studying

FOREIGN
POLICY comparatively
Cases and Analysis

FOURTH EDITION

LAURA NEACK
MIAMI UNIVERSITY

ROW M A N   &   L I T T L E F I E L D
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

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 1

Studying Foreign Policy

Comparatively
In This Chapter

• Features of Foreign Policy Study • Worldviews, Theories, and Rele-

• Defining the Subject vance
• Levels of Analysis • Saying Something about the
World

Major Cases Explored

• US policy toward China in the • How the government-in-exile of

1992 US presidential campaign Tibet has “state-ness” but is not
• The development of Bill Clinton’s a state
China policy

W
 hat is foreign policy? What do we know about why states pursue cer-
tain foreign policies and not others? What factors go into the shaping
and execution of foreign policy? This book answers these questions,
and more, by exploring how scholars analyze foreign policy and by applying this
knowledge to new foreign policy cases; this is a book of cases and analysis. Each
chapter starts with a case study and then considers the models and theories that
might explain the case study. Models and theories propose that when certain
conditions are present, certain phenomena are likely to occur. When certain
conditions in one country contribute to a particular foreign policy, then we
might be able to predict something about the foreign policy of another country
in which we observe the presence of the same basic conditions. When we do
this—moving from an understanding of one case to another—we conduct a
comparative case study.

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 2 Chapter 1: Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively

What is foreign policy? To begin answering this question, we will start

with our first case. In China in May 1989, a small student protest grew into
major demonstrations in Beijing and many other cities. The demonstration
took the name of the Tiananmen Square Protests. By the end of the month,
the Chinese government had declared martial law and mobilized military
forces to end the protests. On June 4, Chinese troops moved on the protes-
tors with tanks and assault weapons, resulting in the deaths of hundreds or
thousands and the imprisonment of many more. International condemnation
rained down on the Chinese government as a result.
In the United States, human rights and religious rights groups called
for a tough US response to the Tiananmen crackdown. The US president at
the time was George H. W. Bush. Perhaps because of the president’s back-
ground—he had served as the US ambassador to the United Nations and
as the US envoy to China before official diplomatic relations started—Bush
maintained a policy of constructive engagement with China. The idea was
to remain engaged with China in order to encourage it to change its behavior
through incentives and interaction rather than through invectives and punish-
ments. Bush was not inclined to punish China.
A majority in the US Congress disagreed with the policy of construc-
tive engagement and passed a tough sanctions bill on China in response to
Tiananmen. Bush vetoed that bill, so congressional critics decided to place
human rights conditions on the yearly renewal of China’s most favored
nation (MFN) trading status.1 Despite disagreement between the president
and Congress, constructive engagement remained the official US policy. In
two years, though, the US prosanctions coalition found a champion in the
1992 US presidential campaign.
Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton came out in favor of
attaching human rights conditions to any future granting of MFN status to
China after meeting with members of Congress and leaders of prosanctions
interest groups. Clinton announced his position: “I do not want to isolate
China . . . but I believe our nation has a higher purpose than to coddle dic-
tators and stand aside from the global movement toward democracy.”2 Clin-
ton repeated this stand many times on the campaign trail. Upon Clinton’s
election, Chinese authorities signaled their unhappiness by suspending further
human rights talks. In response to this and in response to a different coali-
tion of domestic interests, the president-elect announced a moderated view
on China in late November 1992: “We have a big stake in not isolating China,
in seeing that China continues to develop a market economy. . . . But we also
have to insist, I believe, on progress in human rights and human decency.”3
As a way to prepare for his inauguration, Clinton hosted several confer-
ences in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. At an economic conference,
the chief operating officer of Mattel, which manufactures toys in China, raised
worries about Mattel’s ability to stay on top of the world toy market if human

