2.

Power, capabilities and instruments

The international scene is made up of actors. Some resistance is going to be confronted while
‘having one on its way’, even powerful actors.

Strategic-relationship approach: Foreign policy is conducted by a relationship between the actor’s

own strategy and the context. This relationship was introduced to reject the theory that said that
political action could just be reduced to external constraints or interferences.

 Neither context or strategic approach can explain by itself (isolated) the success or miss of
a FP action to achieve an objective.
 Context are other actors and the set of relations that they entertain and the patterns they
have generated.
 The likelihood of achieving an objective is directed to the position in which the actor is
related to its environment.
 There is a constant interplay between actors and context.
 There is constant feedback between the actor and the environment and vice versa. Both
have to adapt to each other changes.

The ‘international’: it means different things to different actors depending on where they are
located and how they interpret the constraints and opportunities offered by context.

The international has at least 2 dimensions:

 Horizontal: It talks about proximity. It usually starts from close to far. Proximity doesn’t
always have to create political proximity, but ideas can create it (i.e. communism).Due to
technology and the power of ideas, FP has the potential to be global both in its causes and
its effects. For small countries it’s difficult to interfere the political arena in a global
perspective due to its limited means, so, it remains just an aspiration. Many countries use
international FP aspirations in order to create consensus and support in an internal level in
order to achieve either internal political goals by mobilizing ‘soft powers’.
o The perimeter of ‘international’ varies from actor to actor as their resources,
position in the context and the strategic value of those resources define its power.
o Hurrell: globalization has pushed forward regionalism in small countries and
powers.
 Vertical: economic, political (diplomacy), military, normative and cultural. The hierarchy of
those layers is not fixed and varies in weight during time. This variation in weight it tends
to be slow.
o Hoffman: differentiates between soft and hard politics (that varies from actor to
actor).
o Held & Archibugi: the political dimension can be split in 3:
  The domestic politics of states (specially big ones).
 The progressive formation of a ‘global public sphere’.
 A variety of actors (States and no states) interact in the layer of
international.
o The political dimension of the international has important areas of overlap with
the social and normative layer.
o The economic layer is the most pluralistic. Economic issues can be easily
politicized.
o Security problems are usually multifaceted and often derived by political,
economic or cultural conflicts. According to neorealist is the layer with bigger
weight in FP.

Balancing ‘inside’ and ‘outside’:

We cannot think that implementation cannot be exclusively directed from the outside, at the
contrary, implementation has a great internal component from a political point of view.
Implementation doesn’t only pursue goals with effective means but more generally the ability of
governments to extract and mobilize resources from their audiences, both material and
immaterial, and channel them into the pursuit of given objectives (mobilization from the inside
(society)). When internal consensus fails, implementation is going to be weaker or even be at risk.

 Putnam: Implementation always develops in a two level way: ‘domestic’ and

‘international’.
 In order to be successful, actors need to make a FP compatible with the context and at the
same time be supported internally.
 Sometimes FP objectives are pursued via domestic policies and vice versa (they have a
synergic relation).

The practical importance of context:

Some foreign policy is initiated at home, but many foreign policy positions are reactions to events
beyond borders. Implementation is on the one hand the issue of channels through which foreign
policy aims are translated into practice, on the other are the difficulties that states have in
operating what is literally a foreign and quite often highly intractable world and how they adapt
their behavior on the basis of the interaction with, and feedback from, the outside.

Great powers, small powers:

Implementation trap: A position in which decision makers get stuck that they come to regret but
cannot easily extract themselves from.

Sometimes countries tend to overreach themselves, what can create them more problems that
advantages. In the case of powers that tend to engage themselves in imperial commitments that
cannot sustain we name it ‘overstretch’. Successful implementation requires some flexibility in
order to accommodate ongoing feedback processes.

Multilateralism and the complexity of action:

Any foreign policy implementation will require cooperation from partners to be successfully
implemented. Geographical position is also important. Most implementation entails some or other
form of multilateralism. States take for granted the fact that success in foreign policy will require
mobilizing support. (Bilateral, multilateral and transgovernmental).

The instruments of foreign policy:

The wide variation in state capacities is a key determinant of what can even be attempted in the
outside world. Instruments are dependent on underlying capabilities. The available resources tend
to shape the decision maker policy choices in the first place.

 French school referred to basic forces of foreign policy to ‘resources’. Resources are not
unchangeable but change slowly (climate, position, population size, education…).
 Capabilities are resources made operational but not yet translated into specific
instruments (soft power). Capabilities should be seen more like an investment than a short
term pay-off.
 Instruments are the forms of pressure and influence available to decision makers. They are
an escalate in seriousness of actions.

