Conclusion: Ideas Matter at all Levels

Therefore, in the presence or emergence of a trusting relationship, states should not resort to but rather eliminate different forms of hedging. An analyst who seeks to recognize hedging strategies must, however, pay attention to several questions prior to drawing conclusions. First, the social meaning of a hedge needs to be understood.

More precisely, the social and cultural context matters and, moreover, the perceptions of the relevant leaders must be taken into account. Secondly, “the geographical and historical situatedness” of the nation in question is also important.

Furthermore, the state’s resources also determine the strategies it is able to choose in order to hedge against uncertainty (Keating & Ruzicka 2014, 763–764).⁵³

Again, the methods introduced are not mutually exclusive. Given the multifaceted and multilevel nature of trust, researchers should not neglect any of these methods straightaway. The research question, the case selection, and the level of analysis in focus all direct methodological choices.

as a consequential foreign policy decision. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that no matter how distinct the belief systems may be, they are always constructed in a social context. Thus, in addition to personal needs and motivations, personal belief systems are formed through learning and socialization.

When it comes to intersubjective ideas, the study investigated national identity. It adopted a bottom-up view, in which an individual identification with a nation state was seen as the foundation of (collective) national identity – a shared interpretation about what the nation is and what it represents in international politics. Thus, in order to fully understand the origin of shared national identities, individual beliefs must be appreciated as essential micro-structures of collective images. Furthermore, national identity was also understood as the sum of three interrelated factors:

worldview, political purpose, and international status. These elements affect how decision-makers see the nature of the world, view the values their nation stands for, and understand their state’s position vis-à-vis other actors. Crucially, all of these aspects shape policymakers’ understandings of their country’s interests and appropriate action in international relations.

The principles of IFPA should also underlie the efforts to understand the role of public opinion in foreign policy. More precisely, ordinary citizens possess beliefs, which take shape in a process similar to elite belief formation – that is, in the interplay between inherent and contextual factors. Moreover, the ways in which the decision-makers appreciate public attitudes is again partly dependent on their personal beliefs.

Some policymakers regard it as necessary to consider public views an integral part of making foreign policy decisions, whereas others are inclined to disregard public guidance. Thus, ideational factors, in addition to threat perceptions, electoral threats, the structure of society, and issue salience, determine which of the three models – top-down, bottom-up or disconnection – is dominant in the foreign policy-public nexus.

Moreover, it was argued above that individual and shared ideas can profoundly influence interstate relations. The issue was approached from the angle of trust, which is essentially a belief that others do not do harm, but rather what is right and agreed upon. Unsurprisingly, various paradigms have divergent definitions of trust, which all describe part of the broad phenomenon. Rationalist theories advocate a rather narrow view of trust by seeing it as an interest-based willingness to reciprocate cooperation. Ideational theories – namely psychology and constructivism – offer more extensive views of trust and, in fact, any interpretation of trust without ideational content is unavoidably too narrow. Psychology sheds light on individual dispositions and the emotive foundations of trust, whereas constructivism underlines the social nature of trust. In other words, constructivists link trust to obligation and to the question of what is right. Moreover, they pay attention to the discursive and narrational manifestations of trust in society and, additionally, argue

that similar identities facilitate the emergence of a trusting relationship between actors. The narrowness of rationalism notwithstanding, one should not exclude the calculative interpretation of trust from the analysis. Rather, calculations regarding the other’s trustworthiness are affected by psychological and social factors.

Lastly, it is worth asking how scholars should apply the principles of IFPA in conducting research on foreign policy. Essentially, the manner hinges on the chosen theoretical and conceptual framework and, ultimately, on the research questions.

Ideational theories come in handy if one seeks to understand the premises of a decision or how a certain action became possible in the first place. If one wants to understand how individual beliefs change or come about, then one must pay attention to both inherent and contextual factors. This study has suggested qualitative analysis as a possible solution for producing a more context-sensitive analysis. Another alternative is to employ quantitative and qualitative methods in parallel (see e.g. Nykänen 2016). As to identity and foreign policy, the precept is that, fundamentally, it is individuals who carry national identities, and identities have both social and cognitive content. Moreover, one should never neglect the significance of the domestic context for the construction of institutionalized state identities. As to public opinion and foreign policy, the formation of public attitudes does not dramatically differ from the process of elite belief development. Context and personal inclinations matter. If one seeks to understand how policymakers acknowledge public sentiments, besides factors such as electoral threat or domestic structure, one must also pay attention to decision-makers’ beliefs about the necessity of taking public views into account. Lastly, although there is an undeniable element of rational calculation in a trusting relationship, one cannot simply understand the quality of a relation without considering respective identities and the shared history of the trustor and trustee.