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 Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively 3

rights conditions were attached to renewing China’s MFN status. Voices

within the United States, such as the aircraft and wheat industries, and voices
outside the United States, such as the governments of Japan and Hong Kong
(at that time still independent of China), similarly urged Clinton to back away
from his tough campaign stand on China. Additionally, at the invitation of the
Chinese government, two groups of Democratic senators visited China and
Tibet in December 1992 and January 1993. This Chinese effort to influence
the domestic political debate within the United States—and thereby shape US
foreign policy in the new administration—reaped some benefits, as several of
the senators declared that it would be shortsighted to link trade and human
rights. The president-elect was sympathetic to the proengagement views—
particularly those of economic actors—having run a campaign based primarily
on the economic discontent of voters.
A new US policy on China, announced by the new administration,
attached some human rights conditions to the US-China relationship, but not
on trade issues. This compromise allowed voices on both sides to be partially
satisfied and partially dissatisfied (this being the nature of compromise). Farm
and business groups and their supporters in Congress were glad to keep trade
off the table, while human rights groups and their congressional supporters
were glad to see some official pronouncement privileging human rights and
democracy. Even in this age of globalization, where market forces seemed
to drive so much foreign policy, human rights groups were satisfied that their
concerns would remain central to US foreign policy. At the signing ceremony
for the executive order, business leaders stood beside members of human
rights groups and prodemocracy Chinese students, forming the backdrop for
Clinton.4 Yet the president warned that the following year’s renewal of Chi-
na’s MFN status would be subject to human rights conditions.
The compromise China policy and the threat for the coming year would
not last. Internal divisions within the Clinton administration—reflecting divi-
sions in American society—led to a reevaluation of policy over the following
year. “On the one side were the economic agencies, Treasury, Commerce,
and the National Economic Council (NEC), who favored developing ties
with China and pursuing human rights concerns only secondarily. . . . On
the other side were State Department officials . . . who favored continuing
a tough stance on human rights.”5 The economic agencies gained the upper
hand on the issue, with support from corporate leaders and increasing num-
bers of members of Congress, all of whom were interested in tapping into
China’s enormous potential market. This coalition was able to change the
Clinton policy and avoid future threats to link MFN status with human rights
issues. As Clinton explained the change in policy in May 1994, “Linkage has
been constructive during the last year, but . . . we have reached the end of the
usefulness of that policy.”6 Human rights groups went along with this delink-
ing in order not to lose their leverage on the rest of the China policy.

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 4 Chapter 1: Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively

In 1995, another event in China caused US domestic interests to put

pressure on the administration for a tougher line on China. To understand
this event, we briefly need to go back forty-five years earlier. In 1950, China
sent troops into Tibet and set up a political and military administration there.
The leadership of the Tibetan government and of Tibetan Buddhism was the
teenage Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama and the Tibetans attempted to work
with the Chinese, but by 1959 they feared the Chinese government intended
to destroy Tibet—as a place, a culture, a religion, and a people—and so they
fled to India. There the Dalai Lama set up a Tibetan government-in-exile with
the agreement of the Indian government.
The leadership of the Tibetan government and religion was, at the time,
determined by reincarnation. The Dalai Lama would identify the reincarna-
tion of the second-highest lama—called the Panchen Lama—and the Panchen
Lama would identify the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama when that time
came. In 1995, the exiled Dalai Lama announced that the second-highest
lama had reincarnated and was living as a five-year-old boy in Tibet. The
Chinese government arrested that five-year-old boy and his family and “dis-
appeared” them. Then the Chinese government picked another boy as the
reincarnated Panchen Lama.
The arrest of a child and his parents prompted members of the US Con-
gress and human rights groups to demand a policy reassessment on trade
with China, bringing our discussion back to the Clinton China policy. Link-
ing human rights to trade would force the Chinese government to honor
human rights in order to maintain coveted MFN status. Yet even in the face
of this pressure, the president’s policy to delink MFN status and human rights
remained firm. Although the human rights problems in China might tem-
per the climate of US-China trade talks, an administration official stated, the
president remained committed to helping China gain entry into the World
Trade Organization, unless Chinese leaders continued to make no progress
on opening their markets. Human rights issues appeared to have fallen well
down the list of administration goals.

