Emerging Powers in Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Wehner
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
Current System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Economic Policy ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
Status Seeking ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
Emerging Powers

Emerging powers are usually referred to as states whose increasing material capacities and status-seeking strategies may potentially have an impact on the international system and also affect the dominant position of the hegemonic powers therein. The rising of new powers is a recurrent phenomenon in international relations. When talking about emerging powers, scholars associate the words with the so-called BRICS states: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The emergence of BRICS, and especially of China, poses the question of whether the rising process is a peaceful one. Realism, institutionalism, and constructivism have all dealt with the possible systemic impacts of the BRICS states. BRICS nations seem to be reformist rather than disruptive, meaning that they are pushing for the better representation of their self-perceived new status in multilateral institutions rather than challenging the current system per se. In terms of foreign policy, BRICS states interact with well-established powers such as the United States and European ones—herein they display balancing or bandwagoning strategies, as they do also toward each other. Moreover, well-established powers either accommodate or contest the rising process and status claims of these emerging powers. However, BRICS states are also regional powers. Regional peers contest the rising processes of BRICS and particularly claims to global powerhood. While BRICS can be seen as striving for the reform of multilateral institutions, the traditional view of BRICS as a homogenous force, comprising countries with similar interests, is sometimes misleading. Even though BRICS states have their own institution with a new bank, they also pursue different interests within traditional institutions. Therefore, the existing literature on BRICS is tilted toward systemic and institutional concerns. Although works taking into consideration the interplay between the domestic and international levels in foreign policy analysis do exist, they are not necessarily related to emerging processes and rarely go beyond foreign economic policy issues. People, leaders, and governmental institutions are decision makers or are part of the decision-making process in foreign policy, and thus they form perceptions and act according to how the rising process of the state is unfolding. An integration of the systemic, state, and personal levels captures the essence of the foreign policies of BRICS states in the context of rising and can take into consideration the ups and downs and stalemates of rising-process trajectories in international politics.

scholarly journals Populism in Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelos Chryssogelos
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global South ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
The World ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Right

The topic of populism in foreign policy is receiving growing attention in academic and public discourse as populist parties and movements proliferate around the world. Yet foreign policy analysis (FPA) scholars interested in the role of populism in foreign policy have to deal with a concept that is notoriously slippery and contested. The existing literature on populism and foreign policy has already offered interesting insights. Focused primarily on Europe, it usually applies the conceptualization of populism as a thin-centered ideology that attaches to thicker ideological traditions and reformulates them in terms of the elite-people divide. Following this conceptualization (that is today the dominant framework for the comparative analysis of populism, particularly in Europe), this literature argues that populist parties of the right have foreign policy positions that reflect their nativism, opposition to immigration, focus on national sovereignty, and rejection of economic and cultural globalization. Populist parties of the left on the other hand reject in their foreign policy positions neo-liberalism and open markets. Together, European populist parties of all persuasions are Eurosceptic, anti-American, and usually pro-Putin’s Russia. Highlighted are the breadth of critical and discursive approaches on populism that scholars of populism and foreign policy can use, particularly because they have been applied successfully to cases outside of Europe, where populists have long held political power and have influenced foreign policy in practice. Such conceptualizations commonly view populism as a reaction to crises of political representation engendered by dislocations caused by globalization and other shifts in international politics. These dislocations will take different forms, but populism in the West and populism in the Global South can be seen, despite more specific differences of outlook, at the very least as a specific type of reaction to concurrent political and economic crises in a rapidly denationalized and deterritorialized world. In this context, most populist foreign policies reflect a preoccupation with popular sovereignty and unmediated projection of popular demands and national interests outside of established processes of global governance. Populists will also tend to perceive and analyze foreign policy issues through the lens of the elite-underdog opposition. Populism is commonly associated or conflated with nationalism (especially in the case of the European radical right) and isolationism, but in practice this does not always have to be the case. The “people” for whom populists speak in international affairs can very well transcend national borders, as evidenced, for example, in the foreign policies of Hugo Chavez and Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who aimed to represent transnational constituencies like the Global South, the Islamic world, the world poor, etc. And while populists generally eschew commitments to broader milieu goals of the international system, they can still engage with foreign affairs if they see immediate material benefits. The same goes for trade: populists (particularly in the United States) are seen usually as ideological protectionists, but most often they do not mind striking trade deals if these favor their interests (see, e.g., Donald Trump’s discourse on this issue). In terms of theoretical and methodological advancements, foreign policy scholars interested in populism are urged to embrace the large variety of conceptual approaches on populism (ideological, critical, discursive) and to build on the growing literature on cross-regional comparison of populist politics, something particularly pertinent in a world characterized by the presence and prominence of populism in almost all world regions.

