SUMMARY AND COMMENTARIES ON

‘LEVELS OF ANALYSIS AND FOREIGN POLICY’

From the book “International Politics on the World Stage, 12e, John T. Rourke”1

SUMMARY

This chapter is divided into three major parts; each discusses a level of analysis

regarding a state’s foreign policy.

A. Individual-Level Analysis

This level of analysis looks at the people who make the policy. This level of analysis

involves understanding on how is the process of policy making.

The basic question regarding this level of analysis is on how do basic human

traits influence policy, which is a discussion on human as a species. There are clearly

several factors that determine how a human being takes a certain policy. Among

them:

1. Cognitive factors. Human beings are bounded by a certain limitation

cognitively in making certain decision. There are external boundaries, which

include missing or unknown information; and internal boundaries, that

include human physical frailties. In coping with this problem decision makers

tend to seek cognitive consistency by discounting ideas that contradict their

existing views. Another way is self-justification or conviction that the choice

will eventually succeed, or known as wishful thinking. The third way is to

use what is known as heuristic device, which allows us to avoid gathering

considerable information and thorough analysis. Some examples of these

heuristic devices would be stereotypes and analogies (a certain comparison

between new situations and an earlier situations someone had experienced).

2. Emotional factors. This is one factor that determines the condition of the

decision maker in making decision. While it is easy to imagine that the

decision maker would be rational enough in taking the decision, in reality

decision maker will find him/herself under pressure, sad, angry, or depressed.

3. Psychological factors. There are psychological traits shared by humans that

explain why their feelings and decisions are usually less than fully rational.

1 John T. Rourke, International Politics on the World Stage, 12th Edition (New York City, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2008).

One of the approaches is frustration-aggression theory, which argues that

individuals and societies that are frustrated sometimes become aggressive.

4. Biological factors. While controversial, there are various theories that explain

how human decisions are often not fully rational. One of them is biopolitics,

which tries to explain the relations between physical nature and political

behavior of human. The comparison between animal and human behavior that

often used in explaining the way humans act is ethology. One example of this

ethology is as mentioned by Ardrey (pp. 12-14), that “territoriality – the drive

to gain, maintain, and defend the exclusive right to a piece of property – is an

animal instinct.” The difference may also be caused by gender2 differences.

The issue of this gender differences have created the gender opinion gap that

political scientists are just beginning to examine. This gender problem has

derived manliness, which states that aggressive behavior is closely related to

sex.

5. Perceptions. The ancient debate on perceptions is philosophical, to determine

whether there is an objective world or whether everything is only what we

perceive to be. There are four common characteristics of perceptions:

1. We tend to see opponents as more threatening than they may actually

be (e.g. how the United States are really alarmed by North Korean

nuclear threat).

2. We tend to see the behavior of others as more planned and coordinated

than our own.

3. We find it hard to understand why others dislike, mistrust, and fear us.

4. Others and we tend to have similar images of one another.

Another common characteristic of human is that human beings tend to think

and act differently in collective settings than they do as individuals. This is the

discussion of organizational behavior.

Human beings play a variety of roles based on attitude about the status we

have and the behaviors we adopt in them. The script for a role is derived from a

combination of self-expectation (how we expect ourselves to act) and external

expectations (how others expect us to behave).

2 The author has managed to distinct the idea of sex and gender, in which sex is biological, and gender is behavioral. See Rourke, p. 69.

When people give advices and make decisions within an organization, they not

only have to consider that they think but also how others will view their opinions and

decisions in the organization. The calculation tends to promote groupthink. In groups

as such, the image of a devil’s advocate is a rarity, in part because those who take this

approach get forced out.

The third approach to individual-level analysis focuses on idiosyncratic

analysis, that studies how each leader’s personal characteristics help shape his or her

decisions. This is the discussion of leaders and their individual traits. There are five

of many possible factors to consider:

1. Personality. Under this factor scholars examine a leader’s basic orientations

toward self and toward others, behavioral patterns, and attitudes about such

politically relevant concepts as authority. The most well known scheme will

place political personality along an active-passive scale and a positive-

negative scale. Active leaders are innovators, while passive leaders are

reactors. Positive personalities enjoy the contentious political environment,

while negative personalities are apt to feel burdened, even abused, by political

criticism. The worst combination is said to be the active-negative combination

(since active leaders receive more criticism, yet negative personalities are

prone to assume that opponents are enemies).

2. Physical and mental health. A leader’s physical and mental health can be

important factors in decision making. How physical health proved to be

important was as the example of F. D. Roosevelt, who was ill from

hypertension while was at the office of the presidency. How psychological

problems proved to be important was as the example of Adolf Hitler, who was

arguably suffer from ailments from a mixture of illness and medications.

3. Ego and ambition. A leader’s ego and personal ambitions can also influence

policy.

4. Political history and personal experiences. Decision makers are also

affected by their personal experiences.

5. Perceptions and operational reality. Decision maker’s images of reality

constitute a fifth idiosyncratic element that influences their approach to

foreign policy. Perceptions form an operational reality, that is, policy makers

tend to act based on perceptions, whether they are accurate or not.

Human decisions are mixtures of rational and irrational inputs. This underlines

how policies are actually mixtures of rational and irrational factors. This view of

how individuals and groups make policy choices is called poliheuristic theory. This

theory depicts decision making as a two-stage process, the use of shortcuts to

eliminate unacceptable policy options, and then setting aside domestic politics and

personal factors and concentrate on strategic, realpolitik considerations.