Features of Foreign Policy Study

This case illustrates some important features of the study of foreign policy.
The first is that foreign policy occurs in the complex intersection of domestic
and international environments. The Clinton administration decision makers
had to consider two different arenas—domestic and international. Clinton the
candidate could afford to focus primarily on the domestic environment, with
very little serious attention paid to the international environment. Clinton the
president—like any head of state anywhere in the world—had to focus atten-
tion on both the domestic and international environments when making and
implementing policy. Robert Putnam has described this situation that national

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 Features of Foreign Policy Study 5

leaders find themselves in as a “two-level game.”7 Leaders cannot afford to

focus exclusively on one level but must try to play both to some advantage.
Sometimes a problem at one level will cause a leader to put greater emphasis
there, and sometimes leaders will use an issue on one level to pursue goals in
the other, but no leader can afford to ignore the reality of this nested game.
The second feature of our study that this case illustrates is that foreign
policy often results from complicated politics involving many different domes-
tic and international actors and groups. Analysts often use shorthand and sug-
gest that foreign policy results from the goals and actions of a single person,
but this shorthand hides complex political calculations by many actors. To
come to power/office and stay in power/office, leaders need supporters, and
often those supporters represent a variety of governmental and societal actors,
not to mention a variety of foreign actors as well. The calculations that result
in certain foreign policies reflect those interests. Leaders and their domes-
tic coalitions cannot ignore oppositional actors and coalitions, and they often
work to pull opponents in or render them irrelevant on particular policy ini-
tiatives. Then, when the environment shifts, as human rights and democracy
advocates learned regarding Clinton’s China policy, actors with more bargain-
ing resources push less-resourced actors to the margins.
The third feature of foreign policy this case illustrates is how difficult it is
to draw the line between what is purely domestic and purely foreign. When
outsiders expressed concerns about human rights in Tibet, China warned
those outsiders to stay out of Chinese domestic affairs. China played the same
game in reverse by repeatedly hosting US congressional delegations in order
to garner friends in the US government.
The line between domestic politics and international politics is blurry.
Issues travel across national borders, and coalitions supporting or oppos-
ing policies form and move across those same borders. Some have called
this blurring of the distinction between international and domestic politics
“intermestic,” combining the words international and domestic to indicate
the combining of issues and interests. Others prefer to use the terms transna-
tional actors and transnational forces to indicate the pursuit of interests across
national lines. In the final chapter of this book, we offer the term linkage
actors to describe the many actors that operate in this intermestic arena.
Globalization prompts some observers to suggest that the line between
domestic and international politics is quickly disappearing. Globalization refers
to the increasing internationalization of economics and culture. As national
markets open to the global market, national cultures similarly open to the
global culture. National sovereignty is eroded in terms of both control of the
national economy and—perhaps more importantly—preservation of national
culture. When the Clinton administration took human rights conditions off
its China trade policy, the justification was that opening up China for trade
would open up China for other influences, ultimately changing the behav-

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 6 Chapter 1: Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively

ior of the Chinese government in the way that human rights and democracy
groups wanted. Put another way, Clinton—like Bush before him—believed
that the forces of globalization would compel changes in Chinese human
rights behavior, and that US policy should facilitate those forces.
Further emphasizing intermestic politics, leaders use foreign policies to pro-
mote domestic agendas, and vice versa. In the 1992 US presidential election,
then-president Bush attempted to convince American voters to reelect him—a
domestic agenda—by pointing to his foreign policy accomplishments. This can
go the other way: domestic actions can promote foreign policy goals. The Chi-
nese government releases political prisoners from time to time (prisoners being
a domestic concern) as a demonstration of its cooperative nature in order to win
the support of other governments for Chinese foreign policy goals.
Despite any government’s insistence that its domestic arena is off-limits
to other governments, foreign policies often target other countries’ domestic
politics. Countries engage in what we might think of as normal lobbying and
bargaining inside the domestic political realm of other countries. Japan and
the Republic of Korea (South Korea) have lobbied inside the United States
to garner support for their claims that Japan or Korea is the more important
Asian ally of the United States. China has funded many Confucius Institutes
across the United States to highlight the soft side of China and gain favor-
able public support for a pro-China foreign policy. Some of these Confucius
Institutes even fund and provide language instructors for the teaching of
Mandarin Chinese in US public elementary schools. These kinds of foreign
policy activities are not perceived as hostile or inappropriate interference in
the domestic arena.
Countries also engage in covert actions and more insidious tactics, such
as the Russian cyberattacks against the governments of Estonia, Georgia,
Ukraine, and the United States—and election hacking in the United States—
for the purposes of altering those countries’ foreign policies that have a direct
impact on Russian interests. As another example, in 2017, a coalition of Arab
states led by Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar in
order to pursue two goals, one foreign and one domestic. First, the Saudi
coalition wanted Qatar to realign its foreign policy away from Iran. Second,
the Saudi coalition wanted Qatar to shut down Al Jazeera, a news channel
that originates in Qatar and is funded by the Qatari government. Al Jazeera
is both a foreign policy arm of the Qatar government and a widely watched
news service, but some other Arab states see Al Jazeera as a facilitator of their
own domestic instability.
We will return to these topics in this book; for now the reader should
have an appreciation of the complicated nature of foreign policy study. Schol-
ars narrow their inquiries to particular cases or particular aspects of those cases
to manage the complexity. They focus their research by making use of theories
and models. Before we discuss this, we should define our subject.

