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Foreign policy models and the problem of dynamism*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2009
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THE study of foreign policy has, until recently, lacked conceptual clarity. This has been primarily the result of the failure to delineate the boundaries of Foreign Policy as a concept. Consequently, many professed studies of foreign policy have, in fact, been concerned with surveying the bilateral or multilateral relations of one state with other states in the international system. However, in the last two decades there has been an increasing tendency towards more precise and orderly methods for analysing foreign policy in its theoretical and operational dimensions. This has led to a proliferation of theory-oriented studies concerned mainly with explaining foreign policy behaviour.
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- Copyright © British International Studies Association 1976
References
page 128 note 1. For example, Snyder, Richard, Bruck, H. W. and Sapin, Burton, Foreign Policy Decision Making: An Approach to the Study of International Politics (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Macridis, Roy C. (ed.), Foreign Policy in World Politics (New Jersey, 1962);Google ScholarRosenau, James (ed.), International Politics and Foreign Policy (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Farrel, Barry R. (ed.), Approaches to Comparative and International Politics (Evanston, 1966);Google ScholarFrankel, Joseph, The Making of Foreign Policy: An Analysis of Decision-Making (London, 1963).Google Scholar
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page 129 note 3. This is also a major criticism of the more recent and widely used models which view foreign policy as a function of bureaucratic competitions and routine organizational procedures. Within the terms of these models, external variables rarely form critical determinants of foreign policy behaviour. Rather, “explanation focuses primarily on processes internal to each nation. [Indeed] threats to interests from rival organisations, or competing political groups, are far more real than threats from abroad”. Allison, G. T. and Halperin, M. H., ‘Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications’, World Politics, xxiv (1972), pp. 57–58.Google Scholar
page 129 note 4. The term ‘model’ denotes an analytical framework for simplifying and ordering complex reality, and as such the term can be used interchangeably with ‘conceptual framework’ or ‘conceptual scheme’. Models have no theoretical pretentions; they “are merely intellectual tools by which we order and codify that which would otherwise remain a buzzing welter”. David Singer, J., “The Incomplete Theorist: Insight without Evidence”, in Knorr, Klaus and Rosenau, James N. (ed.), Contending approaches to International Politics (Princeton, New Jersey, 1969), p. 76Google Scholar.
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page 130 note 3. Ibid. p. 78.
page 130 note 4. In Farrell, op. cit. pp. 27–92.
page 130 note 5. Brecher et. al., op. clt. p. 79.
page 131 note 1. Ibid. p. 79.
page 131 note 2. Ibid.
page 131 note 3. Ibid. p. 80.
page 131 note 4. By System dynamism I mean the system's capacity to constantly adapt itself to external stimuli over a period of time. The process of adaptation refers to the changes in the structure and function of the components of the system which may occur as a result of the feedback effects.
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page 135 note 1. For a fuller account, see my Egypt in the Arab World; The Elements of Foreign Policy (London, 1976)Google Scholar.
page 135 note 2. British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts, Part IV: The Arab World, Israel, Greece, Turkey, Iran: 15 Aug. 1961, ME/176/A/9.
page 135 note 3. Egyptian Gazette, (Cairo), 29 Jan. 1958.
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