Monday, July 1, 2013

What Domestic Politics Can Tell Us About International Relations: A Primer


“Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


“…War cannot be divorced from political life; and whenever this occurs in our thinking about war, the many links that connect the two elements are destroyed and we are left with something pointless and devoid of sense.”
Carl von Clausewitz, On War

Domestic politics is typically the perspective I apply to form a better understanding of international relations (IR) and foreign policy. More broadly, my opinion on the interaction of domestic and international politics will likely develop into the “theme” of this blog. I’ve always been interested in the intersection of domestic and international politics partly because the IR and foreign policy analysis fields basically ignore domestic politics entirely, despite what I’ve believed for many years is its seemingly obvious power to explain major questions about why a country acts the way it does abroad.

To introduce my perspective, I’ve edited down several parts of my master’s thesis which was on the influence of political competition on China’s security policy towards the United States from 1953 to 1992. I apologize this post is a bit thick and abstract, but I felt it was necessary to establish where my point of view on the importance of domestic politics in international politics and security is coming from.

I believe one of the most important tasks in the study of international relations (IR) today is to account for the impact of domestic politics on a state’s international behavior. Since the 1970s, the security studies field has overwhelmingly privileged explanations at the international system level and generally neglected the influence of domestic politics.[1] Most scholars that do investigate domestic-level causes tend to do so in an apolitical manner and shy from contaminating their elegant analyses of state structures and noble statesmen with the muck of domestic politics. Yet the simple observation that statesmen also happen to be professional politicians who are maneuvering for their political survival day in and day out has fazed remarkably few.[2] Yet as several authors have observed, “Most leaders are chosen over rivals because of skills in domestic politics…Consequently, those who shape international affairs are best understood first as politicians and only later perhaps as statesmen.”[3]

Why is the role of domestic politics important to grasp? Because a leader concerned first and foremost with their political fortunes at home may choose policies detrimental to the state’s national power, national security, and vital national interests but which may support their political position at home—at least in the short-term. The incentives a leader faces to remain in power at home may be stronger than safeguarding the interests of the state. This is generally how risky and often disastrous foreign policies come about—think Vietnam. In many respects, however, this perspective is incompatible with the bulk of IR theory in which states act rationally. Furthermore, given the neglect of actual domestic politics in understanding security issues, it is no wonder that such a large gap continues to exist between the strategies and policies recommended by IR scholars and foreign policy professionals and the actual decisions made by policymakers (i.e. political leaders).

Fundamentally, the decisions that drive a state’s international behavior, which collectively shape the nature of international politics, are made by political leaders of political coalitions engaged in domestic political competitions. In every country, policies that affect a country’s position in the international realm such as decisions to go to war or to make peace, or to cooperate, ally, or trade with other states, are more often than not subject to intense political debates (which are not always public depending on the country and circumstances). This is not unusual. Given the right incentives, political actors will contest just about anything with one another. The constant political competition among politicians in a given polity for power exerts enormous influence on that state’s external security policies. A state’s behavior in the international system is a consequence of the competition for power among political coalitions within the state.

What I am concerned with is the high politics of the state, the competition among those that hold power and those who seek it and the impact of this competition on security policy. In classical Realism, perhaps no other concept is considered to have such a powerful influence on behavior than survival. Survival is understood as the principal goal of states in the international system. States are assumed to be basically rational actors because they are concerned first and foremost with their survival in anarchy. The interaction of the two concepts—survival amid anarchy—is what realists argue drives security competition between states. The concept of survival, however, is evident and perhaps more powerful within states as it exerts a strong motivating force on leaders and their coalitions, and can therefore explain why (and when) they make the security policy decisions they do.[4] Political leaders think and act in terms of interests defined as power. Political competition rewards those who practice power politics—the preservation of self-interest and survival—and punishes those who engage in altruism. Leaders who do not play power politics at home and abroad would rarely, if ever, become leaders in the first place and certainly would not last long in office. Politics is cruel to those who do not first place a premium on winning.

Although individuals matter, the basic nature of politics tells us that no one rules alone. Decisions are not made in a vacuum. Every leader in every political system has some form of political coalition supporting them in power, ranging from the two major political parties in the United States to the Saudi royal family and its tribal allies in Saudi Arabia.[5] All incumbent leaders face the crucible of holding onto power and office amid competition from rivals.[6] Leaders and their coalitions in power serve as the decision-makers of the state. By understanding the powerful incentives of domestic political competition, we gain important insights in what factors ultimately shape a leader’s policies.

When international relations scholars investigate domestic politics, it is usually because the state is acting irrationally in the international system (i.e. doing something stupid and unpredictable). For the most part, domestic politics is treated like a light switch that is sometimes on and sometimes off depending if it can explain why a state did something odd at some point in time. Scholars who study domestic politics in search of explanations find different variables driving foreign policy such as regime type, state strength, bureaucracies, ideologies, ideas, public opinion and special interests.[7] Others focus on individual cognition, beliefs, and the decision-making processes of statesmen and those officials and advisers immediately surrounding the leader.[8] Even those who investigate the domestic process of security policy—like how states generate military strength and wealth—do so by considering these factors within sterile environments aloof from the impact of politics.[9]

Therefore, I think it is critical to examine the influence of domestic politics on security policy rather than influence of domestic structure. This does not mean how a state is structured is irrelevant. The structure matters in certain ways because it provides the rules (i.e. transitions of power occur though elections, coups, etc.) and the field of competition for political coalitions generated elsewhere in a given country and/or society. The rules of the competition, however, cannot tell us much about the actions (strategies and tactics) the players on the field will take or even who the players are; they cannot tell us which players will win and lose or by what margin; why and when one wins and others do not; nor predict how the players and rules will change in the future.