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 Defining the Subject 7

Defining the Subject

What is foreign policy? Charles Hermann calls foreign policy a “neglected
concept.”8 He asserts, “This neglect has been one of the most serious obsta-
cles to providing more adequate and comprehensive explanations of foreign
policy.” Hermann thinks that part of the reason for this neglect is that “most
people dealing with the subject have felt confident that they knew what for-
eign policy was.”9 To put it colloquially, we know it when we see it. Ulti-
mately, Hermann defines foreign policy as “the discrete purposeful action that
results from the political level decision of an individual or group of individu-
als. . . . [It is] the observable artifact of a political level decision. It is not the
decision, but a product of the decision.”10 Thus, Hermann defines foreign
policy as the behavior of states.
Hermann rejects the idea that the study of foreign policy is the study
of policy, but his is a minority view. Bruce Russett, Harvey Starr, and David
Kinsella take an opposite and broader view: “We can think of a policy as a
program that serves as a guide to behavior intended to realize the goals an
organization has set for itself. . . . Foreign policy is thus a guide to actions
taken beyond the boundaries of the state to further the goals of the state.”11
Although these scholars define foreign policy as a program or statement of
goals, they also stress that the study of foreign policy must involve study of
both the “formulation and implementation” of policy.12
Deborah Gerner takes foreign policy further when she defines it as “the
intentions, statements, and actions of an actor—often, but not always, a
state—directed toward the external world and the response of other actors
to these intentions, statements and actions.”13 Gerner combines Hermann’s
interest in behavior with Russett, Starr, and Kinsella’s emphasis on programs
or guides. Note that in Gerner’s definition the emphasis is on states, but it
does not have to be. Other actors—such as cause groups, businesses, reli-
gions, and so forth—in the international system formulate guidelines and
goals that direct their actions toward other international actors. In this book,
our study is state-centric; we do not study the external relations of nonstate
actors since our interest is in political institutions.
This last statement needs some explication. Political scientists study
political institutions. When political scientists study noninstitutional political
behavior (like public opinion or interest group activity), they focus on the
impact of noninstitutional behavior on political institutions. Foreign policy is
a subfield of international relations, which itself is a subdiscipline of politi-
cal science. In international relations, the primary unit of analysis is the state.
In international politics, the state is the primary political actor, with rights,
privileges, and legal standing above all other actors. Our focus is on states and
their policies and actions toward other states.

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 8 Chapter 1: Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively

There are some political actors that have a degree of “state-ness” that
makes them more like states than nonstate actors. The government-in-exile of
Tibet, mentioned above, is an actor that has some elements of state-ness—a
government that is recognized by other governments that claims a certain
territory as its proper country. What the government-in-exile of Tibet lacks,
though, is actual sovereignty over that territory. Sovereignty is the ultimate
decision-making and decision-enforcing authority within a territory. In the
international system, states and only states are sovereign, and they notion-
ally answer to no higher authority. The term state denotes the legal, politi-
cal entity that has a defined territory, population, and effective government.
States become states by being recognized as states by other states. The gov-
ernment-in-exile of Tibet is recognized by India as the representative of the
Tibetan people, and India agrees with the government-in-exile’s goals—more
or less—of reclaiming Tibet from China. However, China does not recog-
nize the government-in-exile of Tibet as the government of anything, nor as
the representative of the Tibetan people. China is the effective government
over the territory and people of Tibet. China answers to no higher authority
regarding Tibet. Despite the clear barriers preventing the government-in-exile
of Tibet from being a sovereign state, it does have some political institutions
that can be studied using political science tools.
One actor with a stronger claim to statehood studied later in this book
is Palestine, as represented by the Palestinian Authority (PA). Palestine has
many elements of “state-ness,” including established political institutions, but
it does not possess the full complement of what makes a state. A majority of
the members of the United Nations recognize Palestine as a state, but the
boundaries of Palestinian territory are contested with Israel, and some of that
territory is controlled by Israel as part of its national territory. Similarly, the
Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq has some elements of “state-
ness”: governmental institutions including a military, delineated and occupied
territory, and a population. Other national governments work directly with
the KRG—such as the United States—and even multinational corporations
enter into contracts with it, much to the anger of the Iraqi national govern-
ment. Those other national governments do not recognize the KRG as a state,
however, since it is located within the recognized state of Iraq. The point here
is that there are some state-like actors with political institutions and domestic
and foreign policies that we can study using the tools we use to study the pol-
icies of states.
To sum up, our foreign policy study in this book includes processes, state-
ments, and behaviors. We study statements and behaviors, and we explore the
processes that cause states to declare those statements and embark on those
behaviors.

