Feedback Effects in Foreign Policy: A Framework for Analysis

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16 states by lowering transaction costs, e.g. by providing information or explicit standards of behavior, and by increasing costs for non-cooperative behavior, e.g. by sanctioning this behavior or associating reputational costs with it. Consequently, institutions constrain noncooperative behavior and provide incentives for cooperative behavior without altering actors' preferences over outcomes. Institutions may also regulate behavior because actors have internalized their norms and consider it appropriate to act in certain ways and not in others. EU members, for instance, share a multitude of norms which demarcate appropriate and inappropriate behavior, a partly implicit and partly explicit list of "do's" and "don'ts" that is not externally enforced but internalized by EU members. The most fundamental of them is that EU members do not use military force against each other (this is at the heart of the concept of "integration", see Deutsch et al. 1957). There are other implications of EU membership, on which research more or less agrees. EU membership, for instance, appears to entail a general commitment to a liberal trading order or a particular conception of the EU's role on the world stage (Holzinger et al. 2005: 227 ff.). Membership in other organizations and thus participation in other international institutions appears to have comparable implications, as has been demonstrated for members of NATO (Risse-Kappen 1996), UNESCO (Finnemore 1996: 34-68) and others. The regulative effect of institutions does not necessarily adhere to one of these mechanisms alone. As socialization research has pointed out, for instance, strategic adherence to institutionalized norms may over time evolve in internalization of those norms. In such cases actors begin to adhere to institutional constraints for strategic reasons, but by doing so over and over again adherence to the institutional norm becomes a habit and over time they internalize the norm so that they adhere to it not for strategic reasons but because this is just what a member of their group does (Schimmelfennig 2001; for an example see Jørgensen 1997). It is interesting to note that almost none of the institutionalist research in IR has been translated to a foreign policy perspective. Regime theory, for instance, has been primarily concerned with the emergence and stabilization of cooperation at the interaction level but rarely been made explicit as a framework for analyzing foreign policies. The implications of institutionalist theory for FPA, however, are clear, especially when the regulative dimension of institutional effects is concerned: International institutions affect state policies by both providing standards of appropriate behavior and by altering the costs and benefits associated with different paths of action.
17 What is important now for the analysis of feedback effects is that not only may institutions affect state behavior but also the other way round: states' policies themselves may affect institutions. Regime theory again provides us with a useful starting point to ponder this aspect of the feedback loop. In regime theory the impact of states on international institutions is particularly obvious: States create institutions, they define the principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures that make up the regime. Changes in the institution are made by explicit agreement among participating states. To be sure, the link between state policy and institution is not determinate. After all, rules are made by more than just a single state. Moreover, the influence of some states will be greater than that of others (see, for example, the development of the world trade regime over the past decades). Yet while there are certainly differences in degree it is obvious that state policies affect institutions when these institutions are created and modified by explicit agreement of states themselves. While this explicit and very straightforward impact of states on institutions has been the focus of the rationalist approach to international institutions, recent research has also pointed to less clearly visible and possibly even unintentional effects of state policies on institutions. Changes in state practice may tacitly contribute to modification in international institutions. These may be hard to detect and develop over long periods of time. Changes in state practice have, for example, led to a considerable change in the meaning of sovereignty over the past decades (and centuries). These changes have not necessarily been explicitly codified. Nor are they necessarily the result of intentional institutional design. Rather the collusion of marginal changes in individual foreign policies of different actors led over time to changed practices, changed conceptions of appropriate and inappropriate behavior and thus ultimately to institutional change. There are also less fundamental and less long-term changes that work along the same lines. Take as an example the change of the G-7 institutions over the years. The occasional inclusion of Russia in G-7 meetings after the end of the Cold War led over time to a formalized change in the institutions to make Russia a permanent member of the meetings and transform the G-7 into the G-8. There have also been less obvious changes, e.g. the transformation of the agenda of G-7 meetings from purely economic issues to the broad agendas of today covering more general issues of political cooperation. It would be inadequate to reconstruct such institutional changes as outcomes of explicit negotiations and agreements. Rather they were brought about by gradually changing practices over the years. Such changes require actors to deviate to a certain degree from the institutional norms and rules. However, even mere adherence to the institutions will tend to feed back on
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Page 3 and 4: idges the fields of IR and FPA; and
Page 5 and 6: 5 Bridging the gap: between abstrac
Page 7 and 8: 7 they develop an interactionist fr
Page 9 and 10: 9 3 Feedback effects: some general
Page 11 and 12: 11 These considerations suggest tha
Page 13 and 14: 13 Figure 2: Foreign policy and thr
Page 15: 15 There is a suspicious lack of FP
Page 19 and 20: 19 or autonomy, or influence in the
Page 21 and 22: 21 Interactionist approaches, which
Page 23 and 24: 23 and is developed further by the
Page 25 and 26: 25 While all these approaches are v
Page 27 and 28: processes and the effects of restri
Page 29 and 30: 29 roles and clear calculations of
Page 31 and 32: 31 practice approaches in IR take i
Page 33 and 34: 33 partners (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
Page 35 and 36: Katzenstein, Peter J. (ed.): 1996:

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