Feedback Effects in Foreign Policy: A Framework for Analysis

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explanation factors. The starting point of research does not matter: you can begin with the
agency-level and then reconstruct the effects of foreign policy on the international context
and back again, or go the other way and start with the effects from the international
environment on state decisions.
Such a perspective may also serve to heed the disciplinary calls for analyzing the
“unloved” empirical phenomenon of foreign policy change in long-term dynamics. The
heuristic firstly serves as an analytical guidance to sensitize the researcher to the possible
constraining elements on the international level and on the level of decision making.
Secondly, through our review of different theoretical research strands in IR, FPA and policy
analysis, researchers are invited to use the potentially fruitful accounts we identified. Of
course, such a theoretical repertoire is potentially open-ended. The recent range of
theoretical approaches can be divided, roughly spoken, in rationalist-institutionalist and
constructivist-sociological accounts on both level of analysis. Thus, depending on the
theoretical affinity of the researcher, the reconstruction of a feedback loop has either a more
rationalist or a more constructivist bend. There exist many potential empirical cases for
such an analysis: the constraining effects of the WTO on developing countries, the complex
relationship between Turkey and the European Union, the impact of US Latin America
policy on the rise of populist regimes there etc.
Our own goal with the heuristic, which itself is still work in progress, is to study U.S.
foreign policy after 9-11. Applying the heuristic, we intend to elaborate the feedback loop in
three major steps: first, we start with the decision of the Bush administration to begin a
“global war against terrorism” after 9-11, beginning in Afghanistan. We would take a closer
look on this period of time to grasp possible domestic constraints during the
implementation process which caused internal (establishing Homeland Security politics) as
well as external (new alliance building: coalition of the willing) effects. The second research
step focuses on the new formation of the international environment over the years of the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then, the changes within the three dimensions of the
international environment are at the centre of analysis: 1) in the institutional context there
are changes and disagreements in the transatlantic relationship in material questions
(alliances) as well as normative dimensions (legitimacy of U.S. hegemony); 2) the
distribution of power and wealth points us the relative power position of the U.S. in the
international system which is either characterized as a new empire, or as a declining
hegemony with overstretching ambitions (Iraq) which declines in power position relative to
rising rivals as China; and 3) a look at the policies of other actors (states) highlights the
changing bilateral relations between the U.S. with old allies (Britain, Germany), ambivalent