Feedback Effects in Foreign Policy: A Framework for Analysis

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argumentative negotiations. Only few studies in FPA have hitherto discovered the
interactive dimension of human agents from a constructivist point of view. In the traditional
line of Janis’s work, for instance, there are a few authors who attempt to think Beyond
Groupthink (‘t Hart/Stern/Sundelius 1997) and develop the classic account of Janis in new
methodological directions. A recent edited volume of Donald Sylvan and James Voss (1998)
bundles the current FPA literature on cognitive framing and problem representation. These
authors deal in different kind of methods with the relationship how group environments
affect individual cognition. Although Houghton (2007) recently suggested that there is no
hindrance to combine cognitive psychological approaches of FPA in the tradition of
Snyder/Bruck/Sapin (1962) and de Rivera (1968) with contemporary constructivist
theorizing in IR, it has to be remarked that such a theoretical opening is still in its infancy.
Interpretive policy analysis seems to have proceeded already one step further down
this road. This strand of policy research (Hajer/Wagenaar 2003 for an overview) suggests
that governmental politics should be understood in a less state-centered fashion and rather
as a complex relationship between state and society. Such approaches could be a theoretical
starting point for a sociologically informed foreign policy analysis as well. Pioneers in
deliberative policy analysis as Deborah Stone (1988), Martin Rein and Donald Schön (1994)
illuminated in their analyses why many policy controversies have often an intractable and
stubborn character. Problem solving in such controversies requires a much better
understanding of how various parties framed the situation. They demonstrate that policy
stalemates can be solved when “reframing” of the highly charged issues succeeded. This
underlines the possibilities of collective learning and conflict resolution. Other authors such
as Dvora Yanow (1996) and Maarten Hajer (1995) more directly follow the proposed
“argumentative turn” (Fischer/Forrester 1993) and elaborate the importance of attending to
the discursive dimension of public policy and politics. Hence, analyzing discourse politics is
understood in terms of struggles over the interpretation of issues rather than over
substantive questions. The crucial question then is whose interpretation becomes
authoritative and why this is so (Fischer 2003: 80). For instance, Hajer (1995) has analyzed the
politics of the acid rain controversy to show how different applications and understandings
of acid rain have generated very different types of politics in two countries. Such a socialinteractive
approach is thus conceptualized as an exchange of arguments, of competing,
sometimes contradictory, suggestions of how one is to make sense of reality. For researchers
this means exploring discourse practices through which social actors seek to persuade others
to see a particular situation, event or problem. In contrast to rationalist models such as the
advocacy-coalition approach (Sabatier/Jenkins-Smith 1991) in which social actors have fixed