I think for many people (especially cynics like myself) this would not seem like a very contentious point of view. Every day we can observe politicians engaged in bitter jockeying and maneuvering over domestic policies such as healthcare, immigration, taxes, etc. Why then is it such a stretch for IR and foreign policy experts to imagine those same politicians engaging in exactly the same behavior when it comes to foreign policy and security issues?  There are certainly many reasons that are each worthy of several other posts if not several dissertations, but they would certainly include the dominance of certain theoretical perspectives in IR and the professional limitations imposed on most foreign policy analysts.

Furthermore, research on domestic politics is notoriously difficult to conduct due to the scarce and scattered nature of the literature that discusses domestic politics alongside foreign policy.[10] This is not just a problem in political science due to the neglect of domestic politics in international relations and foreign policy analysis. There is also a wider problem in historical treatments of international affairs, from which IR field draws its evidence. Historian Fred Logevall once commented that most historians “treat the professional politicians involved in the making of foreign policy as though they were not politicians at all.”[11] Unfortunately, political leaders have strong incentives to misrepresent or withhold what factors ultimately drive their policy decisions. Few leaders want to be seen debating the political advantages and disadvantages of sending troops off to fight and die in war or the political particulars of national security issues. It is easy to understand why historical evidence in closed political systems like China would be scant due to intense censorship and secrecy. Yet even in democracies there is a strong taboo among officials against openly discussing foreign policy and domestic politics in the same room—or at least documenting it. Anthony Lake, the National Security Advisor during the Clinton administration, once compared the absence of discussion of domestic political considerations during national security meetings on the Middle East to discussing sex in the Victorian-age, “Nobody talks about it but it’s on everybody’s mind.”[12] 

Understanding a state’s foreign policy requires lifting the curtain of domestic politics and see the rich incentives and intense political competition that is driving and shaping its international behavior. For instance, leaders and their ruling political coalition attach an extremely high value to their political survival and domestic political standing. An incumbent will generally not choose a policy direction that will knowingly make them less secure vis-à-vis their political opposition.   

With all of that said, I don’t want my point to be misconstrued into a simple belief that all politicians are simply Janus-faced power-hungry schemers with zero principles and no sense of civic or national responsibility. Rather, I appreciate (and sometimes admire) the essential art of politics, the strategies and the tactics politicians must use (or invent) as they push, manipulate, and maneuver to achieve their goals. While this is not exactly an entirely complete theoretical framework from which to explore all international affairs through, it is a perspective that is important to keep in mind moving forward.  

 


[1] See Kenneth Waltz, Man, State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); David Singer, "The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations," World Politics, The International System: Theoretical Essays, 14, no. 1 (October 1961): 77-92; Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
[2] See Alexander L. George, Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993).
[3] Kiron K. Skinner et al., The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 30.
[4] As Hans Morgenthau discerns, “Politics is the struggle for power over men, and whatever its ultimate aim may be, power is the immediate goal and the modes of acquiring, maintaining, and demonstrating it determine the technique of political action (emphasis added).” Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations; the Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1967), 195.
[5] The process of coalition building has received considerable attention by formal rational choice theorists. See William H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962).
[6] See Bruce Bueno De Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
[7] See Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); Peter J. Katzenstein, Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Thomas Risse-Kappen, "Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies," World Politics 43, no. 4 (July 1991): 479-512; Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 30-47. Stephen M. Walt, "Revolution and War," World Politics 44, no. 3 (April 1992) 321-368.
[8] Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); John D. Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974);  Alexander L. George, The Operational Code: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-making (Santa Monica: RAND, 1967);
[9] Peter Gourevitch adeptly criticized these approaches for being overly concerned with “state structure” and focused on the wrong processes that they become entirely apolitical: Many arguments focus on process and institutional arrangements divorced from politics; on structure in the sense of procedures; separate from the groups and interests which work through politics; on the formal properties of relationships among groups, rather than the content of the relations among them; on the character of decisions (consistency, coherence, etc.) rather than the content of decisions. Somehow politics disappears. Peter Gourevitch, "The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics," International Organization 32, no. 4 (Autumn 1978): 901. See also Matthew Evangelista, "Issue-Area and Foreign Policy Revisited," International Organization 43, no. 1 (Winter 1989): 169.
[10] Jack Levy remarks, “It is difficult to read both the theoretical literature in political science on the causes of war and historians' case studies of the origins of particular wars without being struck by the difference in their respective evaluations of the importance of domestic political factors.” Jack S. Levy, "Domestic Politics and War," The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4: The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars (Spring 1988): 653.
[11] Schwartz, "Henry...Winning an Election Is Terribly Important,” 179.
[12] Schwartz, "Henry...Winning an Election Is Terribly Important,” 173.

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