Trends and developments in South African foreign policy : 2009

Abstract

Broadly speaking, foreign policy analysts consider two contexts when studying a given state’s policy vis-à-vis the international environment: the systemic, which pertains to the structural determinants of the external domain, and the domestic. Predominant attention to the former is associated with realist schools of thought, which start from the assumption that states, as unitary, rational actors, make and implement foreign policy that is driven by national interests. On the other hand, emphasis on the domestic environment is the proclivity of liberal-pluralist foreign policy analysts (and, it should be noted, theorists within the fast evolving new paradigm of constructivism, who also contend that ‘foreign policy behaviour is often determined primarily by domestic politics’).