South African Foreign Policy Research Articles

African Foreign Policies: Power and Process

Foreign Policy Making in Africa: An Introduction - the Editors. Foreign Policy Decisionmaking in Anglophone West Africa - C.A. Adibe. New Directions in Francophone West African Foreign Policies - P.J. Schraeder. Foreign Policy Making in Central Africa: The Imperative of Regime Security in a New Context - J.F. Clark. Foreign Policy Making in the Great Lakes Region - R. Lemarchand. The Foreign Policy of the Horn: The Clash Between the Old and the New - R. Iyob. Foreign Policy Decisionmaking in Southern Africa's Fading Frontline - G.M. Khadiagala. South African Foreign Policy Decisionmaking in the African Context - D. Venter. External Relations of Weak States and Stateless Regions in Africa - W. Reno. Conclusion: African Foreign Policymaking at the Millennium - the Editors.

Migration after apartheid: Deracialising South African foreign policy

Some critics have pointed to South Africa's restrictive migration policy as one of the areas most deficient in overturning apartheid legacies. Yet it is not a lack of democratic process that forestalls change-witness open parliamentary debate, an array of think-tanks and researchers providing input into the policy-making process, and the mobilisation of diverse grassroots voices. Rather, a new non-racial xenophobia creates a potent barrier to reform. Therefore, advocates of migrants' rights and opponents of violence should utilise regional and international points of leverage to their fullest potential if postapartheid South Africa is to fulfill its democratic promise.

South African foreign policy: Getting critical?

This article examines the theory and practice of the ‘new’ South Africa’s foreign policy by drawing on the emerging Critical Security Studies (CSS) literature. It explores how the African National Congress has attempted to achieve its foreign policy objectives of wealth creation and security in an era of accelerating globalisation, how analysts have thought about this process, and the extent to which a CSS perspective can contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the difficulties involved in such processes. The final section discusses a number of salient foreign policy issues in relation to the domestic context, the Southern African region, the African continent, and the world beyond Africa.

Issues in South African foreign policy: The African renaissance

Issues in South African foreign policy: The African renaissance

South African foreign policy: Setting new goals and strategies

South African foreign policy: Setting new goals and strategies

The Multiple Faces of South African Foreign Policy

THE 'NEW' SOUTH AFRICA PROVIDES AN INTERESTING CASE STUDY of the interaction between international and domestic politics. What Robert Putnam describes as the 'puzzling tangles'(f.1) between external and domestic factors seem especially salient here because of the transformational component in South Africa. Externally, the end of the apartheid regime has widened the range of available options. The challenge is to gauge more precisely the nature of choice in terms of both a significant recalibration of international affairs and a fundamental redefinition of domestic needs and interests. Since its election in May 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) has been pre-occupied with economic and social reconstruction, which it has pursued with a high degree of sensitivity to the constraints imposed by the global system. Internally, reforms have been shaped to fit with many of the orthodoxies set by the external environment, often when these are at odds with proposals put forward during ANC's long period of liberation struggle. Only through an appreciation of the mix of competing international and domestic pressures may the complexity of South African foreign policy be appreciated. Far from combining to produce inertia, these sharp tensions provide South African foreign policy with multiple faces. Although they often diverge, each serves as a key explanation and point of navigation not only for descriptive but also for conceptual exploration.Examining South African in a diffuse fashion allows a break from the rigidity of the traditionally dominant interpretations of its foreign policy. The long shadow of structural realism still hangs over much of the discussion,(f.2) but it presents a disembodied portrait of foreign policy in which international conditions are privileged at the expense of domestic factors. Moreover, the search for national economic well-being remains overshadowed by the traditional search for security within the international system. Amidst all of the dramatic evidence of change, little or no attempt has been made to direct attention to the study of the location (or re-location) of South Africa in the international political economy. This is not to suggest that the domestic determinants of international behaviour have been completely neglected in the scholarship. Nonetheless, the use of this dualistic lens in the treatment of South African foreign policy has been restricted for the most part to the paradigm of bureaucratic politics and the 'management' of foreign policy.(f.3) Larger questions about the evolution of state-societal relationships or the configuration of domestic political and economic institutions still get short shrift.(f.4)This article is intended not so much as an extended critique of the literature(f.5) as a way in which some of the puzzling tangles between the international and the domestic can be teased out and made more coherent. To capture the essence of the multiple faces of South African foreign policy, I have applied a framework of foreign policy behaviour developed by Michael Mastanduno, David Lake, and John Ikenberry which centres on a matrix of state action based on the interconnection and overlap between international and domestic strategies and goals.(f.6) While its high degree of state-centrism may cut into its ability to incorporate divergent interpretations of the rising influence of civil society, it has considerable merit for capturing the range of South African experience in a parsimonious fashion.At the domestic level, maintaining legitimacy is accorded considerable weight in the Mastanduno, Lake, and Ikenberry framework. The more legitimacy a state possesses, so the argument goes, the more flexibility and/or room for manoeuver it has in other strategies and preferences. In building legitimacy at the domestic level, much effort is directed through the political process. At the same time, this approach is an important signaling device at the international level, where a primary goal is to mark the state's changing (and enhanced) position as a member of the global community. …

South Africa's emergence as a middle power

This article seeks to explain South Africa's ostensible emergence as a middle power. It makes the case for the use of a Coxian-based critical theory perspective, which relates the interrelationship between change at the level of world order, the nature of production and the social forces operative in the middle power's state-societal complex to explain South Africa's increasingly active role in international affairs. Playing a mediatory role helps the South African state make diverse foreign policy goals more compatible and it also goes some way in thwarting criticism levelled at its foreign policy in the state-societal domain. Contrary to earlier theorising about middle powers, this article supports a more recent contention that middle powers act in their own (ie dominant societal) interests. The value of such a perspective is illustrated in the light of current debates about the apparent incongruity of South African foreign policy.

