Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis
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Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis

Henrik Larsen

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eBook - ePub

Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis

Henrik Larsen

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About This Book

Henrik Larsen presents discourse analysis as an alternative approach to foreign policy analysis. Through an extensive empirical study of British and French policies towards Europe in the 1980s, he demonstrates the importance of political discourse in shaping foreign policy.
The author discusses key theoretical problems within traditional belief system approaches and proposes an alternative one: political discourse analysis. The theory is illustrated through detailed analyses of British and French discourses on Europe, nation/state security and the nature of international relations.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2005
ISBN
9781134722365

1 Discourse analysis and foreign policy†

This chapter begins with a critique of mainstream foreign policy analysis literature on ‘psychological factors’ and beliefs. I suggest an alternative approach, discourse analysis, as one answer to the problems identified in mainstream approaches. I then discuss the implications of using discourse analysis in foreign policy analysis. I look at the international implications of using discourse analysis in the study of foreign policy. Finally, the chapter treats the methodological problems involved in concretely applying discourse analysis with reference to issues relating to the investigation of French and British discourses in this book.

Problems in the Traditional Literature on ‘Psychological Factors’

The traditional literature on ‘psychological factors’ can be divided into two parts – belief systems and psychological mechanisms (misperception, irrational consistency etc.). Images or perceptions fall within the category of belief systems. Whereas images are often seen in the literature to be of a general character coming close to belief systems, perceptions are often understood as perceptions of something, in other words as more concrete.
When the focus of study is on ‘psychological factors’, three kinds of problems can be identified in the traditional literature1 on foreign policy. First, a tendency to focus on the individual decision-maker. Second, an inclination towards approaching beliefs in a positivistic way. Third, beliefs and psychological mechanisms are studied assuming that language is a transparent medium which does not have its own dynamics. These three problems in the traditional literature are discussed below.