Issue-area and foreign policy revisited

1989 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Evangelista
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Military Policy ◽  
Foreign Economic Policy ◽  
Issue Area ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The U.S

In the study of comparative foreign policy, two schools of thought disagree over what accounts for variations in processes and outcomes of foreign policies within and between states. One holds that differences in the characteristics of the countries in question lead to differences in their foreign policies. The other argues that the important differences are not between countries but between issue-areas. A comparison of the Soviet Union and the United States in the issue-area of military policy (in particular, the process of weapons innovation) suggests that the policy processes differ substantially, contrary to what an issue-area approach would predict. On the other hand, the distinctions made by some students of political economy who focus on domestic structures appear to account well for differences between the U.S. and Soviet processes of innovation. The domestic structural approach should be applied to the study of comparative military policy as well as foreign economic policy.

National Humiliation at the Individual Level

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-77
Author(s):  
Joslyn Barnhart
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
Status Seeking ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
International Events

This chapter examines the effects of international events on an individuals' emotions and foreign policy preferences using a set of survey experiments conducted within the United States. It analyzes the experimental approach that test assumptions about the types of international events that are likely to engender national humiliation. It also demonstrates a clear link between a sense of helplessness and humiliation in a way that distinguishes humiliation from anger and assesses the degree to which humiliating events might shift foreign policy preferences for aggressive foreign policy behaviors. The chapter reviews the degree to which emotional concerns mediate the relationship between humiliating international events and support for aggression relative to security and instrumental concerns. It talks about the desire to shore up the image of the state in its own eyes as well as the eyes of others, which lead states to pursue more aggressive foreign policies and engage in costly status-seeking measures.

Finding Faith in Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregorio Bettiza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sacred Landscapes ◽  
Muslim Politics ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the Cold War, religion has been systematically brought to the fore of American foreign policy. US foreign policymakers have been increasingly tasked with promoting religious freedom globally, delivering humanitarian and development aid abroad through faith-based channels, pacifying Muslim politics and reforming Islamic theologies in the context of fighting terrorism, and engaging religious actors to solve multiple conflicts and crises around the world. Across a range of different domains, religion has progressively become an explicit and organized subject and object of US foreign policy in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. If God was supposed to be vanquished by the forces of modernity and secularization, why has the United States increasingly sought to understand and manage religion abroad? In what ways have the boundaries between faith and state been redefined as religion has become operationalized in American foreign policy? What kind of world order is emerging in the twenty-first century as the most powerful state in the international system has come to intervene in sustained and systematic ways in sacred landscapes around the globe? This book addresses these questions by developing an original theoretical framework and drawing upon extensive empirical research and interviews. It argues that American foreign policy and religious forces have become ever more inextricably entangled in an age witnessing a global resurgence of religion and the emergence of a postsecular world society.

scholarly journals A Transatlantic Secular Divide? The Representation of Religion in EU and US Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Jenichen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Eu And Us ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Eu

AbstractIt is a common—often stereotypical—presumption that Europe is secular and America religious. Differences in international religious freedom and religious engagement policies on both sides of the Atlantic seem to confirm this “cliché.” This article argues that to understand why it has been easier for American supporters to institutionalize these policies than for advocates in the EU, it is important to consider the discursive structures of EU and US foreign policies, which enable and constrain political language and behavior. Based on the analysis of foreign policy documents, produced by the EU and the United States in their relationship with six religiously diverse African and Asian states, the article compares how both international actors represent religion in their foreign affairs. The analysis reveals similarities in the relatively low importance that they attribute to religion and major differences in how they represent the contribution of religion to creating and solving problems in other states. In sum, the foreign policies of both international actors are based on a secular discursive structure, but that of the United States is much more accommodative toward religion, including Islam, than that of the EU.

scholarly journals The Foreign Policy of Islamist Political Parties

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
International System ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Collective Work ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The Way

Does political Islam have a specific vision of global politics? How has the foreign policy of Islamist forces developed in order to impose their ideas onto the diplomatic agenda of other countries? How do these actors perceive the world, international affairs, and the way Islamic countries should engage with the international system? Eager to break with the dominant grammar of international relations, and instead to fuse Muslim states in a unique religious and political entity, Muslim actors have had to face up to the realities that they had promised to transform. Drawing on a series of case studies, this collective work sheds light on six national trajectories of Islamism: in Morocco (the Party of Justice and Development), Tunisia (Ennhada), Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood), Palestine (Hamas), Lebanon (Hizbullah) and Turkey (AKP). It looks at what has been produced by the representatives of political Islam in each case, and the way these representatives have put their words and their ideological aspirations into action within their foreign policies.