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 Levels of Analysis 9

Levels of Analysis
Foreign policy is a complicated phenomenon blurring the lines between
domestic and foreign, in which multiple domestic and foreign actors coalesce
or compete to set policy. This characterization might suggest that we need to
study everything going on around a foreign policy case to understand that
particular case. In some ways, the fuller the study, the fuller the understand-
ing. In other ways, trying to study too much can leave us frustrated by the
enormity of our task. Fortunately, scholars have ways to manage what they
study. Foreign policy analysts disaggregate or break down each case into dif-
ferent component parts in order to study and understand select aspects. Then
they study the parts that are most interesting to them using the frameworks
within which they work. The knowledge generated by many such studies—
studies conducted in the same way, asking the same questions, in similar and
different contexts and cases—may begin to accumulate and form a body of
knowledge.
Scholars use frameworks that are situated at different levels of analy-
sis. These levels of analysis are tools—heuristic devices—that help us study
our subject. All disciplines employ levels of analysis, although the levels vary
depending on the discipline. Levels of analysis are like different lenses on a
camera that can give us different views of our subject. At each level of anal-
ysis, we gain a particular perspective on or understanding of our subject.
Our understanding may be quite thorough for that level but will necessarily
exclude information that can only be attained using one of the other levels of
analysis. When we pose our questions at a single level, we acknowledge that
our understanding will be limited to that level; an analysis conducted at just
one level will not yield a complete picture. Yet foreign policy scholars take the
risk and emphasize a single level because they are curious about questions at
that level. Choosing to frame a study at a single level helps the scholar better
manage the subject matter.
The levels of analysis offer us entrance points for case studies. For exam-
ple, we might want to study Bill Clinton the decision maker. Clinton main-
tained the Bush policy of constructive engagement with China. This might
suggest that the person sitting in the presidency from one administration to
the next does not matter, and so we might use the rational decision-making
model and the idea of persistent national interests to understand US policy
toward China. Alternatively, maybe Clinton’s lack of previous national-level
experience left him open to formulating a different view of China once he
entered the White House. With this hypothesis, we might investigate his
change in beliefs using models proposed by cognitive scholars. Maybe his
change in beliefs happened because he had key policy advisors whose opinions
shaped his, or maybe we could study the small-group dynamics that gave the
economics-focused cabinet members greater influence over Clinton’s deci-

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 10 Chapter 1: Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively

