Theories of Foreign Policy: An Historical Overview
Author(s): Steve Smith
Source: Review of International Studies , Jan., 1986, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), pp. 1329
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20097063
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Review of International Studies (1986), 12, 13-29 Printed in Great Britain
Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview*
Steve Smith
Although it is natural to consider the development of the comparative approach
known as Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) as the most obvious source of theories of
foreign policy behaviour, it is important to remember that all perspectives on the
subject of international relations contain statements about foreign policy. Historic
ally this has been the case because virtually all approaches to the study of inter
national relations took the state to be the central actor. Thus, approaches as diverse
as those concentrating on political economy, international society and Marxism have
all included a notion of what the state is and how its foreign policy results, regardless
of the way in which policy might be defined. Theories of foreign policy are therefore
intrinsic to theories of international relations, even for those who deny the centrality
of the state as an actor in international society.
What has happened in the last decade or so is that the traditional notion of the state
as being the fundamental unit of international society has come under attack. The
state-centric perspective is argued to be outdated as new actors have come on the
scene and as new forces, predominantly economic, have altered the nature of inter
national relations by entangling states in a network of interdependencies. This
position is to be contrasted with that of those who worked in the 1960s in the area of
FPA, certainly as practised in the USA. The latter believed that there was some kind
of progressive quality to their work, which would lead ultimately to a general theory
of foreign policy behaviour. For many, however, FPA as a subject-area was always
problematic?since it was neither social scientific in the way claimed to be the case in
the systems analysis of international relations, nor historical in the sense of using
evidence and hindsight to make sense of, and give coherence to, the perceptions of
those who had made foreign policy decisions. By the late 1970s these concerns seemed
to be all too well supported by both the empirical enquiries that led many in inter
national relations to proclaim the obsolescence of state-centric theory and by the
theoretical impasse that FPA had apparently reached. At this juncture, then, it is
very appropriate to attempt an overview of where we have reached in the study of
foreign policy: to see if FPA was always a blind alley; to see if the contemporary
international system militates against a focus on foreign policies; and to see to what
extent FPA, as a distinct (if eclectic) approach to the study of foreign policy, has
anything to offer other than footnotes to grand theories of international relations or
historical case studies. In short, is FPA a discredited pseudo-science?
* This paper was presented at the 1984 annual conference of BISA, held at Durham; I would like to thank
Charles Reynolds and Geoff Berridge for their helpful comments at that conference. I am also grateful to
the two anonymous referees of the journal and to Christopher Hill, Mike Nicholson and Brian White for
their comments.
0260-2105/86/01/0013-17/$03.00 ? 1986 Review of International Studies
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14
Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview
Traditional approaches
Before examining the decline of FPA as an approach to the study of foreign policy it
is important to clarify how foreign policy was explained by the major theories of
international relations before the sub-field of FPA opened up. This development is
normally associated with the first publication of the Snyder, Br?ck and Sapin
framework in 1954.l Of course, such precision over the formation of the sub-field is a
little misleading, but it is nevertheless quite clear that this one framework, more than
anything before, brought the FPA approach into existence. This approach attempts
to understand foreign policy by treating states as members of a class of phenomena
and seeks to generalize about the sources, and nature, of their behaviour, focusing on
the decision-making process in its varying aspects in order to produce explanations.
This at first sight seems applicable to all theories of the foreign policies of states, but
it is not. Of the three main identifiable ways of thinking about international relations
outside of the behavioural perspective (idealism, realism and the international society
approach),2 none takes as its focus of enquiry the decision-making process. Each has
a more parsimonious explanation of international events, one that sees decision
making as more determined than determining. In all three general perspectives the
critical determinants of foreign policy are to be found in the nature of the inter
national political system. The structural condition of 'anarchy', however mediated
by conventions, laws and morality, is generally the starting point for enquiry. In both
idealism and realism a powerful notion of human nature pervades the analysis. On
the one side it was what a differently constructed international system might let
flourish; on the other it was a constraint that must be managed. Idealist thinkers,
inspired by a liberal conception of human nature and conflict, searched for
mechanisms to be built into international society which would prevent it generating
any more war and for ways of building democracy, since this was believed to be peace
enhancing. Without these mechanisms international relations would be marked by
the recurrence of war, due either to misperception or to the existence of 'sinister'
interests in unreformed societies. For idealists, then, foreign policy was to be
explained through an understanding of what human beings could become and why
existing structures, both domestic and international, stood in the way. The study of
international relations was intrinsically related to the task of improving international
relations. One did not need to focus on how policy was made to understand how this
overriding feature led to that which we might observe in the way of foreign policy
behaviour, nor how that behaviour could be transformed.
The decline of idealist thought was accompanied by the rise of the dominant theory
of international relations in the subject's history, realism. Much has been written
about Morgenthau's work, and, of course, it is misleading to suggest that he was the
only major 'founding-father' of realism, but the subtlety of his approach has led
many to see it as the most coherent and consistent theory of international relations.
Indeed, ten or twenty years ago it was fashionable to write-off Morgenthau as in
some important way pass?. What is surprising is just how many of the critiques of his
work end up imputing to him things that he did not say, and simplifying what he did
say almost beyond recognition. It is therefore less surprising to note that Politics
Among Nations3 is still one of the most widely-cited texts in the subject, a book to be
dismissed at quite a cost. Morgenthau has a very explicit view of why states behave as
they do and this relates to his a priori conception of human nature on the one hand,
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Steve Smith
and to his belief in the structural determinance of the international system on the
other. He claims that the inherent and immutable self-interested nature of human
beings, when faced with a structure of international anarchy, results in states
maximizing one thing, power. Although he is at pains to point out that this concept of
power is not to be imbued with one fixed meaning, and, for example, he explicitly
discusses economic dimensions of power, he does believe that the association of
power with the concept of national interest can provide a universal explanation of
why states act as they do. In his classification of the main types of foreign policies
into categories of status quo, imperialist and prestige,4 he essentially imposes onto
foreign policy behaviour a systemic rationale. That is, he finds the sources of foreign
policy in the situation of the state in the international system, with the overriding
mechanism of the balance of power constituting the fundamental explanation of the
behaviour of the units. That this allows him to develop a coherent explanation does
not detract from the problems of his view of the causes of foreign policy.