Focusing on the individual decision-maker

The traditional approach often focuses on the individual (Hollis and Smith 1990: 74; Smith 1988: 31; Vogler 1989: 139). Assuming that the individual decision-maker, mostly a top political leader, is important, approaches such as operational code or cognitive mapping are used to establish the belief system of the actor.2 Discussion of ‘roles’ versus ‘personality’ are common in the traditional literature, not least in Rosenau’s works (see, e.g., Rosenau 1980: 177-184) in which attempts are made to construct a macro theory of foreign policy behaviour.3 The literature on (individual) belief systems does, however, suffer from a lack of general consideration of the impact of the individual (and therefore also his belief system) on the general line of a country’s foreign policy (another way of expressing this is that the literature on belief systems is not linked to the discussion of role). Although it is sometimes pointed out that the view of the individual examined does reflect more general societal values, this mostly does not have any methodological consequences. This can lead to a lack of understanding of the depth and persistence of particular views and of the possibility of continuity of beliefs across changes of persons or even of governments.
The tendency to focus on the individual as a unit of analysis can, for instance, be found in Sprout and Sprout (1969: 48): ‘The statesman’s psychological environment (that is, his image, or estimate, of the situation, setting or milieu) may or may not correspond to the operational environment.’ Or in O. Holsti:
The belief system … may be thought of as a set of lenses through which information concerning the physical or social environment is received. It orients the individual to his environment, defining it for him and identifying for him its salient characteristics …4
(Holsti 1969: 544)
Although Boulding (1961, 1969) is open towards seeing the ‘image’ as a broad social concept, he is ambiguous as to whether the image originates in the individual or in broader social contexts: ‘The image structure lies wholly within the individual comprising the organisation. It does not lie within the relationship between these individuals …’ (this suggests methodological individualism) (Boulding 1961: 60). But he also says:
the image is essentially a mass image, or what might be called a ‘folk image’, transmitted through the family and the intimate face-to-face group, both in the case of the powerful and in the case of the ordinary person …
(Boulding 1969: 424)
Sometimes the perspective is expanded to groups or even occasionally elites or organisations (see, e.g., Frei 1986).5 The group is, however, rarely seen as reflecting more widespread societal or political beliefs. The group is ‘individualised’.
One of the reasons why the focus has been on individuals (often key political leaders) is that this has been the easiest methodologically (Smith 1988: 17). It can be argued that this concern is narrowly related to a methodology which has wanted the description of the beliefs to be precise, which has often meant quantitative.
The criticism raised here is not that these approaches are useless but that their use is restricted to particular structural situations in which individuals’ (or non-accountable or isolated groups’) points of view might play a role (as opposed to widely held beliefs). It would, for instance, be more likely that individuals played a bigger role in situations of crisis (see, e.g., Vogler 1989: 150-151) where normal mechanisms of political control and restraint tend to weaken and which often reduces decision-making to a small group of individuals.6 In this situation, a feeling of finite time intensifies the importance of these individual/group perceptions. This is one possible reason why Robert Jervis in his book, which can be considered a classic within the traditional approach, takes many of his examples of the importance of ‘perception’ and ‘misperception’ from this kind of situation (Jervis 1976).
A major criticism of Jervis is that, although he identifies many of the mechanisms and provides historical examples of them, he does not appear to identify the kinds of situations in which the phenomena examined are likely to occur (Vogler 1989: 150). One gets the impression – whether this is the author’s intention or not – that the conclusions apply to all kinds of decisions, including decisions of a more general kind, or long trends.
It can be argued that a tendency to focus on the specific, discrete, decision rather than long-term and more general factors, is prevalent in foreign policy analysis. In the light of this, it is interesting to note the importance of the role of Allison’ s Essence of Decision (which is a detailed analysis of a discrete decision, the Cuban missile crisis) within the field of foreign policy analysis.7
However, when we deal with long-term political decisions it is not likely that individuals’ or narrow groups’ beliefs prevail over the social beliefs – the beliefs of the individual’s political party or the broader societal context. A role-theoretical approach explains compliance with reference to the sanctìons used if the individual does not comply with his role, and, in a broader perspective, the question of whether decision-makers can be isolated from the broader meaning structures of the political sphere. What is needed is, thus, a theoretical framework for widespread beliefs.
An important question is whether there are structural situations in which individuals acting as leaders are submitted to so little political control that their personal beliefs have a big impact on the general political line, and not only in crisis situations. One could, for instance, interpret dictators such as Hitler and Stalin as being so omnipotent that political control mechanisms no longer functioned so that idiosyncratic factors mattered more. But even in these extreme situations, the question is whether the leaders at the top are not linked to a broader system of political beliefs which, to a certain degree, they also reflect.
The assumption here, however, is that this structural situation is not present in the majority of Western European countries today. Even so, there might be situations which deviate from the ideal type in degree more than in kind. It has, for instance, been argued that for structural reasons Margaret Thatcher had so much power in her cabinet and in her party that she was no longer under political control (one could, for instance, point to her preference for using ad hoc groups of ministers and officials called in by the PM to advise her on specific policy issues rather than using the established cabinet structure). The issue is, then, whether a key individual (in this case Thatcher) can occupy a structural position which would ensure a special influence on decisions. In a broader perspective, the question is whether the individual as a result of, for example, charisma can change the dominant culture or consensus and perhaps the rules of governance. It can be argued that Thatcher’s leadership was partly based on elements of charisma, charisma which was no doubt reinforced by her three general election victories.
While Thatcher did, in some ways, occupy an unusual structural situation and her declared project from the outset was to change political culture and values (see, e.g., Hall 1988), the question is how much she deviated from the basic features of the New Right thinking which had slowly been gaining ground in the Tory Party in the late 1970s and in many parts of the political elite by the late 1980s.8 The key assumption in this book, following the considerations above, is that Thatcher, when it came to general political beliefs, was more a reflection of, than an independent creator of, New Right thought. On the other hand, the special features of her premiership do probably make it appropriate (for a full analysis of the 1980s) to attribute some importance to her personal belief system with regard to some specific decisions.
Following on from this, the question is whether the French system in the 1980s has allowed the top political figure, President Mitterrand to assume a special personal role. The prevalent view is that President Mitterrand has fulfilled his role as president in very much the same way as his predecessor in the Fifth Republic. Even so, the president of the Fifth Republic does hold considerable personal powers compared to most other chiefs of the executive in Western Europe and so it would probably be right to attribute some role to the president’s personal beliefs with respect to specific decisions (as opposed to the general policy line). However, the general view must still be that neither with respect to Britain nor to France was there a structural situation which allowed the chiefs of the executive in the 1980s to assume an overwhelming personal role.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the focus on the individual top decision-maker might be useful as a means to describe the beliefs that the individual holds as a reflection of his political office (role) and which therefore express more general views. The difference, in this case, would be more in the interpretation of the results than in the material used to describe the beliefs. The traditional approach, however, often draws on methods which, it can be argued, give rise to some problems. These will be touched upon in the next subsection.

