Ideational Foreign Policy Analysis

such as psychology, social psychology and sociology.¹³ What follows is that the dissertation is also integrative, for it incorporates different information from numerous sources and disciplines. In the agent-structure debate (see 1.3), FPA’s focus is clearly on agency and thus highlights the primacy of individuals in explaining and understanding a state’s foreign policy (Houghton 2007, 25). This is the case with the dissertation as well. It is orientated toward agency, more specifically human agency. Moreover, it does not “black-box” individuals but rather sees them as central agents in determining foreign policy action.

The idea of rationality stems from the premise that individuals are expected-utility-maximizing agents. This idea is not necessarily problematic per se, but it rests on shaky assumptions. First, according to rationalism, actors are conscious of the choices they are making. Secondly, they also engage in systematic classification of different possible options. Thirdly, actors act in line with the alternative that maximizes their utility, by taking into account the risks involved and the information at their disposal.

Thus, actors should not subdue their interests to prevailing norms or cultural traditions (Morin & Paquin 2018, 218–219).

This study does not deny that actors make utility-maximizing choices based on their interests. As Kowert (2012, 31–32) has put it, “even the most botched efforts at policy-making are usually recognizable as (sometimes faint) approximations of rational choice”. However, rational decision-making does not play out similarly across the board. Rather, instead of being utility-maximizing agents, humans are social actors with limited rationality (see 3.3). In other words, their rationality is affected by their belief systems and the social environment in which they are situated.

These factors should be considered in efforts to analyze foreign policy, and the dissertation pays attention to the very ideational factors that permeate rational decision-making.

To put it differently, the thesis is interested in how both subjective and collective ideas affect foreign policy and how idiosyncratic and shared ideas are related – a task that requires an integrated view of ideational theories. So far, surprisingly little dialogue and collaboration has taken place among the ideational branches of FPA. This is peculiar since there has been an understanding of the potential usefulness of such an approach from the start of FPA (Houghton 2007, 31). For example, Richard C.

Snyder, in one of the classics of the FPA literature, recognized the necessity of taking ideational perspectives into account in understanding the roots of action in the realm of foreign policy. He argued that

[i]t is difficult to see how we can account for specific actions and for continuities of policies without trying to discover how their operating environment is perceived by those responsible for choices, how particular situations are structured, what values and norms are applied to certain kinds of problems, what matters are selected for attention, and how their past experience conditions present responses (Snyder 1962, 5).

In the decades that followed, multiple scholars have shared this conviction and called for joint analytical efforts between psychology and constructivism (see e.g. Finnmore

& Sikkink 1998, 896–899; Flanik 2011; Goldgeier & Tetlock 2001, 83; Houghton 2007; Hymans 2010; Wendt 1999, 134). Houghton (2007, 27), for example, points out that “approaches that emphasize the manner in which reality is constructed are

natural bedfellows, even though…social construction and its individual counterpart clearly operate at different levels of analysis”. Tannenwald (2005, 18) again claims that constructivist and cognitivist approaches both share the view that “the way people interpret the world and define their interests is based on ideas”. For one reason or another, progress has been rather modest. Perhaps scholars have seen divergent ontological standpoints as insurmountable and, moreover, seeking and valuing inter-paradigmatic collaboration and “compatibilism” have not been in vogue in IR until recently (Lake 2013; Mouritzen 2017; Sil & Katzenstein 2010).

Although progress in the joint ideational effort has been modest, there are solid initiatives to bring psychology and constructivism closer together. The most significant contribution to promoting and developing ideational dialogue is Vaughn P. Shannon and Paul A. Kowert’s (2012) edited volume Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations: An Ideational Alliance. The book lays the foundation for an

“ideational alliance” between cognitive psychology and constructivism. The introductory chapters and the ensuing articles convincingly show that it is possible, fruitful, and necessary to apply social and psychological theories in order to understand the ideational milieu in which foreign policymaking takes place.

The key insight of the opus is that even though psychology and constructivism differ in many respects, they are not incompatible. Rather, they support each other’s weaknesses, since the paradigms deal with different levels of analysis. Traditional applications of cognitive psychology in foreign policy analysis are allegedly reductionist, static, universal, and transcultural, and they are said to neglect the social and political environment in which decision-makers are situated. Constructivism can inform psychological boundaries on how certain cultural or societal values and norms constrain or direct an individual’s preferences. Constructivism, again, is often structurally biased and might lack insights into agency (see e.g. Sending 2002).

Sometimes, purely social explanations fail to explain variation in state action, which can be caused by divergent individual attitudes. To put it briefly, the point of the ideational alliance is to demonstrate

how the virtues of constructivism set macrostructural boundaries on the perceptions of values and possible responses based on prevailing norms and identity, while psychology provides microfoundations¹⁶ for the motives behind normative behavior and identity change (Shannon 2012, 14; see also McDermott 2004, 13).

16 According to Lake (2013, 573), “in the last decade or so there has been an increasing and […]

appropriate demand that mid-level theories have explicit ‘micro-foundations’ or […] a ‘causal mechanism’. In other words, theories are preferred which can link the incentives and actions of real individuals or possibly groups of relatively homogeneous individuals to policy outcomes in a consistent way”. See also Kertzer & Zeitzoff 2017.