There are three main deficiencies: first there is the common accusation that his key
concepts?power, balance of power and national interest?are incapable of objective
definition. To accept that these are subjective negates Morgenthau's claim to
objectivity which is central to his argument.5 Once subjectivity enters into the
definitions his epistemology collapses, for this is not an account of what decision
makers think they are doing, it is an account of what we think we know they are
doing. Second, one searches in vain through Politics Among Nations for any linkage
between the domestic polity and the international system. His discussions of
domestic factors concentrate on the resources of national power and on the
justificatory role of ideology, not on any domestic input to foreign policy. A third
and related problem is that his notion of what human nature objectively is admits of
no variation; yet he does argue that foreign policy takes different forms. Specifically,
he provides no way of moving from a 'knowledge* of what we are to an explanation
of why some states behave in certain ways in contrast to others. Why are some states
expansionist and others not? His answer appears to be that it is all to do with whether
they are content with the existing distribution of power. Notwithstanding his lengthy
discussion of the sources of imperialism,6 his explanations of why some states are
imperialist are structural ones, and they rely axiomatically on some objective
universal notion of power. In summary, Morgenthau's 'theory' of international
relations does indeed have much to say on the question of why states do what they do,
but the ultimately determining role of international structure fails to carry the burden
imposed on it once the objective nature of its driving force, power, is questioned.
Whilst the claim that his theory treats states as billiard-balls is indeed an over
simplification, it nevertheless captures the underlying assumption of his approach:
states are driven to behave in certain ways by the structure of the system and not by
the domestic polity; there is no mechanism linking the internal to the external
aspects of behaviour; his a priori conception of human nature cannot explain why
states behave in such different ways; and, his central concepts are in quite funda
mental ways contestable. The result of these objections is that the logical coherence
and structure of his theory collapses. It is essentially a deterministic notion of foreign
policy, one based on specific and disputable definitions of the driving forces of the
international system. The paradox is that he is himself forced to 'bring people back
in' to explain 'errors' (such as appeasement) in history. There is an ineluctable
tension between determinism and voluntarism in his work.
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Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview
Behaviouralist methods
It was, of course, these kinds of concerns that led to the widespread adoption of
behaviouralist methods in the study of international relations in the US in the 1950s
and 1960s. Two main approaches to studying the foreign policies of states resulted.
These were summed up in the infamous paper by David Singer 'The level-of-analysis
problem in international relations'.7 Two points about that paper are worth noting
here. First, Singer argued implicitly that explanations are necessarily and inevitably
distorted in that there is no uncomplicated existence of a world of facts. Theories
are thus to be seen as competing; each, by focusing on a certain level of analysis,
imposes a bias on the data and in this way evidence is theory-dependent. Although
Singer is somewhat unclear as to his distinction between a model and a theory, it is
implied by his argument that the common behavioural goal of a general theory (as
found in the natural sciences) is fundamentally problematic precisely because
theories compete and in turn define their evidence. Second, Singer, while arguing for
an explicit choice of levels of analysis in order to further the development of a
cumulative set of theories and of evidence, virtually takes for granted the existence of
one unit of analysis, the state. Indeed, John Vasquez has very clearly illustrated that
this assumption pervades the behaviouralist study of international relations.8 So
despite the dissatisfaction with realism, the behavioural movement, for all its
differences in methodology and epistemology, accepted that what was to be
explained was the foreign policies of sovereign states.
Hence quite an extensive literature was built up during the late 1950s and the 1960s
that sought to explain the foreign policy behaviour of the state from a systems view
point. This was most clearly represented by the models of international behaviour
developed by Morton Kaplan, Richard Rosecrance and Kenneth Waltz9 as well as the
work on models of polarity.10 These models (and, in the case of Waltz, theories)
shared a common assumption about foreign policy behaviour, one that had been
central to realism: that the key areas of foreign policy were essentially determined by
the structure of the international system. In a bipolar world, for example, this one
structural feature would impose 'rules' of behaviour on all states regardless of their
ideologies and political complexion. These 'rules' would be different from those that
applied in multipolar systems, hence characteristic behaviour would be explicable
from a knowledge of the polar structure of the system. In all this, the structural
condition of anarchy was both a given and theoretically determining one.
But, just as realism appeared to be overmechanistic, so do these behavioural
theories (indeed there are many similarities on this level between realism and behavi
ouralist theories). Taking their assumptions to their logical conclusion, people and
decision-making processes are exogenous to explanation. In the language of Singer's
level-of-analysis problem, they imply that states are essentially homogeneous and
that the system has a determining impact on the units comprising it. There is no need
to run through the very serious problems of this view,11 but it is salient to note that
this perspective still does seem able to account for some significant forms of inter
national behaviour that, from a state level perspective, seem very problematic. Thus,
for example, just as it is clear that a systems view of foreign policy overemphasizes
the impact of the system, it is also clear that focusing on the decision-making
processes underemphasizes its impact. The fact that multipolar systems are not
accompanied by the level of ideological rigidity in foreign policy behaviour that
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Steve Smith
applies in bipolar systems is, clearly, inexplicable from a state perspective. The fact
that bipolar systems are marked by forms of behaviour different from those of multi
polar systems is likewise inexplicable from a state perspective. In short, it appears
that certain aspects of foreign policy behaviour may be more economically explained
from the systems level than from the state level.
Of course, there are very considerable ontological difficulties with the notion of an
international system, but, as Singer pointed out, there are equally serious problems
with the state level approach, certainly, for example, in the phenomenological
assumptions implicit in any concentration on the perceptions of decision-makers.
This level-of-analysis problem remains in the study of foreign policy, and it also
applies to exactly the kind of issues dealt with in international political economy. For
the present writer the problem reflects the conception of theory made explicit by
Waltz12 (and implied in Singer). Theories are essentially in competition, each explain
ing some aspects of behaviour better than others. What this upsets most is those views
of international relations that see explanation being derived from a concentration on
the thoughts of those who make decisions or as the achievement of a general theory
that can explain all foreign policy at either the level of the state or the level of the
international system. Quite simply, the study of foreign policy cannot afford to
ignore the structure of the international system, since that does seem to provide for
more powerful insights into why states behave as they do in certain situations than
does any focus on the decision-making processes of the state. The problem is,
though, that the international systems level can only deal with certain long-term and
general trends in foreign policy behaviour. On its own it is not sufficient to constitute
a theory of foreign policy.