Positivist treatment of beliefs

The treatment of actors’ views is often positivist.9 Beliefs are often seen as ‘intervening variables’ and not as necessary meaningful references for the actors, the means by which they make sense of the world. Beliefs are presented as just one out of many variables (they are often listed together with elements such as institutional patterns and social organisation) (see, e.g., Snyder, Bruck and Sapin 1969: 201).
The ways in which political actors make sense of the world, however, can in some sense be said to be primary, since it is difficult to imagine social action without meaning for the actors. By action, Weber understands ‘all human action, when and in so far as the acting individual attaches subjective meaning to it’ (Hollis and Smith 1990: 71-72; see also pp. 68-71). The belief aspect, rather than being seen as just variables affecting action, should be seen as something which constitutes a frame for action.
Often the belief system is constructed on the basis of criteria defined by the analysts rather than the terms of the ‘inside’ of the belief system itself. Beliefs are often studied in a non-relational way, as unconnected elements of thought. The operational code approach (George 1969), which has had a significant impact on research, for example, lists ten questions the answers to which define the actor’s operational code (Smith 1988: 21-22). Five of these questions are ‘philosophical’, five are ‘instrumental’. The problems arising from this approach are twofold. First, these questions, in spite of being very general, might not, as seen from the ‘inside’ of the belief system, be central to the belief system itself. Second, the distinction made between philosophical beliefs (in other works often replaced by ‘values’) and instrumental beliefs is imposed by the analyst and does not necessarily exist ‘inside’ the belief system itself.10 The aim of standardising the beliefs, using an externally imposed framework, certainly has the advantage of facilitating comparisons between different belief systems. It can, however, be argued that some internal coherence is lost in this way. In the case of the use of quantitative techniques, as in cognitive mapping, external concepts are also used to map beliefs.
An example of the necessity of studying the coherence of a belief system on its own terms is the apparent paradox (analysed in chapter 3) between the very positive French attitudes towards European integration post-1983/84, and, at the same time, the French view that France is independent and has a mission in the world. These two elements are not just two unconnected phenomena that influence French decision-making in questions on Europe which the perspective of an external observer might suggest: the two elements are connected in the heads of the actors (however illogical it might appear to the observer), and a knowledge of the way in which they are connected is absolutely crucial for understanding French European policy – France sees herself as leader of Europe and the French state (and later, the French nation) is lifted to a European level.
In addition, psychological mechanisms such as ‘irrational consistency’ are often presented as if actors’ beliefs were not an integral part of them, as if they functioned without connection to the ways actors make sense of the world.11 They are presented as working mechanically. This seems to be the assumption behind, for instance, Robert Jervis’s (1976) writings on psychological mechanisms such as cognitive consistency (Jervis, chapter 4), attitude change (Jervis, chapter 7) and cognitive dissonance (Jervis, chapter 11). Jervis, for example, writes about ‘irrational consistency’:
One type of consistency … merits special attention because it cannot be explained by rational procedures for making sense of the world: people who favour a policy usually believe that it is supported by many logically independent reasons … even though there is no reason why the world should be constructed in such a neat and helpful manner … this would not be irrational if in order to agree with the position the person had to affirm a number of necessary conditions … belief systems thus often display overkill.
(Jervis 1976: 128-129)
This is, according to Jervis, not only a phenomenon which occurs in relation to specific questions (of which he gives many examples) but in relation to general beliefs:
At the most general level, many writers have joined morality and expediency by echoing the view of an eighteenth-century liberal that ‘the true interests of the nation never yet stood in opposition to the general interests of mankind; and it can never happen that philanthropy and patriotism can impose on any man inconsistent duties’.
(Jervis 1976: 132)
This is central to elements in British and French foreign political thought described in chapters 2 and 3. For example, in French political thought the connection is frequently made between French national interests and the general interests of Europe or mankind. From Jervis’s external perspective this would be an example of irrational consistency while, for the French, this link makes perfect sense – and is an important source of French foreign political identity.
It can thus be argued that, apart from simple polemics and politicking, actors do not just ‘believe that it [a policy] is supported by many logically independent reasons’ (Jervis). For the actors the reasons are not ‘logically independent’ even though they migh...

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