The Multiple Faces of South African Foreign Policy

The Multiple Faces of South African Foreign Policy

Developing a strategic perspective on South African foreign policy

Developing a strategic perspective on South African foreign policy

South African foreign policy discussion document, Department of foreign affairs July 1996

South African foreign policy discussion document, Department of foreign affairs July 1996

Can the Giant be gentle? Peacemaking as South African foreign policy

ABSTRACT This article presents the case for South Africa assuming the role of peacemaker to (i) promote South Africa's symbolic significance and (ii) sustain its relative international prominence. It is argued that at least until 1999 internal and external conditions would be conducive toward South Africa convincingly assuming such a role since, as regional hegemon, it possesses the necessary “hard”, but also potentially significant “soft” power to contribute toward regional peace and security. In support of this argument, the article explores a variety of intervention measures South Africa could apply – particularly, but not exclusively, in regard to conflicts arising in Southern Africa – with due regard to objections of an over‐extension of foreign policy commitments.

South Africa, the South Atlantic and the international politics of Antarctica

Abstract Existing analyses of South African foreign policy have neglected the geopolitical and legal dimensions of the Antarctic and South Atlantic. Emphasis will be placed on three aspects ‐ South Africa and the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS); the ongoing debates about a South Atlantic security pact in the 1960s and 1970s and the international condemnation of South Africa by the Developing World in the 1980s. The article concludes with a examination of future prospects for the only African country involved in the polar continent.

South African foreign policy in the new era: Priorities in Africa and the Indian ocean islands

Abstract The inauguration of President Mandela marked a new era in South Africa's foreign policy. The question is posed whether South Africa will set out to be a regional superpower or turn its back on the continent. An alternative to either is that South Africa will assume a leadership role, in particular making substantial contributions to conflict prevention and resolution in the region and further afield.

South African foreign policy assumptions and objectives from Hertzog to De Klerk

South African foreign policy assumptions and objectives from Hertzog to De Klerk

Constitution-Making in the New South Africa

Introduction: South Africa since February 1990, Alexander Johnston. Part 1 The new constitution: federalism and the new constitution, Douglas Irvine an electoral system for the new South Africa, Bertus de Villiers constitutional negotiations, the role of mediator in South Africa, Gavin Bradshaw local negotiations, corporation and political symbolism, Doreen Atkinson. Part 2 Political culture, political economy and foreign policy in a post-apartheid South Africa: the ANC as a mass political organization, Yunas Carrim the Soweto Accord - an evaluation of a precedent, Khehla Shubane political economy of post-apartheid South Africa, Alf Stadler economic restructuring in post-apartheid South Africa, Ronnie Bethleham current constraints of South African foreign policy and diplomacy, John Barratt the ANC's foreign policy, Alexander Johnston and Sipho Stezi foreign policy of a post-apartheid South Africa, Peter Vale. Part 3 Constitutional comparisons: partition, accommodation and assimilation - minorities and national constitutions, Alexander Johnston Namibia - the making of a new state in the region, Andre du Pisani conclusion - experiencing South Africa in the 21st century, Christopher Coker.

Myths and realities in South Africa's future foreign policy

It is tempting to hope that once a democratic state is in place, South Africa can return to the fold of civilized nations and start afresh. But even if the past can be forgiven and forgotten, a fresh start cannot be made in foreign policy unless other groups besides the dominant whites are brought into policy-making now. There is as yet no sign of this, nor of the government redefining its international and regional roles in the light of changed international environments. Graham Evans looks ahead to some of the longer-term issues in South African foreign policy.

The Diplomacy of the Veld: Charles Te Water and the 'Organic Approach' To South African Foreign Policy

The Diplomacy of the Veld: Charles Te Water and the 'Organic Approach' To South African Foreign Policy

The Defence of White Power: South African foreign policy under pressure by Robert Scott Jaster London, Macmillan, with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1988. Pp. xvii + 204. £29.50.

The Defence of White Power: South African foreign policy under pressure by Robert Scott Jaster London, Macmillan, with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1988. Pp. xvii + 204. £29.50. - Volume 27 Issue 4

The Defence of White Power: South African Foreign Policy under Pressure, by Robert Scott Jaster

The Defence of White Power: South African Foreign Policy under Pressure, <i>by Robert Scott Jaster</i>

The defence of white power: South African foreign policy under pressure and The battlefronts of southern Africa

Journal Article The defence of white power: South African foreign policy under pressure and The battlefronts of southern Africa Get access The defence of white power: South African foreign policy under pressure. By Robert Scott Jaster. London: Macmillan for International Institute for Strategic Studies. 1988. 204pp. Index. £29.50. ISBN 0 333 45455 3.The battlefronts of southern Africa. By Colin Legum. New York, London: Africana. 1988. 451pp. Index. ISBN 0 8419 1144 4. James Barber James Barber 1University of Durham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 65, Issue 3, Summer 1989, Pages 579–580, https://doi.org/10.2307/2621801 Published: 01 July 1989