B. State-Level Analysis

Policymaking is significantly influenced by the fact that it occurs within the context

of a political structure, in which countries are the most important.

The type of government, the situation, and the type of policy determines

making foreign policy.

1. The type of government and the foreign policy process. The more

authoritarian a government is, the more likely it is that foreign policy will be

centered in a narrow segment of the government. Foreign policy making in

democracies is much more open with inputs from legislators, the media, public

opinion, and opposition parties.

2. The type of situation and the foreign policy process. Policy is made

differently during crisis and non-crisis situation. Crisis policy making is likely

to be dominated by the political leader and a small group of advisers.

3. Type of policy and the foreign policy process. How foreign policy is

decided also varies according to the nature of the issue area involved. Issues

that have little immediate or obvious impact on citizens of a certain country

can be termed pure foreign policy. By contrast, foreign policy that has an

immediate and obvious domestic impact on citizens of a certain country is

called intermestic policy.

Culture also determines the foreign policy making. Each country’s foreign

policy tends to reflect its political culture. This concept represents a society’s widely

held, traditional values and its fundamental practices that are slow to change

(Paquette, 2003; Jung, 2002).

There are some policy-making actors:

1. Heads of government and other political executives. Some important

factors regarding to the political executives are chief executive’s formal

powers (grants of authority given by constitution and laws); informal powers;

and leadership capabilities. Yet, bureaucrats often do not agree with the

country’s foreign policy. They try to influence the policy themselves by

filtering information, giving recommendations, and implementation.

2. Legislatures. In all countries, the foreign policy role of legislatures play a

lesser role compared to the executive branch. Yet it does not mean that all

legislatures are powerless. Legislatures play a larger foreign policy role in

democracies, yet it still constrained by several factors: extensive legal powers,

tradition, the belief that a unified national voice is important to a successful

foreign policy, and legislators tend to focus on domestic policy.

3. Interest groups. Interest groups are private associations of people who have

similar policy views and who pressure the government to adopt those views as

policy. There are several kinds of interest groups, among them: cultural

groups, economic groups, issue-oriented groups, and transnational interest

groups.

4. The people. The public plays a highly variable role in foreign policy. Public

opinion is a marginal factor in authoritarian regimes, yet the role is more

complex in democracies.

C. System-Level Analysis

While countries are free to make any foreign policy decision they want, practically

they have to make choices that are reasonable within the context of the realities of the

international system.

Every system has its own structural characteristics. Two of particular

relevance to this analysis is on the organization of authority and the scope and level of

interaction among the actors in the system.

1. The organization of authority. The structure of authority for making and

enforcing rules, for allocating assets, and for conducting other authoritative

tasks in a system can range from hierarchical (vertical) to anarchical

(horizontal). Most systems tend to be hierarchical. However, the international

system is mostly horizontal. Thus, the international system is largely anarchic,

in which there is no higher authority than the states.

2. Scope, level, and intensity of interactions. Another structural characteristic

of any political system is the scope (range), frequency, and intensity (level) of

interactions among the actors. In the international system, the scope,

frequency, and level of interaction among the actors have grown extensively

during the last half-century, mainly due to economic interdependence.

The second factor that determines the policy making under this analysis is the

power relationships. Countries are restrained by the realities of power in the

international system. The conduct of the international system is heavily influenced by

power considerations such as the number of powerful actors and the context of power.

The international system has been defined in part by how many powerful actors

each has (Wilkinson, 2004). Such an actors can be a single country or empire, global

IGOs, or regional IGOs. These poles are particularly important to the realists in

relations with the balance of power. It underlines the theory that all states are power

seeking, the states/blocs will seek to become hegemonic, and the others will try to

block such effort. Power relationships are also determined by the context of power.

System-level analysis contends that the economic realities of the international

system help shape the choices that countries make. Again, this is the same in systems

from the global to local level. Interdependence is one of the economic facts of life that

influences states’ behavior. Natural resource production and consumption patterns

also influence the operation of the system.

Norms influence the actions within the international system. It is hard to

accept that norms exist in a world in which horrendous things sometimes happen; yet

it would be far to say that there is anything near a universal standard of behavior.

Commentaries

This elaboration on levels of analysis should have been elaborated more with some

other levels of analysis. Another book, International Relations, Eighth Edition

(Joshua S. Goldstein and Jon C. Pevehouse, 2009: pp. 17-19) added some levels of

analysis:

1. The individual level, concerns the perceptions, choices, and actions of

individual human beings.

2. The domestic (or state or societal) level, concerns the aggregations of

individuals within states that influence state actions in the international arena.

3. The interstate (or international or systemic) level, concerns the influence of

the international system upon outcomes.

4. The global level, seeks to explain international outcomes in terms of global

trends and forces that transcend the interaction between states itself.

Among many other level of analysis, the individual-level analysis could be

one of the most interesting. To say the least, Indonesian leaders can be judged by

many of their individual traits. And to compare, I personally see that Indonesian

politics is mostly related to leaders’ individual traits. For example, how the

charismatic Soekarno ignited the spirit of Indonesians on the international politics of

Konfrontasi, or how the current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s attitude on

politics which created quite a weak stance on dealing with interstate conflict, as in the

2010 conflict with Malaysia.

Matthew Hanzel

Department of International Relations, 2009

043 2009 0015