Although much work on the theory of foreign policy took place at the inter
national systems level, it was eclipsed not only by the growing perception of the
central role of economic factors, but more so by the rise in the 1960s of a distinct
approach to analysing foreign policy behaviour. This approach, which for the sake of
convenience can be called the comparative foreign policy approach (CFP), was one
of the major growth areas in the study of international relations in the era of
behaviouralism. Although many different approaches were proposed during the
'heady days' of CFP in the 1960s, what was common to them was a belief that,
through the use of methods borrowed from natural science, foreign policy analysis
could lead to a general theory. Given the subsequent failure of such a general theory
to materialize, this belief now seems misplaced and inappropriate, but it is important
to note that such a belief gave impetus to, and faith in, the CFP approach in the
1960s. As Charles Kegley has written in his review of the history of the CFP
approach: 'the goals advocated by those urging comparative studies of foreign policy
in the 1960s might be classified as a paradigmatic departure revolutionary in intent.
Those present at the creation of the . . . [CFP] paradigm shared a cluster of
assumptions that seemed to justify?indeed, demand?a declaration of inde
pendence from pre-existing approaches to the study of foreign policy. Certain
convictions were held to be self-evident: that all nations' foreign policy behaviors
were comparable; that patterns in those behaviors were determined by certain
factors (among these were size, wealth, and political accountability); that to uncover
nomothetic statements about the relative potencies of these determinants, powerful
comparative methodologies were available. . . . The declaration accepted one set of
epistemological prescriptions and rejected another.'13
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Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview
Above all, what was rejected by those who adopted the CFP approach was the
case-study approach to understanding foreign policy.14 For reasons that I have
discussed elsewhere,15 those following the CFP approach were united more by a
rejection of certain methods than by adherence to any one theory. Again, it is critical
to note just what the study of foreign policy comprised before the CFP approach
developed: single-country case studies with little attempt to introduce comparison.
Even the most widely-used foreign policy text, Roy Macridis's edited volume Foreign
Policy in World Politics, explicitly rejected any notion of the use of comparative
'scientific' method (although it implicitly used comparative method through such
terms as power maximization and national interest). Thus, in the fifth edition
published in 1976, the chapter on the comparative study of foreign policy states that:
'the canons of science call for simplicity and economy in the formulation of
hypotheses that are to be tested. It is only when simple hypotheses are tested that the
scientist moves into the more complex, slowly relating and checking his findings with
the outside world. We, in contrast, find that we cannot test. ... To attempt to
construct generalizations and models that will give us a rigorous scientific under
standing and prediction of foreign policy is a hopeless task . . . [we] believe that case
studies of the individual foreign policy-making process, including conflict of various
states in terms of the descriptive categories suggested, would give us considerable
food for thought and might lead us to more fruitful hypotheses.'16
The CFP approach, then, was committed to a very different kind of analysis of
foreign policy behaviour than that which preceded it. A second important
assumption of CFP was, therefore, that existing approaches, which claimed to be
based on case studies and on the careful sifting of historical evidence, in reality had to
rely on a more or less explicit theory of foreign policy?and in most cases this was
realist. Whilst eschewing comparative scientific method, this work was given
meaning by a powerful set of assumptions about what foreign policy was, about how
it was made, and about what goals it was directed towards. This, of course, was the
motivation behind the one paper that served as the founding document of an
identifiable CFP approach, Rosenau's 'Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign
Policy'.17 There is little need to document the history of the CFP approach, as this
has been discussed extensively elsewhere;18 but one should note that this one article
was seminal in the development of CFP. Not only did it lead to the major
comparative foreign policy research project of the 1960s and 1970s (the Inter Uni
versity Comparative Foreign Policy Project, ICFP), it also provided the basis for the
most extensive development of behavioural theory, Rosenau's adaptation frame
work. The pre-theory attempted to enumerate the causes of foreign policy per se, and
it did this through positing foreign policy behaviour to be a dependent variable, with
independent variables being those of the size, level of economic development, and the
nature of political accountability of the states concerned. These were connected by a
series of 'source-variables', related to governmental, societal, idiosyncratic, systemic
and role factors. The aim was simply to make explicit the kinds of factors that caused
foreign policy behaviour; adaptation was a theory that explained the patterns
between independent, intervening (source), and dependent variables. Of course, the
theory had a series of formidable deficiencies,19 and ICFP broke up in the mid-1970s.
But for a period of about ten years the goal was general theory, with many roads
towards that goal being suggested. A distinct CFP approach dominated the literature
in the United States. In Britain, however, it was much less popular, as witnessed by
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Steve Smith
Brian White's attack on the dominance of traditional methods in the study of British
foreign policy,20 and Roy Jones's discussion of the possibilities of applying
behavioural theory to Britain.21
Whilst the 1960s saw a distinctive approach aimed at general theory emerge in the
United States, it also saw the rise of a number of less ambitious approaches, which
may be termed middle-range theories. What was most salient about these was that
they were concerned to disaggregate the notion of the monolithic state, a notion that
had dominated realist (and much behavioural) analysis. Not only this, but these
middle-range theories focused on a much narrower set of factors than did either
realist or CFP analysis, the underlying assumption being that foreign policy could
best be understood by examining the impact of certain processes within the decision
making structure. While various analysts focused on different aspects of that
structure, the implication of much of this middle-range work was that these operated
in differing combinations at different levels, from country to country and from issue
to issue. Thus, Jervis concentrated on the nature of perceptions;22 Janis looked at the
role of psychological processes within decision-making groups;23 Steinbruner
stressed the analogy of decision-making as a cybernetic process;24 and Allison
analysed bureaucratic and implementational views of decision-making.25 Neverthe
less, despite the contributions of these non-CFP scholars, by the early 1970s, the
study of foreign policy in the United States was marked by the existence of a powerful
and identifiable CFP approach which was aimed at the creation of a general theory.
