ABSTRACT
Change is a neglected aspect of the study of foreign policy. Similar to the field of IR, which famously was not able to account for the rapid events that precipitated the ending of the CW in 1989, FPA tells us little about the sources and conditions that give rise to significant alteration to state foreign policy. This shortcoming is highlighted by Charles Hermann in his call for a greater integration of ‘change and dynamics in theories of foreign policy’,1 and despite a few theoretical developments since then, this statement, by and large, still holds. This failure to incorporate change into FPA is important and, amongst other things, undermines the disciplinary claims that FPA enables deeper interpretation of international politics through its focus on the foreign policy process. The relatively static depiction of foreign policy in much FPA in part
is a reflection of the field’s primary concern for decision making as process. The state and its foreign policy institutions are seen by academics essentially as given and timeless, subject to no more than incremental change. The only areas of FPA scholarship that, at least notionally, recognize that these conditions do not always hold are those concerned with the impact of crisis conditions on foreign policy decision making. These works tend to assume (notwithstanding US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s comments that all foreign policy is crisis management), however, that with the reversion to ‘normalcy’, established procedures and their concomitant structures reassert their places in the foreign policy process.2 In related fields, such as political science and international political economy, which address aspects of foreign policy change, foreign policy is not necessarily seen by those outside IR as being tied to FPA while FPA practitioners are not aware of the work on foreign policy change outside their narrow
of the process of change and its impact on foreign policy. There have been several definitions proposed for the notion
of change in relation to foreign policy. In general, foreign policy change comprises two main types of change: tactical and strategic. Tactical change in state foreign policy – what Hermann describes as adjustment and programme change – constitutes shifts within the established framework of policies that focus mostly on methods and instruments. Strategic change – described by Hermann as problem/goal and international orientation – involves more fundamental shifts in foreign policy based on a re-examination of foreign policy goals and the state’s position in the international system.3 Examination of the place of change in foreign policy can be achieved by analysing the change and its impact at the levels of the individual, of state institutions and of the political regime, which shed light on different aspects of the process. The role of agency, usually embodied in an individual actor, is a common thread in all these accounts. At the same time, these approaches have some limitations that call for consideration of constructivism as a source for understanding the meaning and process of foreign policy change.
