The Complex Process of Foreign Policy Decision Making
SET4 A) The Foreign Policy Process
The foreign policy process is a process of decision-making. States take actions because people in governments (decision-makers) choose those actions. Decision-making is a steering process in which adjustments are made as a result of feedback from the outside world. Decisions are carried out by the actions taken to change the world, and then information from the world is monitored to evaluate the effects of actions. These evaluations, along with information about other independent changes in the environment, then go into the next round of decisions.
A common starting point for studying the decision-making process is the rational model. In this model, decision-makers:
- Clarify goals in the situation.
- Order them by importance (in case of conflicting goals).
- List alternatives available to achieve the goals.
- Investigate consequences of those alternatives.
- Choose the course of action that will produce the best outcomes in terms of reaching one’s goals.
Example: The Case of Saddam Hussein
The hanging of Saddam Hussein ended the life of one of the most brutal tyrants in recent history and negated the fiction that he himself maintained even as the gallows loomed — that he remained president of Iraq despite being toppled by the United States military and that his power and his palaces would be restored to him in time. The despot, known as Saddam, had oppressed Iraq for more than 30 years, unleashing devastating regional wars and reducing his once-promising, oil-rich nation to a claustrophobic police state.
For decades, it had seemed that his unflinching hold on Iraq would endure, particularly after he lasted through disastrous military adventures against first Iran and then Kuwait, where an American-led coalition routed his unexpectedly timid military in 1991.
His own conviction that he was destined by God to rule Iraq forever was such that he refused to accept that he would be overthrown in April 2003, even as American tanks penetrated the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in a war that has become a bitterly contentious, bloody occupation.
After eluding capture for eight months, Mr. Hussein became the American military’s High-Value Detainee No. 1. But he heaped scorn on the Iraqi judge who referred to him as the “former” president after asking him to identify himself on the first day of his trial for crimes against humanity, which ultimately led to his execution.
SET4 B) The Influence of Bureaucracy
Foreign policy is shaped not only by the internal dynamics of individuals and group decision-making but also by the states and societies within which decision-makers operate.
The sub-state actors closest to the foreign policy process are the state’s bureaucratic agencies maintained for developing and carrying out foreign policy. Different states maintain different foreign policy bureaucracies but share common elements.
Tensions are common between state leaders and foreign policy bureaucrats. Career diplomats try to orient new leaders and their appointees and to control the flow of information they receive. Politicians, for their part, struggle to exercise power over formal bureaucratic agencies because the latter can be too cumbersome and conservative to control easily. Also, these agencies are staffed at lower levels with career officials who may not owe any loyalty to political leaders.
There is a saying that where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit. Bureaucratic rivalry as an influence on foreign policy challenges the notion of states as unitary actors in the international system.
Such rivalry suggests that a state does not have a single set of goals and objectives or a national interest but that its actions may result from sub-acts, each with its own separate objective. Sub-states, on their part, have their own bureaucracies, which they seek to advance by influencing foreign policy.
SET4 C) The Impact of Government Type
The differences in the foreign policy processes from one state to another are more influenced by a state’s type of government than by the particular constellation of bureaucracies, interest groups, or individuals within it. Government types include military dictatorship, communist party rule, one-party rule (non-communist), and various forms of multiparty democracies. Relatively, democratic states tend to share values and interests and therefore tend to get along better with each other than non-democracies.
Most states lie around a spectrum of a mix of democratic and authoritarian elements.
The Democratic Peace Theory
Two centuries ago, philosopher Kant argued that lasting peace would depend upon states becoming republics with legislatures to check the power of monarchs to make war. He thought that checks and balances in government would act as a brake on the use of military force.
IR scholars have from time to time stated that democracy is linked with a kind of foreign policy fundamentally different from that of authoritarianism. Democracies are more peaceful in that they fight fewer and smaller wars. What is true about democracies is that although they fight wars with authoritarian states, democracies almost never fight each other. This is called democratic peace. Democracies do not tend to have severe conflicts with each other since they are capitalist states whose trade relations create strong interdependence, and war could be a costly cause and consequence in the disruption of trade relationships. Democracy has become more and more widespread over time as a form of government, and this trend is changing the nature of the foreign policy process worldwide.
Challenges and the Future of Democracy
Many states do not yet have democratic governments, China, for example. And existing democracies are imperfect in various ways, from political apathy in the US and corruption in Japan to the autocratic traditions of Russia. New democracies have emerged, and military governments have been replaced with democratically elected civilian ones throughout most of Latin America as well as several African and Asian countries.
Conclusion: The Complexity of Foreign Policy
Foreign policy is a complex outcome coming out of a complex process. It results from the struggle of competing themes, competing domestic interests, and competing government agencies. No single individual, agency, or guiding principle determines the outcome. Yet, foreign policy does achieve coherence. States do form foreign policies on an issue or towards a region, and it is not just an incoherent collection of decisions and actions taken from time to time. Out of the turbulent internal processes of foreign policy formulation come relatively coherent interests and policies that states pursue.