Even in Britain such an approach was gaining some allegiance. As Christopher Hill
wrote in 1974: 'we have concluded the process of heart-searching about methodology
by coming to beliefs that in principle some generalizations, however qualified, should
be possible about phenomena in international politics, that comparisons can be both
practicable and productive, and that at least we may hope to lend some precision?
by the ordered use of concepts and evidence?to our understanding of inter
national action, whether highly specific or very general'.26
The decline of comparative foreign policy
Yet three sets of events occurred in the mid-1970s that served to alter significantly the
study of foreign policy. The first of these was the increased role of economic factors
in international relations. Though it was evident that economic factors had always
played a significant role, to US academics the early to mid-1970s seemed to witness a
qualitative change in that role. This does not imply ipso facto that foreign policy
analysis cannot explain and account for the role of economic factors, but it does
represent a significant challenge to the dominant assumptions of FPA, which was a
subject focused on the political-military scene. In and of itself the impact of
economic factors does not cause problems for FPA. It did so because the rise in
economic interdependence challenged the ability of a subject focusing on the state to
explain the actually dominant patterns of interactions between societies. Inter
dependence, then, called into question the utility of focusing on both the notion of
foreign policy (since one of the effects of interdependence was to challenge the
distinction between foreign and domestic policy) and the centrality of state decision
makers (since attention had to turn to consider non-governmental actors in the
managing of the effects of interdependence). In fact this problem was more serious
for those who were involved in explaining foreign policy either in a realist perspective
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Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview
or in a traditional case-study perspective. Nevertheless, interdependence did call into
doubt the credentials of FPA, and though much of the work of behaviouralist
foreign policy analysts had already begun to discuss the relevance of economic
factors,27 it still seemed to cut away at the assumptions of the subject.28
A second factor was the perceived decline in the role of the state as an actor in
international relations. Again, while the claims of those who forecast the demise of
the state now seem to have been vastly exaggerated, the realization that non-state
actors were central to international behaviour in certain issue-areas did at the time
constitute a major challenge to FPA. What was the use of concentrating on the
foreign policy behaviour of states if non-state actors were equally, if not more,
important in certain issue-areas? At the very least the rise of non-state actors did
interrupt the confident development of FPA; its impact along with that of inter
dependence did call the whole enterprise into doubt. Again, this was more
problematic for non-behavioural approaches than for the CFP/middle-range
theorists, but it did lead to a massive identity crisis in the mid-1970s: what had been
taken for granted (that states were dominant, that their foreign policies could be
studied comparatively and that what foreign policy was could be accepted as applying
to all states) crumbled in the face of a new world order in which the twin forces of
transnationalism and interdependence seemed to alter both the structure and the
processes of international society. This challenge was, of course, resisted, most
vehemently by traditionalist academics in Britain,29 but it was also welcomed by
many behaviouralists in the United States precisely because of their epistemological
and methodological commitments.30
The third problem applied specifically to CFP. By the mid-1970s it was evident
that, despite the hopes and despite the claims, a general theory of foreign policy
behaviour was simply not going to emerge. ICFP broke up in 1974; the pre-theory,
although it led to large numbers of studies, had not advanced beyond being a pre
theory; and the investment of time and money in quantitative research had not led to
theory. Whilst in 1974 Rosenau could write the infamous line that 'all the evidence
points to the conclusion that the comparative study of foreign policy has now
emerged as a normal science',31 in a paper written a year later (althnough ironically
published in the same year, 1976, as was the paper in which the quote immediately
above appeared), he noted that: 'it appears that this process [of knowledge building]
may be grinding to a halt in the scientific study of foreign policy ... the long-term
trend towards convergence seems to have slowed, and, even worse there are more
than a few indications that we are going our separate ways'.32 The CFP approach
had, to use the words of Charles Kegley, lost its paradigm. The result was that it
effectively ground to a halt.
The impact of these three factors was to lead to a decline in the comparative study
of foreign policy. Many of the behavioural analysts went off to study other aspects of
international relations and certainly the rate of publication in the FPA area
substantially declined. Paradoxically, in Britain this occurred just as an identifiable
group of academics working in what could be loosely called FPA started to emerge.
Since then, of course, world events have thrust the state and its political-military
behaviour back to the centre of the stage of international relations. The study of
foreign policy in the 1980s, however, has to deal with a rather different world from
that of either the 1960s or the 1970s, since in the 1980s both economic and military
factors are of central importance in foreign policy. It is, nevertheless, a subject of
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Steve Smith
study in which not only has much of the optimism as to the possibilities of creating a
general theory declined, but also one in which the beguiling simplicities of realist or
case-study analysis seem most appropriate.
All in all, there has been a massive retreat from CFP-type analysis in the United
States and a resurgence of interest in an analytical focus on one country. The study of
foreign policy now has five main approaches. The//rs/ of these is what can be labelled
neo-realism, as represented most clearly in the work of Kenneth Waltz33 and as
discussed in a recent article by Richard Ashley.34 Neo-realists stress the centrality of
the structure of the international system in determining state behaviour; as such this
is a return to, as well as an advance on, realism. Foreign policy is to be understood by
seeing the situation in which the state has to operate. A powerful variant of this is the
work on nuclear strategy that relates to nuclear proliferation, regional security, or
superpower relations. A second approach is the world economy perspective,
popularized by the work of Immanuel Wallerstein35 and the world-systems
theorists.36 In this perspective, the foreign policy behaviour of states is primarily
related to the varying influences of the involvement of states in the international
economy. A third approach, which is essentially the residual of CFP, may be termed
the quantification approach, as seen in the recent works by East et ai, Wilkenfeld et
al., and Callahan et al?1 For these writers foreign policy is to be explained by the
gathering of empirical data to discover regularities in foreign policy behaviour; in
fact each of these three volumes is an outgrowth of a data-collection project (East et
ai and Callahan et ai from CREON, Wilkenfeld et ai from the IBA model). The
fourth, and most popular, approach involves a return to single-country case studies.
Even a quick glance through the literature will reveal that the vast majority of work
on foreign policy consists of case studies of either a single country's foreign policy or
an event or series of events. If we were to characterize the study of foreign policy as
having a dominant approach, it would be this. Having said that, there is no
uniformity on appropriate methods, nor on the variables to be studied. The final
approaches one which stresses the development of the study of foreign policy by the
use of middle-range theories. In many ways this can be termed the 'residual FPA
approach'. To the extent that an identifiable FPA sub-field exists, it is now
concerned with a group of theories each of which seems to be able to provide
explanations of certain types of foreign policy behaviour for certain types of states.
Examples of this are the crisis-behaviour work of Michael Brecher,38 the work on
implementation by a group of British foreign policy academics,39 as well as the
extension of the work on bureaucratic politics, decision-making groups, and percep
tions pioneered by Allison, Janis and Jervis respectively.
