Key Actors in the Management of Crises: International and Regional Organizations

In crisis-ridden times, when events like the COVID-19 pandemic, acts of terrorism, and climate change-induced crises are making constant headlines, states, businesses, and individuals alike look to international organizations (IOs) to help them weather the storm. How can the role of IOs be better understood in the context of crisis and crisis management? For a start, it requires a distinction between objective and subjective crisis perspectives in studying IOs. From an objective perspective, IOs are examined as unitary actors that have the aim of contributing to the stability of the international political system. On the other hand, in a subjectivistic approach, IOs’ actual crisis management is the focus. In this perspective, the emphasis is on an IO’s internal life, that is, its perceptions, bureau politics, and decision-making. In the exploration of these issues, IOs can no longer by studied as entities but have to be unwrapped into small groups and individuals, such as members of secretariats or member state’s top politicians. As borne out by theories developed by scholars of crisis management and foreign-policy analysis, centralization and cognitive bias are of special interest in the study of IOs. IOs’ crisis management has four crisis phases and tasks: sense-making, decision-making, meaning-making, and crisis termination. Finally, crises may prove a threat to, or an opportunity for, IOs. Transnational crises may usher in IOs’ foundation and flourishing, or they may contribute to IOs’ demise.

9. Foreign Policy

This chapter examines theories and approaches involved in foreign policy analysis. Foreign policy analysis (FPA) is concerned with the study of the management of external relations and activities of nation-states, as distinguished from their domestic policies. The chapter first explains the concept of foreign policy before discussing various approaches to foreign policy analysis. It then evaluates the arguments of major theories by using a ‘level-of-analysis’ approach that addresses the international system level, the nation-state level, and the level of the individual decision maker. It also presents a case-study on the Gulf War to illustrate how insights from various approaches to foreign policy analysis can be brought together. The chapters ends with reflections on Donald Trump’s foreign policy and a discussion of how FPA theories have combined domestic and international factors.

Crisis Foreign Policy Making in Venezuela: The Case of Nicolás Maduro’s Left-Wing Militaristic Cabinet in Venezuela’s Blockade Policy towards Brazilian Aids

Venezuela has experienced a turmoil of economic crisis since 2014 under the administration of President Nicolás Maduro. This crisis has been spilling towards social and political issues, with one being the emergence of opposition group led by Juan Guaidó. This crisis, at first, has invited sympathy from various international actors, both states and non-states, one of them being Brazil. However, in February 2019, President Maduro decided to fully-blockade Venezuela-Brazil borders for any human or goods movement. This paper aims to analyze the presence of President Maduro’s cabinet towards Brazil borders blockade in Venezuelan Crisis in 2019. This paper utilizes qualitative social science methodology by analyzing primary and secondary data. By using the groupthink paradigm in foreign policy analysis, this paper argues that there is a position convergence between the members of the cabinet with the background of: (1) the dominance of nationalist military group loyal to President Maduro; (2) the same ideology of left-wing political spectrum. This paper also argues that beside the two internal factors above, the external factors of regional and global tension towards Venezuela also create an isolation as an element of stress towards this government. This paper concludes that the combination of the three factors above become the main factors that formulated the blockade policy.

Foreign policy change as rhetorical politics: domestic-regional constellation of Global South states

Although the recent advancements in critical constructivist IR on political rhetoric has greatly improved our understanding of linguistic mechanisms of political action, we need a sharp understanding of how rhetoric explains foreign policy change. Here we conceptualize a link between rhetoric and foreign policy change by foregrounding distinct dynamics at the regional and domestic institutional environments. Analytically, at the regional level, we suggest examining whether norms of foreign policy engagement are explicitly coded in treaties and agreements or implicit in conventions and practices of actors. And at the domestic level, we suggest examining whether a particular foreign policy issue area is concurrent or contested among interlocutors. In this constellation, we clarify how four different rhetorical strategies underwrites foreign policy change – persuasion, mediation, explication and reconstruction – how it operates, and the processes through which it unfolds in relation to multiple audiences. Our principal argument is that grand foreign policy change requires continuous rhetorical deployments with varieties of politics to preserve and stabilize the boundaries in the ongoing fluid relations of states. We illustrate our argument with an analysis of Brazil’s South-South grand strategy under the Lula administration and contrast it against the rhetoric of subsequent administrations. Our study has implications for advancing critical foreign policy analysis on foreign policy change and generally for exploring new ways of studying foreign policies of nonwestern postcolonial states in international relations.

