The Three Levels Of Analysis In International Relations 6o6y23

SUMMARY AND COMMENTARIES ON ‘LEVELS OF ANALYSIS AND FOREIGN POLICY’ From the book “International Politics on the World Stage, 12e, John T. Rourke”1

SUMMARY This chapter is divided into three major parts; each discusses a level of analysis regarding a state’s foreign policy.

A. Individual-Level Analysis This level of analysis looks at the people who make the policy. This level of analysis involves understanding on how is the process of policy making. The basic question regarding this level of analysis is on how do basic human traits influence policy, which is a discussion on human as a species. There are clearly several factors that determine how a human being takes a certain policy. Among them: 1. Cognitive factors. Human beings are bounded by a certain limitation cognitively in making certain decision. There are external boundaries, which include missing or unknown information; and internal boundaries, that include human physical frailties. In coping with this problem decision makers tend to seek cognitive consistency by discounting ideas that contradict their existing views. Another way is self-justification or conviction that the choice will eventually succeed, or known as wishful thinking. The third way is to use what is known as heuristic device, which allows us to avoid gathering considerable information and thorough analysis. Some examples of these heuristic devices would be stereotypes and analogies (a certain comparison between new situations and an earlier situations someone had experienced). 2. Emotional factors. This is one factor that determines the condition of the decision maker in making decision. While it is easy to imagine that the decision maker would be rational enough in taking the decision, in reality decision maker will find him/herself under pressure, sad, angry, or depressed. 3. Psychological factors. There are psychological traits shared by humans that explain why their feelings and decisions are usually less than fully rational. 1

John T. Rourke, International Politics on the World Stage, 12th Edition (New York City, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2008).

One of the approaches is frustration-aggression theory, which argues that individuals and societies that are frustrated sometimes become aggressive. 4. Biological factors. While controversial, there are various theories that explain how human decisions are often not fully rational. One of them is biopolitics, which tries to explain the relations between physical nature and political behavior of human. The comparison between animal and human behavior that often used in explaining the way humans act is ethology. One example of this ethology is as mentioned by Ardrey (pp. 12-14), that “territoriality – the drive to gain, maintain, and defend the exclusive right to a piece of property – is an animal instinct.” The difference may also be caused by gender2 differences. The issue of this gender differences have created the gender opinion gap that political scientists are just beginning to examine. This gender problem has derived manliness, which states that aggressive behavior is closely related to sex. 5. Perceptions. The ancient debate on perceptions is philosophical, to determine whether there is an objective world or whether everything is only what we perceive to be. There are four common characteristics of perceptions: 1. We tend to see opponents as more threatening than they may actually be (e.g. how the United States are really alarmed by North Korean nuclear threat). 2. We tend to see the behavior of others as more planned and coordinated than our own. 3. We find it hard to understand why others dislike, mistrust, and fear us. 4. Others and we tend to have similar images of one another. Another common characteristic of human is that human beings tend to think and act differently in collective settings than they do as individuals. This is the discussion of organizational behavior. Human beings play a variety of roles based on attitude about the status we have and the behaviors we adopt in them. The script for a role is derived from a combination of self-expectation (how we expect ourselves to act) and external expectations (how others expect us to behave).

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The author has managed to distinct the idea of sex and gender, in which sex is biological, and gender is behavioral. See Rourke, p. 69.

When people give advices and make decisions within an organization, they not only have to consider that they think but also how others will view their opinions and decisions in the organization. The calculation tends to promote groupthink. In groups as such, the image of a devil’s advocate is a rarity, in part because those who take this approach get forced out. The third approach to individual-level analysis focuses on idiosyncratic analysis, that studies how each leader’s personal characteristics help shape his or her decisions. This is the discussion of leaders and their individual traits. There are five of many possible factors to consider: 1. Personality. Under this factor scholars examine a leader’s basic orientations toward self and toward others, behavioral patterns, and attitudes about such politically relevant concepts as authority. The most well known scheme will place political personality along an active-ive scale and a positivenegative scale. Active leaders are innovators, while ive leaders are reactors. Positive personalities enjoy the contentious political environment, while negative personalities are apt to feel burdened, even abused, by political criticism. The worst combination is said to be the active-negative combination (since active leaders receive more criticism, yet negative personalities are prone to assume that opponents are enemies). 2. Physical and mental health. A leader’s physical and mental health can be important factors in decision making. How physical health proved to be important was as the example of F. D. Roosevelt, who was ill from hypertension while was at the office of the presidency. How psychological problems proved to be important was as the example of Adolf Hitler, who was arguably suffer from ailments from a mixture of illness and medications. 3. Ego and ambition. A leader’s ego and personal ambitions can also influence policy. 4. Political history and personal experiences. Decision makers are also affected by their personal experiences. 5. Perceptions and operational reality. Decision maker’s images of reality constitute a fifth idiosyncratic element that influences their approach to foreign policy. Perceptions form an operational reality, that is, policy makers tend to act based on perceptions, whether they are accurate or not.

Human decisions are mixtures of rational and irrational inputs. This underlines how policies are actually mixtures of rational and irrational factors. This view of how individuals and groups make policy choices is called poliheuristic theory. This theory depicts decision making as a two-stage process, the use of shortcuts to eliminate unacceptable policy options, and then setting aside domestic politics and personal factors and concentrate on strategic, realpolitik considerations.