sion making than the human rights groups. We could conduct a study of this
case using any of these questions to guide our research. Each of these ques-
tions is posed at the individual level of analysis—a focus on individual decision
makers, how they make decisions, what perceptions and misperceptions they
hold, and the ways key decision makers interact in small top-level groups.
We might instead be interested in how domestic interest groups and Con-
gress shaped the Clinton policy. We could explore how groups on the pro–
human rights and protrade sides varied in their lobbying efforts. We could
explore the “turf” problems, or competition between the executive and legis-
lative branches, in defining US China policy, maybe by thinking about com-
petition between elites in different branches of government. We could ask
whether the US military, worried about potential Chinese military threats,
lobbied the White House and Congress for a certain stand against the Chi-
nese. We could investigate the rise and fall of the fortunes of the pro–human
rights groups and the rise of the protrade groups, charting their different
strategies, arguments, and overall effectiveness in shaping media coverage of
and public opinion on China and human rights. These questions involve the
study of foreign policy at the state or domestic level of analysis. At this level,
we examine those societal (historical, cultural, religious, economic) and gov-
ernmental (type of government, division of powers, policy-making rules) fac-
tors that contribute to the making of foreign policy in a particular state.
Maybe as analysts we are interested in the bigger picture. Maybe we
are curious about whether changes in the overall balance of power between
countries in the Asia-Pacific region were influential in shaping a US policy
of accommodation toward China. We might wonder about whether policy
makers decided that China might need to be enticed into being a “good
international citizen” rather than coerced into such a role. Maybe US policy
makers thought issues of human rights could be addressed better through
multilateral channels like the United Nations. These questions about state
versus state, or geostrategic concerns about regional or global power tilts, or
states acting through international organizations, involve the system level of
analysis. The system level explores bilateral (state-to-state) relations, regional
issues and interactions, and global issues and multilateral interactions between
states. At this international level, we also consider the role played by regional
and international organizations and by nonstate actors such as transnational
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have a direct influence on the
foreign policies of states.
Foreign policy research is conducted at particular levels of analysis. This
book, then, is organized using a levels-of-analysis approach. Chapters 2 and
3 focus on decision making and cognition, both individual-level approaches.
Chapter 4 puts the decision maker in broader focus, including other actors,
with a focus on the ultimate decision unit. The ultimate decision unit can
straddle levels of analysis, from individuals and small groups to a larger group

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 Worldviews, Theories, and Relevance 11

that shares authority among different parts of a government. This leads us

officially to the state level of analysis in chapter 5 with a focus on national
culture and national role conception and how these influence state institu-
tions and foreign policies. Chapter 6 continues the state-level focus with an
exploration of how foreign policy results from the domestic politics compe-
tition between elites and their supporters. In chapter 7 we bring in societal
actors, asking how public opinion and media influence the domestic compe-
tition set up in the previous chapter. Finally, we put a panoramic lens on our
camera and move to the broadest level of analysis. In chapter 8, we study what
international relations theories say about foreign policy choices and behaviors.
Chapter 9 brings in nonstate linkage actors and suggests a reframing of the
two-level game for future foreign policy scholars.

Worldviews, Theories, and Relevance

In some important ways, the decision to study at a particular level of analysis
is related to what the individual scholar thinks is important. Every one of us
holds a view of “how things work” or of “human nature.” These views might
be very elaborate or very simple, but they set the stage for how we act in the
world. These worldviews do not just apply to politics; a personal worldview
might explain why your best friend did not talk to you today, how to play the
stock market or pick lottery numbers (or whether to bother playing the mar-
ket or picking lottery numbers at all), or why countries choose peace over war.
The study of foreign policy derives in large part from the academic dis-
cipline called international relations. International relations scholars spend a
lot of time arguing over worldviews or grand theories that explain global pol-
itics. A theory is an explanation of how things work, or how an analyst thinks
something works. A grand theory purports to explain why things are the way
they are overall—or how things might be. In this latter sense, theories can be
prescriptions for action to achieve a desired endpoint.
Theories are also used to help us tell the future, or predict. Foreign policy
as a field of study is a political science subfield, as previously mentioned. Polit-
ical science seeks to explain political decisions and behavior in the past with
an eye to predicting political decisions and behavior in the future. Political sci-
ence theories seek to explain and predict. An explanation of a single incident
in the past might be interesting and worth investigating, but that single inci-
dent may not tell us anything about the future. This is a problem for scholars,
but even more so for foreign policy makers. Foreign policy makers need to
be able to confront new circumstances with decisive, effective responses, and
they need to be able to be proactive when planning the course for their coun-
tries. Theories about how the world works can help policy makers generalize
from the past to new experiences, thereby helping them know which policies
to undertake and which to avoid.