The resulting situation could optimistically be described as one of methodological
pluralism; in reality, however, it is evident that the subject-area of FPA as a distinct
sub-field of the discipline of international relations is in a state of disarray. This is in
contrast to both the general agreement of how to study foreign policy found during
the period when realism dominated and the sense of direction provided by the CFP
approach. Ironically, the most popular recent text on foreign policy analysis, Lloyd
Jensen's Explaining Foreign Policy,*0 for all its concern with discussing mainly CFP
theories of states' behaviour, concludes by echoing sentiments similar to those which
motivated the first major work in the subject-area, that of Snyder, Br?ck and Sapin.
For Jensen, all the determinants of foreign policy are important only insofar as they
affect the motivations of decision-makers. In that way^ of course, they are not
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Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview
determinants at all; in this regard FPA has not come very far in the last thirty years.
This does not mean that foreign policy is not studied, quite the contrary, but it does
mean that if the 1960s and early 1970s witnessed the growth of an identifiable sub
field of FPA, then this sub-field has failed to develop in the last decade. Gone are the
claims for the possibility of a general theory, and gone are the large research projects
on the analysis of foreign policy behaviour; there has been no major publication
from the CFP school in the last few years. Real-world events and theoretical short
comings have, therefore, led to a reduction of interest in FPA: as a way of studying
foreign policy it is now far less significant than rival approaches in international
relations. Grand-scale theorizing has been replaced by, on the one hand, a return to
case studies, and, on the other, a concentration on middle-range theories.
The weaknesses of foreign policy analysis
This leads us to discuss what have been the pitfalls in the study of foreign policy. Why
are we where we are now? The history of the sub-field of FPA has contained five
main weaknesses which have prevented the development of theory. Before
discussing these it is important to note that the sub-field mirrors many of the central
methodological problems in the nexus between social science and history. FPA has
been no more able to resolve these than has any other discipline, and so, in addition
to the specific weaknesses mentioned below, one must add the critical issues of what
constitutes an explanation, and whether scientific method is applicable to the analysis
of human behaviour. In fairness, these being part of much wider debates on the
philosophy of history and social science, it is not surprising that such problems
remain unresolved, but foreign policy analysts would do well to be aware of their
methodological assumptions and of the weaknesses (as well as the strengths) of any
particular method. Given that their training has tended to be in either history or
social science it is all too easy (and convenient) to accept a priori the soundness of a
particular methodology. Just as it is common to talk of decision-makers being
trapped by closed belief systems so this also applies to those studying them. Indeed
the history of FPA both in Britain and the United States indicates how beguiling are
the paradigms in which study is undertaken; in a very important way, the very
division of the sub-field into identifiable schools adhering either to particular
methods or to particular middle-range or grand theories has served to foreclose
discussion on the central area of method. Precisely because each approach has its
utility in explaining events so is it convenient to leave on one side doubts as to the
coherence of its structure and the assumptions it makes as to questions of method and
epistemology.
Nevertheless, the history of FPA does suggest that there have been five major
pitfalls in the study of foreign policy. The first concerns the search for a general
theory. Despite the hopes of those engaged in CFP in the 1960s and 1970s a general
theory did not emerge. This was not for lack of research in this area, nor for lack of
finance. Those approaches that claimed to lead to general theory failed, in most cases
never getting beyond the pre-theory or even data collection stage, for the simple
reason of their epistemological assumptions: it was assumed that if everyone used the
same concepts, collected data, tested hypotheses, then theory would emerge. Quite
how this was to happen was never specified. To take just the clearest case: the pre
theory led to considerable research with many attempts to offer rank-orderings of the
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Steve Smith
potency of the source-variables for certain types of states. Yet once this had been
achieved, there was no easy way of turning findings into theory. No amount of data
can lead to the entirely separate cognitive act of creating theory. Even had the pre
theory led to an unambiguous ranking of the source-variables for each genotype of
state, upon which all those engaged in this research could agree, the assumption that
this would lead to theory seems unrealistic. This is not to argue that such findings
would be trivial, nor to suggest that they would not be important in the process of
building theory, but the rather naive belief that this route would lead to theory seems
very questionable. That the work on the pre-theory could not even lead to
unambiguous findings merely highlights the problems of coherence and logical
structure that the model faced.
A second pitfall follows on from the first and concerns the quantitative analysis of
foreign policy as represented most clearly in the recent work emerging from the
CREON and IBA data-bases. Their work indicates only too well the inherent
problem of inductive quantitative research: this is that the work is concerned with
describing not explaining the foreign policies of states. All too often quantitative
work ends up being an exercise in elegant mathematics, with the findings telling us
something not about foreign policy but about the utility of certain forms of data
manipulation. Each study develops certain measures for dealing with the data and
discusses their utility in comparison to those of other studies; this does little to
advance the understanding of why states do what they do. It also reflects the weak
nesses of the simple positivist notion of social science in its implications about the
types of theory that can be built. This is not to say that data has no place in foreign
policy analysis, but that data cannot be analyzed only in terms of its relationship to
certain quantitative measures. In short, quantitative analysis in FPA is in danger of
becoming an enclosed area of study that concentrates not on foreign policy behaviour
but on the advantages and disadvantages of certain quantitative techniques. To
repeat the old adage, correlation is not causation, and to the extent that the analysis
of foreign policy deals with the issue of how best to obtain correlation coefficients,
the risk is that the subject will not address the really important relationship between
data and behaviour. It would become an exercise in how best to describe rather than
how best to explain.
The third pitfall has been the unwillingness of those working in the discipline to
undertake cumulative work. Stated baldly, there has been little in the way of testing
the theories that have been developed. Thus, for example, how many studies have
tested Allison's bureaucratic politics approach, or Janis's groupthink approach, to
name only two of the most widely-cited theories? The study of foreign policy has
simply not indicated a willingness on the part of those who work in it to test the
theories of others. While some approaches do suffer from serious problems of
operationalization this does not apply to all approaches, and the absence of tests of
theories has constituted a serious impediment to the development of the study of
foreign policy.
A fourth pitfall has been the rather surprising reliance on the seductive notion of
the national interest. Despite all the very serious deficiencies that have been found
with the term it is still very popular with foreign policy makers. But its continued
popularity in many foreign policy studies has hindered the development of the
subject. This is precisely because of the reason that makes it so popular with prac
titioners?that it can be used to mean whatever the user wishes. In international
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Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview
relations, the term has a commonsensical appeal because it is still convenient to think
of each state having interests within a society of states. Yet it has proven impossible to
convert this appeal into a theory, unless one reverts to essentially a realist position.