“Goodbye Moscow, Hello Brussels”: The City Diplomacy of Chișinău Mayor Dorin Chirtoacă

This article argues that post-Soviet mayors are foreign policy actors that deserve more attention from area studies and foreign policy analysis scholars. Mayors have their own diplomatic preferences and goals – rooted in geopolitical and ethnonationalist views – that they can enact using city hall institutions and networks. They can work either in harmony or in opposition with central authorities by bolstering or compromising the executive’s diplomatic goals and actions. These claims are explored in a case study of the foreign policy of Chișinău mayor Dorin Chirtoacă (2007–2017), whose diplomatic endeavors consolidated the Moldovan capital’s ties with Romania and the European Union and minimized interactions with countries in the former Soviet Union, including Russia. At times, the mayor’s actions abroad ran afoul of central authorities as he created an alternative foreign policy that undermined central foreign policy. The findings suggest that a more extensive investigation of how mayors interact with foreign actors would refine our understanding of foreign policy-making in the former Soviet Union and in Central and Eastern Europe more broadly.

Slides to accompany "Teaching IR Theory for Future Foreign Policy Practitioners" presentation

Materials to present a “practical theory” toolkit for applied foreign policy analysis in the classroom setting

Foreign Policy Analysis and Armed Non-State Actors in World Politics: Lessons from the Middle East

The study of armed non-state actors (ANSAs) has grown exponentially in the last two decades. This article explores the foreign policy of ANSAs as a new empirical domain for foreign policy analysis (FPA) by drawing on various examples from the Middle East to show the merit of this area for novel empirical and theoretical studies. The article identifies the domain of ANSAs’ foreign policy showing how FPA research has so far remained state-centric and almost completely ignores ANSAs. While the external engagement of ANSAs were examined within the scholarship on civil wars, FPA can be adapted to provide systematic scholarly understanding of this phenomenon. Finally, the article explores how studying ANSAs’ foreign policies can revitalize FPA and drive its agenda into new directions.

Foreign Policy Analysis in Brazil: The Use of Middle-Range Theories

Since its inception in the late 1950s, the field of foreign policy analysis in Brazil has been mostly problem driven. Furthermore, most of the studies are focused exclusively on the Brazilian context, without extending their conclusion beyond national boundaries. However, the analysis of more than 200 articles, published by Brazilian academics in local and international journals since the 1950s, reveals that new trends are emerging since the beginning of the 21st century. There is a steady increase of articles using foreign policy analysis tools and concepts, a growing number of comparative studies, and a tendency to develop middle-range theories that can be replicated elsewhere. Even though the use of middle-range theories is still incipient, the Brazilian international relations (IR) community could greatly benefit from it, fostering greater integration with the international IR community, refining the Brazilian foreign policy analysis, and reevaluating the “scientific exceptionalism” that has characterized Brazilian IR academic production.

KEBIJAKAN LUAR NEGERI INDONESIA DI ERA JOKOWI MELALUI DIPLOMASI EKONOMI DALAM UPAYA UNTUK MENGUASAI PASAR HALAL DUNIA

The idea of moderate Islam was implemented in economic diplomacy to dominate the Global Halal Market through its participation in the Islamic Cooperation Organization (OIC) forum by Indonesia during Jokowi's reign. By using Graham T. Allison's foreign policy analysis model, this paper will explain the actions taken by the Jokowi government to control the Global Halal Market in terms of its opportunities and challenges. Based on the analysis, the results obtained from the number of Muslims in Indonesia and Indonesia's participation in the OIC become an opportunity and certification of Halal product become a challenge. Jokowi's government has synergized with the bureaucratic apparatus, but this effort still seems stagnant. Because in the end Indonesia is still lagging behind other countries in the Global Halal Market. Keyword : Economyc Diplomacy; Jokowi; Global Halal Market; Graham T. Allison Abstrak Indonesia dalam masa pemerintahan Jokowi mengimplementasikan gagasan islam moderat ke dalam diplomasi ekonomi untuk menguasai Pasar Halal Dunia melalui keikutsertaannya dalam forum Organisasi Kerjasama Islam (OKI). Dengan menggunakan model analisa kebijakan luar negeri milik Graham T. Allison, tulisan ini akan menjelaskan tindakan (action) yang dilakukan pemerintahan Jokowi untuk menguasai Pasar Halal Dunia beserta peluang dan tantangannya. Berdasarkan analisis, didapatkan hasil bahwa tingginya angka pemeluk muslim dan keikutsertaan Indonesia dalam OKI menjadi peluang, dan permasalahan sertifikasi internasional menjadi tantangan. Pemerintahan Jokowi telah bersinergi dengan perangkat birokrasi namun upaya ini masih terkesan stagnan. Sehingga pada akhirnya Indonesia masih tertinggal dari negara lain dalam Pasar Halal Dunia. Kata kunci : Diplomasi Ekonomi; Jokowi; Pasar Halal Dunia; Graham T. Allison