Domestic contestation over foreign policy, role-based and otherwise: Three cautionary cases

Abstract

Foreign policy role theorists have recently placed domestic role contestation central to their accounts of foreign policy continuity and change. Yet, contestation over national role conceptions is only one aspect of domestic competition over political power that can impact the roles states play in world politics. Frequently, foreign policies are an outgrowth of political struggle over matters only indirectly related to a state’s international role. In this article, I draw role theorists’ attention to cases where non-role-based political competition affects role performance, urging them to trace empirically the connections between role contestation, non-role-based political competition with role implications, and role performance. To make this case, I develop three plausibility probes: America’s embrace of the hegemon role after 1945, Britain’s 2016 Brexit vote, and the United States’ recent turn towards a more transactional foreign policy. Highlighting non-role political competition with role implications offers a productive challenge that promises to enrich role theory in foreign policy analysis (FPA) by bringing it a step closer to domestic political competition.

Role Theory, Foreign Policy, and the Social Construction of Sovereignty: Brexit Stage Right

“…Similarly, Argentina speculated that Brexit might cost Britain EU members' support in its dispute over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands, with the Foreign Minister asserting that Argentina stands ready to use Brexit to "enhance" its sovereignty claims over the islands (Politico 2018b). In 1982 during the Argentinian-British conflict over the islands, the UK had been able to successfully cast its actions as part of a status-quo power role rather than a colonial power role (McCourt 2011). The Brexit landscape, however, has allowed external actors to paint ongoing British sovereignty problems with the brush of its colonial past.…”

“…Like many major international turning points involving multiple causes, contingencies, and conjunctions of events (Lebow 2000), the Brexit referendum may have been an unpredictable catalyst, but the subsequent processes it launched give us an opportunity to contribute to role change research by focusing on sovereignty dynamics. Scholars have identified different types of role change such as adaptation, learning, and identity transformation (Harnisch, Frank, and Maull 2011b), the processes involved (Thies 2013;Wehner and Thies 2014;Beneš and Harnisch 2015), and investigated different change and stability dynamics in various cases (e.g., Klose 2020;McCourt 2020;Teles Faszendeiro 2020;Wehner 2020), including the UK (e.g., Gaskarth 2014;McCourt 2014). Our approach contributes to these efforts by focusing on role changes stemming from sovereignty concerns.…”

Towards a Theoretical Synthesis: Supplementing Two-Level Games with Role Theory

“…The combination works best when "multiple theories explain similar phenomena, when explanatory variables have little overlap, and when these variables do not interact in their influence of outcomes", that is, when they are complementary (Caporaso, Checkel, processes of role's contestation. This is understandable, because treating a role as clearly defined guarantees analytical parsimony and narrative clarity, but role theorists should not ignore either the processes of contestation or the influences on the state's role generated by its environment (Cantir, Kaarbo, 2012, p. 10;Cantir, Kaarbo, 2016;McCourt, 2020). The framework developed by Putnam, although usually associated with and employed by IR scholars, should be primarily treated as a theory of negotiations (and not as IR theory as such).…”