Power and the ends:

All action implies the exercise of power to a greater or lesser extent. The rational model, that sets
that decision makers choose between those resources of power available according to how
aligned they are with their objective (they choose the most aligned) is rarely use it in reality.

Economic statecraft (Mastanduno):

Statecraft can be defined as the use of instruments at the disposal of central political authorities
to serve foreign policy purposes.

 It can be positive or negative. Unilateral or multilateral.

 Powerful states are more likely than weaker states to initiate economic statecraft as a key
foreign policy measure.
 Sanctions usually fail to achieve their expected outcome. Pape says that are not effective
measures. Baldwin says that it can serve multiple and varied objectives. Are difficult to
succeed because sanctioned countries can find help in other partners, usually create a
unifying sentiment among the population of a country, can have a huge internal
(economic) cost for the country that’s using it (rally round flag effect), it can affect
innocent victims and that can create bad image to the sanctioner. During recent years,
states using sanctions have developed ‘samart sanctions’, aka sanctions that are
quirurgical. Countries find it useful despite not being 100% effective because are the best
 option among the ones they have to achieve an objective, and despite not being effective,
usually help with other actions to achieve that objective (they give leverage).
 Sanctions tend to be more useful when objectives are modest, when the target is small
and weak and when the sender avoids high costs to itself.
o Financial sanctions: financial sector restrictions or restrictions to be helped by IMF
for example.
o Monetary sanctions: manipulating currency.
o Investment restrictions.
 Can be used to influence both internal or foreign policy policies. To undermine military or
economic power or to change a regime.
 Globalization makes the ‘rhodesian solution’ less viable, as countries become more
interconnected they become more vulnerable to economic sanctions.
 Positive statecraft:
o Tactical linkage: promises to economic concessions.
o Structural linkage: long term economic linkage in order to change the balance of
political interests in a country. Are not turned on and off, is unconditional.

3. Rational decision making

Rational accounts of foreign policy decision-making, see it as a linear process. At the base, is the
foundation of values of the society encapsulated in the foreign policy. These involve security
interests, or they might involve economic development, ideas of democracy, peace, those sorts of
things. These values themselves are reflected in a set of foreign policy goals, some long term,
some short term, which are articulated by foreign policymakers.
Sustained policies, that is to say, policies towards peace, security, economic development.
Sustained policies overtime are derived from these goals and they become eventually, abiding
interests. These abiding interests help define the particular tasks of the state in foreign policy. The
state's capabilities and the instruments available to it, that is to say, the military instrument,
diplomacy, propaganda, all of these things reflect the capacity of the state to mobilize its
resources in the service of these interests. Particular issues arise at a given time to bring foreign
policy action. They bring about the need for foreign policy action on the part of the state.

The specific targets are identified in pursuit of foreign policy action. This cycle of foreign policy
decision-making, therefore, moves from values to actual targeting and implementation and it's a
cycle that's repeated across the system by different states.

Foreign policy decision making:

Rationality is one of the most influential approaches to understanding contemporary decision
making in international politics.

It has an inability to accurately capture the FP process and it has some foundational problems.

It’s centered on the centrality of the mind of the decision maker.

It wants to maximize the utility of actors, aka it has to identify the goals and then identifies and
selects the means available which fulfill the goals at the lower costs. National interest is the
motivation.

Putnam: decision makers operate in two different environments, domestic and international (self-
help, anarchy). So they have to operate in two overlapping and potentially conflicting games
simultaneously.

Levy and Razin: it’s the flow of information what enables democratic decision makers to calculate
potential gains and losses to obtain an amicable solution to any dispute. (Democratic peace
theory)

Influence of individual perceptions, human cognition, leader’s personality and the dynamics of
group decision making limits rational decision making.

Snyder: Decision makers act within the framework of the information available to them and make
decisions on that limited basis.

Jervis: leaders make foreign policy based upon their perceptions. They are biased by their personal
perceptions and opinions.

Alexandre George: Leaders take decisions using ideas preset in their minds.
Axelrod: Policy makers tend to choice those actions that involve the fewest trade-offs and not the
optimal ones.

Holsti: FP cannot be usefully explained if we don’t take into account several levels of analysis and
not just the individual level.

Decision makers cannot achieve pure rationality. The act partially rational due to their lack of
information and other limitations.

Mintz: polyheuristic method: aims to 'defend' rational theory by assessing that the actor makes a
rational choice over the capabilities that it has once it identifies its goals and discards the ones
that cannot be fulfilled.