: International challenges and variations in foreign policy beliefs as explanations for shifts in China’s policy towards the European Union

This article examines why and how China upgraded its engagement with the European Union (EU) in the years between 2001 and 2004, with reference to pre-existing foreign policy traditions and practices in reform-era China. It argues that most of the observed changes can be explained with reference to two dynamics. First, the changing international environment, mostly with regard to the roles of the United States and the EU, challenged the established approach to foreign policy inherited from Deng Xiaoping, China’s pre-eminent leadership figure from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. In this sense, the shift towards the EU was part of wider efforts to solve this dilemma. Second, differences in how various groups in the Chinese foreign policy establishment understood and implemented Deng’s guidelines and their respective influence in policy-making can help to grasp some of the more specific developments in Chinese policy towards the EU in the early 2000s. To supplement this main claim, the article also critically evaluates the changes less well explained by these two dynamics and proposes additional explanations.

Visual Literacy in International Relations: Teaching Critical Evaluative Skills through Fictional Television

This article explores how students experience fictional television as part of their broader learning experience. In particular, the article investigates the potential role of fictional television in the development of visual literacy and critical evaluative skills. The article reports the findings of an experiment into critical evaluative viewing, which measures the foreign policy beliefs of students after exposure to two contrasting episodes of NBC's The West Wing. The results indicate that students are influenced by fictional television, but in perhaps unexpected ways. Although nuanced, the findings suggest that students demonstrate and develop critical evaluative skills—and visual literacy—in two different ways. First, students oppose the fictional/political message to which they are exposed. And, second, students reject the options that are presented to them in their totality. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for teaching critical evaluative skills and visual literacy.

Foreign policy beliefs and support for Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party

Similar to other recent Canadian elections, foreign policy did not feature prominently in the 2011 federal election campaign. In fact, many doubt Canadian public opinion on international affairs is linked to the actions taken by recent Governments. In this paper, we examine Canadian public opinion toward a range of foreign policy issues and argue that the survey questions measure two latent dimensions —militarism and internationalism. Our survey evidence indicates the existence of an “issue public” which is prepared to endorse military action and is skeptical of human rights and overseas aid programs, and this group is far more supportive of Prime Minister Harper and the Conservative Party than other Canadians. The absence of an elite discussion, either among politicians or between media elites, about the direction of Canadian foreign policy does not prevent the Canadian voter from thinking coherently about questions pertaining to this issue domain and employing these beliefs to support or oppose political parties and their leaders.