The final pitfall relates to an inability to agree on what the state is and what
foreign, as opposed to domestic, policy consists of. In the last twenty years
conceptions of both the state and of the distinction between domestic and foreign
policy have shifted back and forth. As the Cold War led to detente and as this gave
way to the Second Cold War, foreign policy analysts have altered their views on what
this thing called the state is, on what its foreign policy consists of and on how this can
be demarcated from domestic policy. In one sense it is no wonder that FPA has faced
serious problems given that these issues are central to its identity and to its way of
studying international relations. Nevertheless, it has posed very serious problems for
the subject area, and all the indications are that these will continue.
Having identified five major pitfalls in the history of the study of foreign policy, it
is necessary to note that in an important sense there are also the problems of the
study of international relations as a whole. In essence, and to differing degrees, they
apply to many of the other main areas of the discipline, yet they seem to have had a
more marked impact on FPA than other sub-fields. This is because FPA is at the
intersection of four main epistemological, methodological and even ontological diffi
culties that apply to varying extents to all areas of the study of international relations.
The first of these is the theoretical concern noted above: how do we construct a
theory of international behaviour? Exactly because FPA has to take into account the
perceptions of those who make decisions at the same time as it attempts to relate state
behaviour to process or structural factors, it highlights the problem of any theory of
human behaviour. The easiest way out of this is to eschew any generalizations and to
proceed on a case-by-case basis; yet, of course, it is absurd to pretend that this solves
the problem as case study analysis reflects powerful, if implicit, theoretical pre
dispositions and assumptions. Just because a historical case study does not have the
pretensions of a general theory does not mean that it does not involve (questionable)
notions of causation especially at the level of why do actors think what they do. The
failure of general theories in FPA does not mean that one can retreat to a safe-ground
of uncontentious, nontheoretical case studies, and yet this has been the most
noticeable reaction to the all-too-evident breakdown of the search for general theory.
A second reason for the pitfalls in FPA relates to the question of the impact of the
international system on the behaviour of states. This problem besets many theories of
international relations, from the realists to the Marxists, and afflicts FPA particu
larly strongly. International relations, as a discipline, has so far been unable to
answer this question and in many studies two mutually exclusive answers will be used
to explain different forms of international behaviour; at one juncture the structure of
the international political system will be a powerful constraint on state behaviour, at
another a state will be assumed to have considerable independence. Quite what the
international system is poses considerable ontological problems, and these are at
their most acute when attempting to explain the behaviour of the units of that system.
A third factor involves the role of individuals. Whilst it is axiomatic that any study
of human behaviour involves an uneasy mixture of assumptions on the age-old
question of free will versus determinism, FPA confronts this problem head on. This
is because the most useful middle-range theories have posited the impact of (often
hidden) structures and processes within the decision-making context on the
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Steve Smith
behaviour of decision-makers. After all, if Allison, Janis and Jervis are correct, then
the individual is far less of a rational chooser than is usually assumed. But, for
example, how can we move from a statement (following Allison) that bureaucratic
position affects policy preference to a mechanism for explaining that and at the same
time accounting for individual choice? FPA faces problems because it either has to
treat individuals as extraneous (as in most of the CFP work) or it has to include them
but without giving them total autonomy when the evidence indicates that this is not
present. Because FPA clearly has to take individuals into account and yet, at the same
time, finds that their perceptions of what they are doing are unreliable guides to their
actions, it faces this problem in a very stark form.
Finally, FPA's focus on the state and on the content of foreign policy has been
particularly problematic given the recent empirical developments discussed above.
Not only does FPA have to deal with a shifting and variable notion of the state, it also
has to deal with a rapidly changing relationship between foreign and domestic politics
and the changes that this implies for the domestic setting of, and influence upon,
foreign policy.
FPA, then, has been at the intersection between a set of fundamentally
problematic issues that have had implications for all areas of the study of inter
national relations. This explains the peculiar difficulties that have beset the develop
ment of the subject area and underlies the current breakdown of consensus on how
best to undertake the study of FPA. It would be misleading to suggest that there is an
easy way out of this problem and it is unlikely that the subject area will achieve
consensus on how to study foreign policy precisely because the impact of these
factors has been so marked. This syndrome has led some to portray FPA as a pseudo
science, a diagnosis made all the more appealing given the grandiose claims advanced
by those who claimed that this 'normal science' would lead to general theory. The
manifest failure to turn this claim into reality has led to a considerable loss of
momentum in the subject, and has resulted in a severe identity crisis. Yet it is the
strong belief of this writer that FPA has much to offer the study of international
relations. Foreign policy does form patterns; it is to be explained by structures and
processes that are common, if to variable extents, among different states; and the
explanations it provides are more economical than other theories of state behaviour.
The all-too-obvious failures of the grandest schemes have blinded us to our successes.
After all, there is no 'truth' out there waiting for discovery by one all-embracing
theory. We are, therefore, in the business of dealing with competing theories and
explanations, and in this light FPA has aided, and can continue to aid, the study of
international relations.
The way forward
All of this raises the question of how is the study of foreign policy to proceed given
the problems revealed in its history. This, of course, returns us to the issues of
methodology and explanation. These are central issues and FPA, if it is to progress,
must become more self-conscious as to its weaknesses and potential pitfalls in these
areas. It must also, however, be aware of its strengths. What would not aid the
development of an understanding of foreign policy perse is a return to single-country
case studies. This is not because these have little to offer but because what they do
have to offer does not advance comparative understanding as such. Their findings
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Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview
are essential to any analysis of a country's foreign policy but they are of limited use in
the task of building cumulative knowledge on a comparative basis. Because case
studies define key terms differently and because their assumptions are implicit rather
than explicit (although equally central to their methodology), their utility for
comparative analysis must not be overestimated. Specifically, focusing on the actors'
perceptions of their actions and deriving an understanding of foreign policy from
this, albeit informed by our knowledge of 'what happened', involves a set of con
siderable epistemological problems. To understand how an actor perceived the world
is neither simple nor unproblematic. It involves assumptions about a theory of mind
and a very clear notion of what it means to say that one has made sense of an actor's
perceptions. A verstehen approach is dependent on a theoretical structure, one that
crucially relies on a problematic epistemology. Given that we know that actors are
not literally free to do what they wish, we immediately introduce subjectivity into
judgements, and these reflect implicit theoretical assumptions. Nor will looking at
actors' perceptions tell us why they think what they think; for this we need wider
behavioural rules and laws. These may not be physical laws in the sense of natural
science, but the nexus between free will and conditioning implies that a focus on how
actors perceive their world will not serve as a basis for understanding their behaviour
without precisely the kind of general comparative rules and laws that FPA explicitly
utilizes. In other words, case studies, despite their lack of what might be termed
theoretical pretensions, can only work by relying on very strong, if implicit, assump
tions. To repeat, that FPA has suffered in the four ways noted above does not mean
that approaches that do not have such explicit theoretical assumptions can escape
into a problem-free search for understanding.