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 12 Chapter 1: Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively

When analysts apply their theories about the world to the study of par-
ticular aspects of foreign policy—such as why a country may form a military
alliance or leave a trade agreement—they offer something useful to policy
makers. The explanations of the world that result from focused studies on
particular policies or events are called midrange theories. Midrange theories
do not claim to explain everything, just selected parts of the subject under
investigation. In fact, midrange theories tend to do a better job of explain-
ing focused aspects of the world than the grand theories do in explaining the
entire world. Grand theories purport to explain everything and so must gloss
over many rich, human details in order to do so. Midrange theories give ana-
lysts the ability to learn a lot about the dynamics of a smaller range of phe-
nomena. When other analysts use these same theories for studying new cases,
they extend the range of the midrange theories and refine them for the future
purposes of scholars and policy makers.
Good midrange theories explain the past and help predict the future.
With predictive capability, policy makers can plan their own actions. Theories
are of no use to analysts or policy makers if they are too particular or overly
specified. Theories need to go beyond single instances; they need to gener-
alize across cases, events, incidents, and time. In doing this, theories help
develop generic knowledge.
Foreign policy is a diverse field of study. As in other fields, scholars using
different theories can examine the same basic set of events and arrive at dif-
ferent explanations for why those events occurred and how best to deal with
similar events in the future. Theories give us different answers to the puzzles
of the world because they begin with different starting assumptions, stress
different critical variables, and have different ideal endpoints. It is also impor-
tant to note that an analyst working within a particular tradition will some-
times ignore evidence that another analyst using a different worldview would
find indispensable. When a scholar comes up with an answer as to why an
event occurred and whether it will occur again, we would be wise to ask about
the framework used, the evidence included, and the evidence not included.
What factors did this person ignore, disregard, or downplay? Will we imperil
our own study—or our own country’s policy—if we ignore other potentially
important variables?
As students of foreign policy and potential future policy makers, we should
read every study with caution—with a critical mind—remembering that each
scholar’s orientation has led her or him to choose some variables over others.
We might learn a great deal from this scholar’s work, but the things we are not
learning might be just as important. We would be wise, then, to critically mix
and match our studies, looking for scholars of different orientations to offer
us competing explanations that we can assess critically on the path to a more
comprehensive understanding of events.

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 Saying Something about the World 13

Do actual foreign policy makers take into account foreign policy schol-
arship? Scholars around the world sit in foreign ministries, serve on national
security councils, or hold top decision-making offices. US president Woodrow
Wilson, credited for some of the intellectual ideas that formed the League of
Nations and the later United Nations, was a professor of international rela-
tions and politics at Princeton University before he was president. Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, the president of Brazil from 1995 to 2003, was a lead-
ing international scholar of Marxist dependency theory, studying asymmet-
rical power relations between rich and poor countries. Michael Ignatieff, an
important scholar in the liberal internationalist tradition, was the leader of the
Liberal Party and a member of Parliament in Canada. Scholars serve as policy
advisors in government ministries and agencies around the world, using their
expertise and scholarly approach to problem solving on behalf of their gov-
ernments. Sometimes scholars write influential syndicated columns for news-
papers or blogs or host talk shows and podcasts heard around their countries
and around the world. The work of scholars translates into the work of for-
eign policy makers, and that translation happens in many different ways. This
is why it is imperative that foreign policy studies have something to say about
the world—something tangible and practical.

Saying Something about the World

There are many cases discussed in the pages of this book. Some are set a little
further back in time, some quite recent. This book presents some original case
studies, while some derive from the scholarly works examined here. This book
is not just a collection of foreign policy stories, though, but is instead a survey
and demonstration of how foreign policy knowledge can help us understand
our subject matter. The cases discussed here can be discussed using different
models and different key variables—maybe instructors can help students con-
struct their own case studies to test what appears here. The point of this book
is to help students learn how to apply the knowledge of foreign policy studies
toward the goal of developing an understanding of what has happened in the
world, and what might happen next.

For Discussion
1. Explain the two-level game that foreign policy is used in this
resulted in Clinton’s China pol- book.
icy. Which groups were more 3. What are the levels of analysis,
influential and which groups less and how do they help analysts
influential? focus investigations?
2. Discuss how scholars have 4. What is a theory? What is a mid-
defined foreign policy and how range theory?

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 14 Chapter 1: Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively

Key Words
state lobbying
human rights public
constructive engagement covert actions
most favored nation (MFN) nonstate actor
leaders international relations
democracy political science
globalization levels of analysis
linkage decision making
leadership elites
two-level game system level of analysis
nested game worldview
intermestic theory
transnational actors grand theory

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