Feedback Effects in Foreign Policy: A Framework for Analysis

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14 perspective, this absence of a direct determinate link between context and action is easily explicable. Foreign policy decision-makers are simply exposed to more influences than just the international environment in which a state is embedded. Moreover, international context cannot leave its direct imprint on foreign-policy decisions. Rather, information about external influences needs to be digested in the foreign-policy making system. This processing of external influences does not leave them undistorted as has been demonstrated time and again by the decision-making approach to FPA. Regarding the second part of the feedback loop the non-determinate character is even more obvious. A single state's policy cannot determine the international context. All a single state can possibly have is a more or less strong influence on the shape of the international context. Even the strongest state in the system can hardly be expected to permanently pressure other states in particular policies and thus also to single-handedly determine the shape of international institutions and of the international distribution of power. Rather the international context is shaped by the interaction of a variety of actors. Taken together, neither the link from international context to foreign policy nor that from foreign policy to international context is simply determinate. 1 This is not to say that there are no effects in one or the other direction. Yet these effects are not determinate, they are contingent on other factors not incorporated in our analytical framework (and possibly unpredictable). The same, then, holds for the feedback effects that may evolve between foreign policies and context. Contingency is thus an important aspect of feedback effects in foreign policy. There and back again I: International institutions and foreign policy We use the concept of international institution here in a very wide sense, indicating basically the stable rules and norms that govern international interactions. Such broad definitions have been widely employed in institutionalist research with rationalist approaches viewing institutions mostly as exogenous constraints for interaction (e.g. North 1990) and constructivist approaches highlighting in particular their enabling and constitutive aspects (e.g. Kratochwil/Ruggie 1986, Duvall/Wendt 1989). 1 This is a variation of the level-of-analysis problem as it has been discussed by J.D. Singer (1961). What becomes clear here is that a feedback perspective can on the one hand incorporate context variables and on the other hand still avoid the pitfalls of many structuralist accounts. Such accounts have been extensively criticized for being (a) determinist and (b) unable to account for change. In a feedback perspective change is possible (albeit likely to be incremental) because actions do not contribute to mere reproduction of contextual conditions, but may contribute to their modification.
15 There is a suspicious lack of FPA studies that would systematically address the relation between international institutions and foreign policies. Even those FPA textbooks which do address the international environment of a state tend to leave international institutions completely out of the picture (e.g. Hudson 2007, Smith et al. 2008). In IR theory on the other hand a huge amount of research has been done on institutions since the 1980s, but these studies have mainly focused on the question of how certain kinds of institutions emerge in international politics and less on how they affect foreign policies. 2 Nevertheless the broad IR literature on international institutions has some obvious implications for foreign policy research. We will spell them out and rely on these implications to enhance our understanding of the feedback effects that may develop between states' foreign policies and international institutions. Institutionalist research has brought out two basic ways in which institutions can affect states and their policies. First, institutions can be understood as constitutive of states and their goals. Research on the institution of sovereignty, for instance, has demonstrated how this basic institution has evolved and shaped international politics (Onuf 1991, Bartelson 1995). Sovereignty constitutes states as entities in the first place. It also constitutes states as certain kinds of entities which are prone be guided by particular goals in their external policies, especially by safeguarding their sovereignty. Other, less general institutions have comparable effects. Membership in the EU and thus participation in its institutions constitutes states as EU members, which is important for how others interact with them and how they themselves respond. Such institutions thus provide the condition of possibility for the existence of particular actors. Institutions, secondly, regulate behavior, i.e. actors (of which we now think as preexisting, given entities) adjust their behavior to their institutional environment. Institutions thus may make states lower their tariffs, cut their industries' carbon dioxide emissions or solve their disputes without recourse to military force. Institutionalist research discusses two general ways in which institutions can become effective in terms of regulating behavior. Institutions may work as a constraint on the strategic behavior of states. In IR theory this conception has been elaborated especially in the context of institutionalist regime theory (e.g. Krasner 1983, Keohane 1984, Hasenclever et al. 1997: 23-135). In this conception institutional rules alter the matrix of the costs associated with different paths of action. States, rationally calculating the optimal policy against the background of a given preference-ordering, will respond to these changes by adjusting their behavior. Typically this strand of institutionalist theorizing has pointed out that cooperative institutions make cooperation more attractive for 2 The few exceptions include Duffield (1992), Simmons (2002).
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