B. State-Level Analysis Policymaking is significantly influenced by the fact that it occurs within the context of a political structure, in which countries are the most important. The type of government, the situation, and the type of policy determines making foreign policy. 1. The type of government and the foreign policy process. The more authoritarian a government is, the more likely it is that foreign policy will be centered in a narrow segment of the government. Foreign policy making in democracies is much more open with inputs from legislators, the media, public opinion, and opposition parties. 2. The type of situation and the foreign policy process. Policy is made differently during crisis and non-crisis situation. Crisis policy making is likely to be dominated by the political leader and a small group of advisers. 3. Type of policy and the foreign policy process. How foreign policy is decided also varies according to the nature of the issue area involved. Issues that have little immediate or obvious impact on citizens of a certain country can be termed pure foreign policy. By contrast, foreign policy that has an immediate and obvious domestic impact on citizens of a certain country is called intermestic policy. Culture also determines the foreign policy making. Each country’s foreign policy tends to reflect its political culture. This concept represents a society’s widely held, traditional values and its fundamental practices that are slow to change (Paquette, 2003; Jung, 2002). There are some policy-making actors: 1. Heads of government and other political executives. Some important factors regarding to the political executives are chief executive’s formal powers (grants of authority given by constitution and laws); informal powers;

and leadership capabilities. Yet, bureaucrats often do not agree with the country’s foreign policy. They try to influence the policy themselves by filtering information, giving recommendations, and implementation. 2. Legislatures. In all countries, the foreign policy role of legislatures play a lesser role compared to the executive branch. Yet it does not mean that all legislatures are powerless. Legislatures play a larger foreign policy role in democracies, yet it still constrained by several factors: extensive legal powers, tradition, the belief that a unified national voice is important to a successful foreign policy, and legislators tend to focus on domestic policy. 3. Interest groups. Interest groups are private associations of people who have similar policy views and who pressure the government to adopt those views as policy. There are several kinds of interest groups, among them: cultural groups, economic groups, issue-oriented groups, and transnational interest groups. 4. The people. The public plays a highly variable role in foreign policy. Public opinion is a marginal factor in authoritarian regimes, yet the role is more complex in democracies.

C. System-Level Analysis While countries are free to make any foreign policy decision they want, practically they have to make choices that are reasonable within the context of the realities of the international system. Every system has its own structural characteristics. Two of particular relevance to this analysis is on the organization of authority and the scope and level of interaction among the actors in the system. 1. The organization of authority. The structure of authority for making and enforcing rules, for allocating assets, and for conducting other authoritative tasks in a system can range from hierarchical (vertical) to anarchical (horizontal). Most systems tend to be hierarchical. However, the international system is mostly horizontal. Thus, the international system is largely anarchic, in which there is no higher authority than the states. 2. Scope, level, and intensity of interactions. Another structural characteristic of any political system is the scope (range), frequency, and intensity (level) of interactions among the actors. In the international system, the scope,

frequency, and level of interaction among the actors have grown extensively during the last half-century, mainly due to economic interdependence. The second factor that determines the policy making under this analysis is the power relationships. Countries are restrained by the realities of power in the international system. The conduct of the international system is heavily influenced by power considerations such as the number of powerful actors and the context of power. The international system has been defined in part by how many powerful actors each has (Wilkinson, 2004). Such an actors can be a single country or empire, global IGOs, or regional IGOs. These poles are particularly important to the realists in relations with the balance of power. It underlines the theory that all states are power seeking, the states/blocs will seek to become hegemonic, and the others will try to block such effort. Power relationships are also determined by the context of power. System-level analysis contends that the economic realities of the international system help shape the choices that countries make. Again, this is the same in systems from the global to local level. Interdependence is one of the economic facts of life that influences states’ behavior. Natural resource production and consumption patterns also influence the operation of the system. Norms influence the actions within the international system. It is hard to accept that norms exist in a world in which horrendous things sometimes happen; yet it would be far to say that there is anything near a universal standard of behavior.

Commentaries This elaboration on levels of analysis should have been elaborated more with some other levels of analysis. Another book, International Relations, Eighth Edition (Joshua S. Goldstein and Jon C. Pevehouse, 2009: pp. 17-19) added some levels of analysis: 1. The individual level, concerns the perceptions, choices, and actions of individual human beings. 2. The domestic (or state or societal) level, concerns the aggregations of individuals within states that influence state actions in the international arena. 3. The interstate (or international or systemic) level, concerns the influence of the international system upon outcomes. 4. The global level, seeks to explain international outcomes in of global trends and forces that transcend the interaction between states itself.

Among many other level of analysis, the individual-level analysis could be one of the most interesting. To say the least, Indonesian leaders can be judged by many of their individual traits. And to compare, I personally see that Indonesian politics is mostly related to leaders’ individual traits. For example, how the charismatic Soekarno ignited the spirit of Indonesians on the international politics of Konfrontasi, or how the current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s attitude on politics which created quite a weak stance on dealing with interstate conflict, as in the 2010 conflict with Malaysia.

Matthew Hanzel Department of International Relations, 2009 043 2009 0015