Connection of foreign policy analysis to international relations

Script for the podcast on Moodle

In this podcast, I will outline the 3 features that connects Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) to International Relations (IR). My analysis is limited in the sense that I will focus only on a handful of sources to help me make the connection. As such, I encourage you all to read widely to further develop your understanding of the connection between FPA and IR.

Categorization

We begin with the first feature, categorization. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, IR is a subfield of political science. Political science is “the systematic study of governance by the application of empirical and generally scientific methods of analysis. As traditionally defined and studied, political science examines the state and its organs and institutions.”

In addition, Encyclopedia Britannica explains that: “International relations considers the political relationships and interactions between countries, including the causes of war, the formation of foreign policy, international political economy, and the structures that increase or decrease the policy options available to governments.”

Various scholars categorize FPA as a subfield of IR. Breuning (2007) states that foreign policy is a specialization within the field of IR. He said (p. 16); “The goal of foreign policy analysis is to gain generally applicable knowledge about how foreign policy decisions are made; why leaders make the decisions they make, why states engage in specific kinds of foreign policy behaviors, as well as to assess the opportunities and constraints presented by the international system.”

Encyclopedia Britannica divides IR into 2 principle perspectives. The foreign-policy perspective differs from the international-system-analysis perspective. This helps us to understand the connection between FPA and IR.

Encyclopedia Britannica explains that: “The foreign-policy perspective includes theories about the behavior of individual states or categories of states such as democracies or totalitarian dictatorships. It also includes studies of the traits, structures, or processes within a national society or polity that determine or influence how that society or polity participates in international relations. One such study, known as the decision-making approach, analyzes the information that decision makers use, their perceptions and motivations, the influence on their behaviour of public opinion, the organizational settings in which they operate, and their intellectual, cultural, and societal backgrounds. Studies that analyze the relations between the wealth, power, or technological level of a state and its international status and role provide other illustrations of the foreign-policy perspective.”

Behaviourism

Secondly, another significant development in the study of political science and international relations is the emergence of behaviourism. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, classical behaviourism is “concerned exclusively with measurable and observable data and excluded ideas, emotions, and the consideration of inner mental experience and activity in general.”

According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “International relations scholarship prior to World War I was conducted primarily in two loosely organized branches of learning: diplomatic history and international law. Involving meticulous archival and other primary-source research, diplomatic history emphasized the uniqueness of international events and the methods of diplomacy as it was actually conducted. International law—especially the law of war—had a long history in international relations and was viewed as the source of fundamental normative standards of international conduct. The emergence of international relations was to broaden the scope of international law beyond this traditional focal point.”

The curiosity about the causes of war led researchers from the different social science fields and mathematics to develop a new method of study known as behaviourism. This meant that apart from using qualitative methods to study IR, researchers began using quantitative methods.

Schrodt (1993) in his research on events data said, “The objective of the behavioralists was to study political behavior using systematically measured variables, statistical techniques, and unambiguously stated hypotheses.”

Moreover, Schrodt (1993) said traditional studies of foreign policy primarily used narrative sources such as documents, histories, and memoirs. There was no way to analyze all these information in a statistical framework. The advent of events data changed the research landscape; researchers began to examine newspaper reports and coded them in a systematic way in order to support research assumptions or hypotheses.

I find this example given by Schrodt (1993) helpful in understanding events data: “For example, if two countries sign a trade agreement, that interaction might be assigned a numerical score of +5, whereas if the two countries broke off diplomatic relations, that would be assigned a numerical score of -8. When these reports are averaged over time, they provide a rough indication of the level of cooperation and conflict between the two states.”

Ground

Hudson (2013) talks about the fact that every theoretical discipline has a ground. She states that for economists their study is based on the ground of firms or households. While for physics, it is matter and antimatter particles.

So far, we have looked at the different IR theories. All to a certain degree have assumed that the ground of IR is state and non-state actors. States are unitary rational actors who interact with each other in the international system and are driven by their national interest.

Hudson challenges that assumption by claiming that humans are the ground of IR. Human beings as agents acting singly or in groups give the idea of state meaning. She said; "Understanding how humans perceive and react to the world around them, and how humans shape and are shaped by the world around them, is central to the inquiry of social scientists, even those in IR."

The distinction between classical realism and neorealism also points out the connection. Elman states that neorealism excludes the internal makeup of different states, while classical realism relies on the assumption that leaders of states are motivated by their lust for power.

Waltz disregards the motivations of leaders and state characteristics as casual variables for international outcomes.  He argues that; "state behavior can be a product of the competition among states, either because they calculate how to act to their best advantage or because those that do not exhibit such behavior are selected out of the system. Alternatively, states’ behavior can be a product of socialization: states can decide to follow norms because they calculate it to their advantage or because the norms become internalized."

Classical realism along with neoclassical realism share similar assumptions. Elman (2007) states that; "neoclassical realism suggests that what states do depends in large part on domestically derived preferences."  The behaviour of states is influenced by domestic structures, institutions and most importantly, agents like political leaders.

Thus, I want to argue that the ground issue connects FPA and IR. Hudson (2013) does have a point that we cannot study IR without understanding the key agents who make decisions, which influence the actions of the state and non-state actors.

Conclusion

I believe it is necessary for us to make the connection so we relate back to what we have learnt in previous semesters and develop our understanding of FPA. I have identified 3 features which I think connects FPA to IR. These 3 features are:

1. Categorization – FPA is a subfield of IR
2. Behaviourism – Change in political science and IR research approach also influenced change in FPA research approach     
3. Ground - Human decision makers influence the behavior of state and non-state actors so they should be the ground of IR

Reference
Breuning, M. (2007). Foreign Policy Analysis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Elman, C. (2007). Realism. In M. Griffiths (Ed.), International relations theory for the twenty-first  century (pp. 11-20). New York: Routledge.
Hudson, V. M. (2013). Foreign policy analysis : classic and contemporary theory. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com