1. Theories of US foreign policy

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Offensive Realism ◽  
Defensive Realism ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines some of the competing theories that have been advanced to explain U.S. foreign policy. In trying to explain the foreign policy of the United States, a number of competing theories have been developed by International Relations scholars. Some theories focus on the role of the international system in shaping American foreign policy while others argue that various domestic factors are the driving force. The chapter first considers some of the obstacles to constructing a theory of foreign policy before discussing some of the competing theories of American foreign policy, including defensive realism, offensive realism, liberalism, Marxism, neoclassical realism, and constructivism. The chapter proceeds by reviewing the theoretical debate over the origins of the Cold War and the debate over the most appropriate grand strategy that the United States should follow in the post-Cold War era.

Is there an emerging left-wing foreign policy in the United States?

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-48
Author(s):  
Aaron Ettinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Policies

Is there a left-wing foreign policy emerging in the United States? The rise of an energized and assertive left wing of the Democratic Party, and a receptive constituency within the electorate, has opened space for new political possibilities at home. In the foreign policy realm, leftist internationalism is making compelling arguments about new directions. However, there are limitations to the possible realization of a left-wing foreign policy in the US. While candidates like Sanders and Warren are distinctive in a left-wing foreign policy worldview, the practical implications of their foreign policies are consistent with post-Cold War practice. There are two important exceptions: in trade policy and in their positions on the use of military force. Here they mark a sharp break from the liberal internationalist mainstream. This paper outlines five broad principles of left internationalism, assesses the foreign policy positions of leading Democratic candidates for the 2020 nomination, and explores the long-term prospects of left-wing foreign policy in the US after 2020.

Realism in Foreign Policy Analysis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Wivel
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
International System ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
External Action ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Action Space ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Foreign Policies

Realists explain foreign policy in terms of power politics. They disagree on the exact meaning of power and on how and to what extent politics is likely to influence policy. But they all find that power has a strong materialist component and that the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy is likely to vary with security challenges stemming from the external environment. The relative size of a state’s material resources is likely to influence its ability to set agendas and influence specific decisions and outcomes in international affairs. And the nature of the strategic environment, most importantly whether the security and survival of the state is under immediate threat, is likely to influence the relative weight of domestic influences on foreign policy. In sum, great powers enjoy a bigger external action space in their foreign policies than weaker states, and secure states enjoy a bigger external action space in their foreign policies than insecure states. Realism is a top-down approach to explaining foreign policy. Realists begin from the anarchic structure of the international system. They argue that the absence of a legitimate monopoly of power in the international system create a strong incentive for states to focus on survival as their primary goal and self-help as the most important means to achieving this goal. However, “survival” and “self-help” may take many forms. These forms are shaped by mechanisms of socialization and competition in the international system and systemic incentives are filtered through the perceptions of foreign policy decision makers and domestic institutions enabling and restraining the ability of decision makers to respond to external incentives. Neoclassical realists combine these factors in order to explain specific foreign policies. Offensive realists and defensive realists focus on the effects of structure on foreign policy, but with contrasting assumptions about the typical behavior of states: defensive realists expect states to pursue balancing policies, whereas offensive realists argue that only by creating an imbalance of power in its own favor will a state be able to maximize its security. In addition to being an analytical approach for explaining foreign policy, realists often serve as foreign policy advisors or act in the function of public intellectuals problematizing and criticizing foreign policy. This illustrates the potential for realism as an analytical, problem-solving and critical approach to foreign policy analysis. However, it also shows the strains within realism between ambitions of creating general theories, explaining particular foreign policies, and advising on how to make prudent foreign policy decisions.

Strategic Relationships in Post-Communist Foreign Policies

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason E. Strakes ◽  
Mikhail A. Molchanov ◽  
David J. Galbreath
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Strategic Relationships ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Newly Independent States

To gain a comprehensive understanding of the relationships of elite/citizen preferences and strategies—and its consequent impact on the perceived role of their countries in the greater international system—it is necessary to put an emphasis on interactions within and across contrasting areas of the formerly communist world. Until recently, the systematic investigation of foreign policy-making processes has been a relatively neglected dimension within the general domain of post-communist studies. During the mid-to-late 1990s, various scholars addressed ideological redefinition in post-communist states. Other scholars have addressed the foreign policy trajectory of the newly independent states from the perspective of governance, institutional structure, and state capacity. Among the analytic tools that have been adopted to evaluate the international activities of post-communist states in recent years is the burgeoning concept of “multi-vector” foreign policy. However, due to the vast cross-regional scope and complexity of the former Soviet region, it has become more analytically useful to identify this group of countries in terms of their location in separate and respective geographic subregions. Two regional overviews provide a synthesis of the four analytic foci: national identity, political transition, rationality, and regionalism. The first offers an assessment of the foreign policy decisions and strategies of the Baltic republics since 1990–1. The second evaluates the foreign relations between the Russian Federation and the five independent republics of Central Asia.

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