Between Loyalty and Exit. Explaining the Foreign Policies of Industrialized Countries in the UNESCO Crisis (1978-87)

Abstract

The article starts out with the presentation of an analytical model for foreign policy analysis which integrates not only a great variety of causal factors proposed by different strands of International Relations research but also several competing causal pathways to the explanation of foreign policy: interest-oriented foreign policy behavior vs. foreign policy styles, structure vs. agency, and subsystemic vs. systemic causation. Furthermore, the model contains a dynamic element which allows to take into account the effects that international interaction outcomes have on foreign policy formulation. The comparative analysis of the UNESCO policies of four major industrialized countries, the United States, the Soviet Union, France and the Federal Republic of Germany, produces the following results: (1) The UNESCO policy of these states can satisfactorily be explained as interest-oriented if one controls for the distorting effect that an unfolding crisis has on the behavior of states. (2) The UNESCO policy of the four states can, to a very large extent, be attributed to structural factors operating at the domestic level (their media system) or at the international level (their position in the overall international power structure): However, in order to account for foreign policy change over time, a dispositional variable, the ideological orientation of the government, had to be added. The conclusion of the authors is, that there are two consistent and empirically tenable yet competing explanations, one related to the Liberal theory of international relations, the other to Realism. However, since 'parties matter' in the explanation of UNESCO policy, Liberalism possesses a certain advantage.