Nor would the task of developing an understanding of foreign policy behaviour be
advanced by a return to a quasi-realist reliance on conceptions of national interest.
Theories of national interest not only involve questionable assumptions and con
siderable problems of operationalization, but they ignore areas of behaviour (for
example decision-making structures and processes) that evidently do affect
outcomes. Added to this is their own problem over the subjectivity of what purports
to be an objective form of analysis. Foreign policy behaviour is far more complex
than these theories imply and they cannot deal with that complexity.
A similar objection can be made to any return to a search for a general theory of
foreign policy via the use of quantitative data. Not only has this clearly failed in the
past, but it rests upon a positivist notion of science which is wholly inappropriate to
the analysis of human affairs. Behaviouralist analysis has to contemplate that it may
have reached an intellectual dead-end. The process of applying a simplistic version
of natural science method to foreign policy analysis will not lead to a theory of
foreign policy. It is time to reflect on the problems inherent in the transfer of methods
of natural science (usually simple notions derived from physics) to social phenomena:
the failure of CFP to develop general theory was indeed inherent in its simplistic
notion of what science was about. Yet naive positivism still pervades much of the
residual CFP work in the United States.
Yet if the positivistic notion of social science needs to be rejected, so does the
opposite contention, that the study of human affairs cannot be studied by the use of
scientific methods. This is because opponents of any social scientific method have a
rather simple notion of what natural science involves. Scientific practice indicates
that there is no such thing as a 'true' explanation and no theory-independent facts.
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Steve Smith
27
The problems of epistemology faced by social science are essentially similar to those
of natural science. Theories of nuclear physics, for example, are increasingly to do
with probability statements, in which non-observable theoretical concepts provide
the mechanism for moving from observation to explanation. In short, all scientific
methods involve problems of epistemology, all involve common problems over what
constitutes an explanation. This is not to imply that FPA can become a science just
like physics, but much of the attack on social science rests on a view of science that
does not accurately portray what scientists are engaged in.
The upshot of this argument is that any theory of foreign policy, whatever its
claims, involves a priori assumptions. Evidence is concept-dependent and it is no
excuse to claim that one is 'only' looking at the facts, be they those contained in
historical records or even those of the perceptions of those who took the decisions.
Just as FPA involves contestable assumptions, so does historical analysis, and an
explicit concern with stating these assumptions and facing attack on them is to be
preferred to pretending that they do not apply. Of course we can get excellent
accounts of why X did what they did but this is not an explanation of it. It may be an
essential part of such an explanation but it cannot be it in its entirety without
involving wider theoretical assumptions as to the causes of behaviour, and the impact
of the system on the state and the like. We have to accept that theories stand in
mutual antagonism, and any theory imposes bias onto its explanations and derives its
explanatory power by the acceptance of some assumptions and the rejection of
others. FPA has, quite rightly, come under attack for many of its assumptions, but
other seemingly 'less' theoretical approaches can be similarly attacked.
The way forward, then, is not to return to convenient descriptions of events, nor to
return to the search for a general theory. FPA needs to accept that methodology
matters, and to be more aware than it has been hitherto that it faces fundamental
epistemological and ontological problems. This paper has been concerned with the
historical development of the (mainly American) approach, FPA, and the main
conclusion of the discussion is that whilst the most grandiose claims have proved to
be unfounded, the approach achieved some major successes in unearthing regu
larities in the causation of foreign policy. That these exist is beyond doubt, as the
work on belief systems, bureaucratic politics, implementation, crisis behaviour and
decision-making processes indicates. These findings have not been unearthed by
concentrating on single country studies or on the actors' perceptions per se; they have
resulted from the use of social scientific method, albeit a method much removed
from the naive positivism of the general theorists. Thus, one promising way forward
is to develop the comparative middle range theories that exist, and this requires the
testing of these theories. This will not lead to an overall general theory because the
existence of factors such as the impact of the international system on states, the
importance of perceptions, and the effect of decision-making structures and
processes will differ from state to state. But what it will do is to enhance the ability of
FPA to explain foreign policy behaviour much better than does any rival theory. The
task of creating general theory must await the development of identifiable areas in
which middle range theories dominate over alternative approaches. The point is that
the process of developing comparative theory is, on past performance, much more
likely to emerge from the use of social scientific analysis than it is from single country
studies focusing on the perceptions of the decision-makers.
In summary, then, FPA as an approach to explaining foreign policy has distinct
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Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview
advantages over its rivals. In the past, the inappropriate claims of the grandest CFP
schemes have cast a shadow over the subject's successes. These successes are con
siderable, and are intrinsically related to the use of a specific methodology. The fact
that FPA stands at the intersection of the major difficulties facing the study of inter
national relations has led many to proclaim the subject a dead-end, but these are
difficulties that must be faced and not feared. Other approaches to studying foreign
policy may well avoid the tortuous discussion of these difficulties that has charac
terized FPA's history, but this does not mean that they can avoid the problems them
selves. Those engaged in the comparative study of foreign policy behaviour must be
aware of the subject's failures, but they must also not underestimate its successes. It
has much to offer the study of international relations because it can explain parts of
the international body politic that other theories cannot reach.
References and notes
1. Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Br?ck and Burton Sapin, Decision-Making as an Approach to the Study
of International Politics (Princeton, NJ, Organizational Behavior Section, Princeton University,
Foreign Policy Project, Series No. 3, June 1954). This was subsequently published in the same authors'
edited volume Foreign Policy Decision-Making (New York, 1962), pp. 14-185.
2. For a classical critique of idealism and a statement of the realist viewpoint see E. H. Carr, The Twenty
Years' Crisis (London, 1946) and Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 5th Edition revised
(New York, 1978). For the international society approach see: H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.),
Diplomatic Investigations (London, 1966); H. Bull, The Anarchical Society (London, 1911);
M. Donelan (ed.), The Reason of States (London, 1978); J. Mayall (ed.), The Community of States
(London, 1982).
