Relative Status and Foreign Policy

Abstract

A revision and extension of status-field theory is applied to the analysis of foreign policy interactions among 32 black African states in the middle 1960s. In the revision of the theory, directed-dyads are partitioned into four sets, based on the relative position of the actor-nation in each dyad. Hypotheses relating status distance on economic development and power to three patterns of foreign policy behaviour (cooperation, conflict, and interaction) then are tested for each partitioned set. Throughout, the goal is to retain the generality and parsimony of status-field theory and to increase empirical correspondence. The findings support the utility of the partitioning procedure and confirm the relative importance of power in relations between states, also found in previous tests of the theory and in recent analyses of African foreign policy.