In other words, although individual policy-makers’ opinions might be rooted in social and historical circumstances and although they seek policy options from socially and politically appropriate alternatives (see e.g. Legro 1996; Weldes 1996),

“actors are not [mere] bearers of structural components, but independent agents”

with their own, sometimes decisive idiosyncrasies (Abe 2012, 683–685).

Furthermore, the primary concerns of the ideational alliance constitute a triangle in which obligation, identity, and choice are the vertexes of the tripod. These three themes also recur throughout the book. In other words, the premise of the ideational alliance is that both psychological and social factors are needed to understand how people make choices. Decision-making is shaped by identity, on the one hand, and by the sense of obligation, on the other. In other words, personal identity is an important guide to one’s intent and, in order to make a choice, one must also reckon with normative constraints imposed by the societal environment (Kowert 2012).

This study commends the endeavor by Shannon and Kowert and seeks to advocate and complement the dialogue between psychology and constructivism in FPA.

However, instead of ideational alliance, the dissertation speaks of Ideational Foreign Policy Analysis. There are two reasons for the choice. First, Shannon and Kowert’s contribution does not encompass individual belief system studies, public opinion, or the question of trust, unlike this study, which aims to broaden the ideational horizon.

In other words, IFPA incorporates additional theoretical perspectives and levels of analysis into the realm of ideational dialogue. Thus, it serves as an umbrella for the various ideational approaches of FPA. Secondly, the decision to use another concept is a matter of semantics. To imply that a theoretical construct is against something sends a strong signal, and it is perhaps unnecessary to see material/rational and ideational views as polar opposites, which is in fact something the authors of the volume note. As the study will soon elaborate, normative compliance requires strategic thinking and, moreover, psychological views are based on the idea of limited rationality. One could then perhaps state that this study rejects the utility of purely rationalist and materialist theories but not the entire idea of rationality.

As the broad theoretical contours of the work have now been drawn, it is in order to elaborate what ideas actually are. The term idea is not only vague but also too broad to have any analytical value without conceptual specifications. Obviously, in IFPA, salient ideas are confined to the world of foreign policy and international relations. For instance, ideas about the nature of international politics and its actors, and views about one’s nation’s values and position in the international system stand out as important ideas guiding foreign policy action. In this particular study, ideas refer to individual and public beliefs, collective identities and the perceived trustworthiness of other states, for example. These and other important ideational concepts will be thoroughly introduced and analyzed later in the study.

The basic assumption running through this dissertation is that ideas should be divided into individual and collective ideas. In other words, ideas are both mental and social phenomena. (Tannenwald 2005, 15). Individual ideas are subjective constructs and representations of reality, which, depending on the circumstances, might significantly influence an individual’s definition of the situation at hand, his decisions and, ultimately, his actions (see 3.3.2). Collective ideas in turn refer to intersubjective knowledge. According to Legro’s (2000, 420) description,

“[collective] ideas are social and holistic” and they “are not simply individual conceptions that are shared or added together”. Individuals can influence collective ideas, but they also have an intersubjective existence that transcends the individual roots. In other words, collective ideas are typically embodied in institutions, symbols, and discourse. Another underlying stance of this study is that the individual and collective levels are related through multiple mechanisms. There is thus a link between the cognitive and social worlds. Through political action, entrepreneurship or persuasion individuals can transfer their individual beliefs and preferences to the collective level. The intersubjective world again influences the individual level, for example via socialization, social conformity and learning. All of these mechanisms will be touched upon in the following chapters of the dissertation.

One can approach ideas from two perspectives. Most scholars share the opinion that ideas have both causal and constitutive effects. From a causal perspective, ideas influence policies or “lead to changes in intersubjective understandings”. Ideas operate through either individual or collective causal mechanisms such as socialization or learning (see 3.3.2) or identity (see 3.3.3). From a constitutive perspective, ideas are those structures that define actors and their properties.

According to this point of view, ideas are not mere guidelines, but they give meaning to material circumstances and they also generate conditions for action (Tannenwald 2005, 29–30, 33).

It is noteworthy that although the focus of this investigation is on ideas that exist within the “black box” of the state, it must be highlighted that ideas are transnational.

Thus, the image of a purely domestic ideational landscape is a necessary simplification. States are not hermetical entities but are rather influenced by the international environment also in ideational and normative questions. Ideas penetrate borders and spread globally, for example through transnational networks and international institutions, in which policymakers and other important individual actors are involved. How international ideas take root in societies is a complex question. Their localization, acceptance or rejection can, for instance, depend on the domestic structure of the “target state” (see e.g. Acharya 2004; Checkel 2005; Risse-Kappen 1994).

Next, the dissertation will introduce the ideas that are examined in the specific studies. It starts from the individual level, and deals with the literature on cognitive

psychology and belief systems. The first section is followed by an analysis of the elite level, namely constructivism in general and the concept of national identity in particular. The third part concerns the nexus between public opinion and foreign policy, making the case for why the public level should also be included in the IFPA.

The last section explores the importance of trust in foreign policy, thus moving to the inter-state level, where intra-state ideas finally materialize and turn into foreign policy.