3. Morgenthau, op. cit.
4. Ibid., see chapters 4, 5 and 6.
5. See Ibid., pp. 4-15.
6. Ibid., pp. 48-73.
7. J. David Singer, The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations', in Klaus Knorr and
Sidney Verba (eds.), The International System: Theoretical Essays (Princeton, NJ, 1961), pp. 77-92.
8. John Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics (London, 1983).
9. See Morton Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics (New York., 1957); Richard Rose
crance, Action and Reaction in World Politics (Boston, 1963); Kenneth Waltz, Theory oj'Inter
national Politics (Cambridge, MA, 1979).
10. See the chapters by Waltz, Deutsch and Singer and Kaplan in J. N. Rosenau (ed.), International
Politics and Foreign Policy, 2nd edition (New York, 1969).
11. For rather different critiques see Charles Reynolds, Theory and Explanation in International Politics
(Oxford, 1973), ch. 2, and John J. Weltman, Systems Theory in International Relations (Lexington,
MA, 1973).
12. Waltz, ibid., ch. 1.
13. Charles W. Kegley, Jr., The Comparative Study of Foreign Policy: Paradigm Lost? (Columbia,
SC, University of South Carolina, Institute of International Studies, Essay Series No. 10, 1980),
p. 1.
14. See James N. Rosenau, Phillip M. Burgess and Charles F. Hermann, 'The Adaptation of Foreign
Policy Research: A Case Study of an Anti-Case Study Project', International Studies Quarterly,
Vol. 17(1), March 1973, pp. 119-144.
15. See Steve Smith, 'Foreign Policy Analysis: British and American Orientations and Methodologies',
Political Studies, Vol. 31(4), December 1983, pp. 556-565.
16. Roy C. Macridis (ed.), Foreign Policy in World Politics, 5th edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1976),
p. 23.
17. See James N. Rosenau, 'Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy', in his The Scientific Study of
Foreign Policy, 2nd edition (London, 1980), pp. 115-169.
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Steve Smith 29
18. See Kegley, op. cit.; see also Steve Smith, 'Rosenau's Contribution', Review of International Studies,
Vol. 9(2), 1983, pp. 137-146, and Steve Smith, 'Describing and Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior',
Polity, Vol. 17(3), 1985, pp. 595-607.
19. See Steve Smith, Foreign Policy Adaptation (Farnborough, 1981), pp. 131-148; this is summarized in
Steve Smith, 'Rosenau's Adaptive Behaviour Approach?a critique', Review of International Studies,
Vol. 7(2), 1981, pp. 107-126.
20. See Brian White, 'The Study of British Foreign Policy: Some Comments on Professor Barber's
Review Article', British Journal of International Studies, Vol. 3(3), 1977, pp. 340-348, and his
'The Study of British Foreign Policy', unpublished paper presented to the BISA annual conference,
Durham, 1977. For a reply see James Barber, 'The Study of British Foreign Policy: A reply to Brian
White', British Journal of International Studies, Vol. 4(3), 1978, pp. 266-269.
21. See Roy Jones, The Changing Structure of British Foreign Policy (London, 1974); for a (still) very
helpful and incisive survey of the subject area, see Roy Jones, Analysing Foreign Policy (London,
1970).
22. Robert Jervis, 'Hypotheses on Misperception', World Politics, Vol. 20(3), 1968, pp. 454-479. See
also his The Logic ofImages in International Relations (Princeton, NJ, 1970) and Perception and Mis
perception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ, 1970).
23. Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston, 1972).
24. John Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision (Princeton, NJ, 1974).
25. Graham Allison, 'Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis', American Political Science
Review, Vol. 63(3), 1969, pp. 689-718. See also his Essence of Decision (Boston, 1971).
26. C. J. Hill, 'The Credentials of Foreign Policy Analysis', Millennium, Vol. 3(2), 1974, pp. 148-149.
27. See, for example, James N. Rosenau (ed.), Linkage Politics (New York, 1969).
28. This is discussed in Steve Smith, 'Foreign Policy Analysis and Interdependence', in R. J. Barry Jones
and Peter Willetts (eds.), Interdependence on Trial (London, 1984), pp. 64-82.
29. See, for example, Fred Northedge, 'Transnationalism: the American Illusion', Millennium, Vol. 5(1),
1976, pp. 21-27, and Hedley Bull, 'The State's Positive Role in World Affairs', Daedalus,
Vol. 108(4), 1979, pp. 111-123.
30. See James N. Rosenau, 'International Studies in a Transnational World', Millennium, Vol. 5(1),
1976, pp. 1-20.
31. James N. Rosenau, 'Restlessness, Change and Foreign Policy Analysis', in James N. Rosenau (ed.),
In Search of Global Patterns (New York, 1976), p. 369.
32. James N. Rosenau, 'Puzzlement in Foreign Policy', Jerusalem Journal of International Relations,
Vol. 1(1), 1976, pp. 1-2.
33. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, op. cit.
34. Richard Ashley, 'The Poverty of Neorealism', International Organization, Vol. 38(2), 1984,
pp. 225-286.
35. See, for example, Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (Cambridge, 1979).
36. For a collection of essays on this theme see W. Ladd Hollist and James N. Rosenau (eds.), World
System Structure (Beverly Hills, CA, 1981).
37. Maurice East, Stephen Salmore and Charles Hermann (eds.), Why Nations Act (Beverly Hills, CA,
1978); Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Gerald Hopple, Paul Rossa and Stephen Andriole, Foreign Policy
Behavior (Beverly Hills, CA, 1980); Patrick Callahan, Linda Brady and Margaret Hermann (eds.),
Describing Foreign Policy Behavior (Beverly Hills, CA, 1982).
38. See, Michael Brecheried.), Studies in Crisis Behavior (New Brunswick, NJ, 1978); for examples of this
approach applied to different countries, see Michael Brecher with Benjamin Geist, Decisions in Crisis
(Berkeley, CA, 1980), and Avi Shlaim, The United States and the Berlin Blockade 1948-1949
(Berkeley, CA, 1983).
39. Steve Smith and Michael Clarke (eds.), Foreign Policy Implementation (London, 1985).
40. Lloyd Jensen, Explaining Foreign Policy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1982).
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