On Analysing the Dynamics of Foreign Policy Change:

Abstract

The analysis presented here departs from the conventional conceptualization of foreign policy change in terms of input-output modes of analysis, here represented by two of its most recent and acknowledged practitioners. It is argued that approaches of this kind tend to fail on at least three counts: their account of the function of human agency in such change, which is not given the central role which this factor arguably deserves; their negligence of the agency-structure issue and its implications for analysing the dynamic interaction between decision-makers and social structures; and their inability to incorporate `learning' as an endogenous characteristic of foreign policy systems. An alternative mode of analysis is then presented which rejects the input-output imagery while specifically addressing the problems highlighted above. Although it defines the explanandum of foreign policy wholly in terms of agential behaviour, it includes structural factors as a crucial explanans and outlines a conceptualization of the dynamic nature of foreign policy which explicitly incorporates the reciprocal causal links between agents and structures, particularly in the form of the interplay — both adaptive and innovative — between institutions and discursive practices in foreign policy behaviour.