対外政策決定論の再検討

比較政治と国際政治の間

抄録

In studies of international politics, foreign policy decision-making has been one of the important research areas. However, domestic politics in which policy decision-making is done has not received much attention in traditional studies, even though foreign policy is a point of contact between international relations and domestic politics. With the progress of international economic interdependence, theories that focus on a decision-making process in domestic politics have become important to investigate a foreign policy. In this article, theories of foreign policy decision-making are reexamined.
There are several approaches to theorize foreign policy decision-making. Traditional and orthodox analysis of foreign policy in studies of international politics saw domestic politics as a “black box” and explained nation's policy at the level of international system. Next attempt of theorization was to grasp a whole foreign policy-making process as a system. Then Allison's second and third model, which analyzed decision-making process in domestic politics, got attention by many scholars in the 1970s. After that, cognition of policy-maker was focused on in the academic circle of international politics. In the 1980s, importance of “idea” in foreign policy decision-making was pointed out in several studies and the “two-level games” model was proposed as another framework.
In the study of international political economy, domestic politics attracted scholars' attention as an important factor to analyze decision-making of foreign economic policy in the late 1980s. There are two types of studies. One focuses on preference or power resource distribution of societal actors in domestic politics. The other sees socioeconomic and/or political institutions as an important factor in policy decision-making.
There is another approach that makes models of decision-making and applies them to foreign policies of developed democratic countries in various issue areas. Goldmann's study investigates Sweden's foreign policies and tries to find relations between democracy and foreign policy. It examines and compares foreign policy decision-making in four issue areas (defense, internationalist, foreign economic, diplomatic security) using three criteria (representation, participation, information). Other study by Goldmann presents nine models of decision-making and applies them to Swedish foreign policies in several issue areas. These studies indicate that the analysis of domestic politics is important for foreign policy study and that plural models based on policy areas will be useful.
For better understanding on foreign policy decision-making, it is not sufficient to analyze foreign policy only at the level of international system or of individual decision-maker in domestic politics. We need to investigate domestic political process with the consideration to the influence of international relation on domestic politics. Therefore, approaches and methods of the study of international relations and comparative politics should be utilized and merged for analysis of foreign policy.