Feedback Effects in Foreign Policy: A Framework for Analysis

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them. Different strands of critical theorizing have highlighted the importance of the social
reproduction of institutions. This reproduction can be construed as one particular kind of
feedback loop in which states are predisposed by existing institutions to follow a certain path
of action; and by actually following that path contribute to the continuing existence of this
institution.
When taking together what we have said about the interrelation of institutions and
foreign policies, we arrive at a first basic picture of how feedback effects in foreign policy can
work. International institutions predispose actors towards certain courses of action by
constituting goals or constraining actions. Foreign policies, in turn, contribute to the
reproduction or change of the institutions by adhering to institutional rules, deviating from
them or renegotiating them.
There and back again II: The international distribution of power and foreign policy
That foreign policies may be affected by the international distribution of power is probably
one of the oldest assumptions of international political thought. It is easy to see the basic
intuition: What you do is fundamentally related to what you are able to do; and what states
can do in the international system is intimately linked to their power relative to other states.
Power is understood here as the control over certain resources that may allow a state to
achieve its goal in the international system, including military capabilities but also economic
resources.
The idea that a state's power influences its foreign policy has been spelled out time
and again in realist writing. More often than not this link is assumed to be quite direct. In
this view, the strive for power is taken to lie at the very heart of international relations. States
use power as a means and pursue power as an end (e.g. Morgenthau 1948). Consequently
states will be inclined to seek power and they be will forced to bow to the power and
influence of superior states. Great powers and small states will therefore display different,
characteristic kinds of foreign policy.
Structural realists have argued that the link between power and policy may not be
quite so straightforward (e.g. Waltz 1979). From their point of view, power is not an end by
and for itself in states' foreign policies. Rather, they regard the international distribution of
power as an opportunity structure which enables states to pursue certain actions and
constrains them from pursuing others. States may respond rationally to this opportunity
structure, in which case their foreign policies will display a certain inclination to seek power,