Abstract
In the introduction to this book it was indicated that the present study would seek to explain the major developments in Britain’s postwar foreign policy at two different levels. On the one hand, it would examine the calculations that underpinned the foreign policy decisions of successive governments, paying particular attention to the ‘Realist’ world-views of the policy makers themselves. On the other, it would simultaneously attempt to identify the most significant underlying ‘structural’ factors that seem to have influenced Britain’s changing international position, again making particular use of the Realist model. Given this intrusion of Realism at both the ‘decision making’ and ‘structural’ levels of investigation, it was acknowledged from the outset that the analysis provided in this book adopted a broadly state-centric, ‘Realist’ approach. It is clear from the foregoing chapters, however, that some of the other ‘theoretical perspectives’ outlined in the Introduction have also found their way into this dicussion. In these circumstances, the purposes of this chapter are to review the main theoretical perspectives that could have been used in order to analyse Britain’s postwar foreign policy and to assess the relevance of each of these perspectives to the particular analysis conducted here. Not surprisingly, a substantial part of the discussion is devoted to an exposition of Realism, the approach that has featured most significantly in previous chapters.
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Notes and References
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (translated by R. Crawley) (London: Everyman’s Library, 1952);
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (translated by G. Bull) (Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1961);
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1968).
For a recent summary statement of the Power Politics approach, see Martin Wight, Power Politics, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986).
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
See, for example, Hedley Bull, ‘Society and Anarchy in International Relations’, in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays on the theory of international politics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966) pp. 35–50.
On the notion of ‘security complex’, see Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: the National Security Problem in International Relations (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1983).
A ‘definitive’ list of ‘Realist propositions’ would be difficult to provide. The propositions summarised here are a revised and extended version of those developed in Trevor Taylor, ‘Power Politics’ in Trevor Taylor (ed.), Approaches and Theory in International Relations (London: Longman, 1978) pp. 122–40.
See, for example, Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977).
See Norwood Russell Hanson, Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).
On the general relationship betwen theory and evidence, see A. F. Chalmers, What is this thing called Science?, 2nd edn (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986); note, however, that Chalmers’s references to philosophical ‘Realism’ do not refer to the ‘Realism’ discussed here.
See Imre Lakatos, ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, in Imre Lakatos and Alan E. Musgrave (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974) pp. 132–5.
The most impressive applications of the Rational Actor model have undoubtedly been undertaken in the field of Game Theory. For a wide-ranging application see Glenn H. Snyder and P. Diesing, Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining, Decisionmaking and System Structure in International Crises (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
The best known study using the Bureaucratic Politics approach is probably Graham T. Allison, The Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
Lawrence Freedman, ‘Logic, Politics and Foreign Policy Processes: a critique of the Bureaucratic Politics model’, International Affairs, vol. 52, no. 3 (1976) pp. 434–49.
The only exceptions to this general pattern were during the Korean War rearmament programme of the early 1950s (when defence expenditure rose as high as 11 per cent of GDP) and during the late 1980s (when a sustained rise in GDP enabled relative defence expenditure to fall to 4.5 per cent of GDP). See Peter Byrd, ‘Defence Policy’, in Peter Byrd (ed.), British Foreign Policy Under Thatcher (Oxford: Philip Allan, 1988) p. 171.
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 13th edn (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966).
This theme is developed in P. A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966).
This theme has been extensively developed in the writings of Gunder Frank. See, for example, Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971);
Crisis: in the Third World (London: Heinemann, 1981).
On the development of capitalism as a global system, see Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
A. Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange: a Study in the Imperialism of Trade (London: New Left Books, 1972).
See, for example, C. R. Hensman, Rich Against Poor: The Reality of Aid (London: Allen, Lane, 1971);
Teresa Hayter, Aid as Imperialism (Har-mondsworth: Penguin, 1971).
See, for example, UNCTAD, ‘Restructuring the international economic framework. Report by the Secretary-General of UNCTAD to the fifth session of the Conference’ (Geneva: UNCTAD TD/221, 1979); W. Brandt et al. North-South: A Programme for Survival.
See, for example, Ingham, Capitalism Divided.
Frank Longstreth, ‘The City, Industry and the State’, in Colin Crouch (ed.), State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism (London: Croom Helm, 1979) pp. 160–1;
Bob Jessop, ‘The Transformation of the State in Post-War Britain’, in R. Scase (ed.), The State in Western Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1980) pp. 30–8.
See Strange, Sterling and British Policy, pp. 212.
For a sophisticated critique and re-interpretation of these issues, see Robert A. Stones, ‘The Myth of Betrayal: Structure and Agency in the Labour Government’s Policy on non-devaluation 1964–67’, PhD dissertation, University of Essex, 1988.
Classical Idealism was a powerful influence upon international organisation during the interwar period. For review, see David Sanders, Lawmaking and Co-operation in International Politics: The Idealist case reexamined (London: Macmillan 1986).
See, for example, John W. Burton, World Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972);
John W. Burton, Global Conflict: The Domestic Sources of International Crisis (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1984);
Edward Azar (ed.), The Theory and Practice of Conflict Resolution (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1985).
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© 1989 David Sanders
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Sanders, D. (1989). The Relevance of Foreign Policy ‘Theory’. In: Losing an Empire, Finding a Role. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20747-3_10
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