Feedback Effects in Foreign Policy: A Framework for Analysis

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Heuristically, we follow the bulk of the foreign policy literature in conceiving of
foreign policy formulation as embedded in a variety of contexts which can become more or
less important for ultimate foreign policies. They can be thought of as different layers
grouped around the decision-making center. They range from the characteristics of small
decision-making groups over the institutional characteristics of the foreign-policy making
system at large and the broader characteristics of state and society to different aspects of the
international environment (Hudson 2007). In the context of research about feedback effects in
foreign policy analysis, however, not all of these layers will have the same relevance. Rather
we can distinguish more immediately relevant aspects of contexts from other aspects which
may be only indirectly linked to feedback effects. Since foreign policy is, by definition,
directed at the international environment of a state, its international context will be most
directly relevant for the emergence of feedback effects. Foreign policy will more directly
affect international factors, e.g. a state's international institutional environment, than it will
impact on the state's domestic characteristics. Hence we focus on states' international
environments in this paper to discuss feedback effects. This is not to say that there may not
also be more indirect feedback effects that involve a state's domestic characteristics.
Interestingly enough the international context of states is only rarely addressed as a
causal variable in foreign policy research. FPA has tended to look first and foremost at the
domestic causes of foreign policy—so much so that some even equate the whole of FPA with
research on the internal determinants of a state's external actions (Hudson/Vore 1995;
Hudson 2005). This is not to say, however, that there has been no research at all on the
international determinants of (or, better, influences on) foreign policy. Research on these
resulted in particular from IR debates, either by implication or through explicit attempts to
cross-fertilize FPA with insights from IR. This research has pointed to three broad
dimensions of a state's international environment that will be relevant for its foreign policies:
a state's institutional environment; its place in the international distribution of power; and
the preferences and policies of other states. These three dimensions, which we will address
in greater detail below, help us to arrive at a specification of the feedback effects that may
occur in foreign policy.