Estado actual de las contrataciones públicas excluidas del ámbito de aplicación de

 International Environment  Alliance/Allied Resolve  Diplomatic Leverage  Interdependence DOMESTIC (Intervening Variable/ with sometimes independent function)  Nationalism - State Nationalism - Popular Nationalism  State Institutions - Strong state - Weak state  Domestic Politics FOREIGN POLICY BEHAVIOUR/OPTION (Dependent Variable)  Assertive/nationalist - actual policy - rhetorical policy  Moderate/Conciliatory  Non-action

Source: Partly adapted and modified from Taliaferro (2006:486)

This framework requires the Japanese “state”, or more specifically, “state-elites” be made the primary agent, since they ultimately dispense the foreign policy-decisions. This necessitates the task of identifying their political-ideological dispositions and affiliations, their dependence on nationalism as a power instrument, their inclination towards nationalist, or pragmatic external agenda, and their domestic political resolve vis-à-vis nationalist and moderate elements to infer on nationalism’s salience in affecting their perception/calculation. Also under scrutiny are other domestic agencies, namely the LDP and its coalition partners, bureaucracy (MOFA, JDA/MOD, METI, etc.), political oppositions, and non-state actors (i.e. media, intelligentsia, nationalist/pacifist pressure groups, zaikai, and public opinion). For external agencies, the responses of the Chinese government and society, and the US’ role (within the US-Japan alliance, and as a salient actor in the US-Japan-China “triangular” relationship) are considered, together with other relevant contextual factors/actors in the international environment that simultaneously affect Japanese foreign policy-making.

Building on the modest framework, this section operationalises nationalism within an interactive “macro-micro” model to explicate how, when, and under what condition, it prevails in Japan’s China policy-making. NCR stresses that domestic influence on foreign policy depends on the constraints/opportunities imposed by the international system. This is coherent with the realist tradition’s basic assumption, which emphasises the primacy of systemic imperatives in conditioning the environment in which nation-states function and operate. Nonetheless, NCR goes further by assuming that the environment primarily serves to limit, but not govern a state’s specific foreign policy-choices, leaving such processes to domestic factors/actors, i.e. nationalism and state-elites’ perception/calculation (Sterling- Folker 1997; Dessler 1989). When international pressures are low, or when the probability of conflict is relatively obscure, NCR assumes that states can exercise a wider range of policy- options, thus giving nationalism and other domestic factors a bigger impact on foreign policy-making (Desch 1998). Under such conditions where domestic political bargaining enjoys greater saliency in the decision-making process, nationalist pressures (i.e. nationalist politicians, popular nationalist sentiments, etc.) may prevail and force, or even encourage states to adopt nationalist over prudent foreign policy-options. Likewise, state-elites fostering, or are dependent on nationalism for domestic political expediency, may allow it a more affective role in engendering state behaviour, under a relatively low-pressure international environment. Conversely, when external pressures are high, and the likelihood of threat becomes imminent, state preferences are bound to be curtailed, thus reducing the leverage of domestic imperatives on foreign policy-making (Desch 1998). This implies that nationalist forces have lesser bargaining power in policy-making. Instead, state-elites as “rational” actors are expected to respond to systemic imperatives, rather than domestic nationalist pressures, or their nationalistic convictions, when determining policy-options.43

NCR, however, does not exclude the possibility of domestic attributes superseding systemic imperatives even in times of tremendous structural constraints, since international pressure does not directly translate into specific set of behaviour/preferences, but must be 43_{This paragraph’s line of argument is developed based on the NCR-oriented works of Desch (1998); Taliaferro}

filtered through unit-level factors/actors, namely state-elites’ perceptions, which can “intervene”, and cause states to act contrary to systemic imperatives.44 According to Sterling-Folker, since state-elites perceive external pressures through the “prism” of their own intersubjective processes, their evaluation of the situation may not be necessarily objective. Even in the pursuit of survival, their efficiency in responding to those pressures “remain grounded in the processes from which actor identities, interests and behaviours are derived” (1997:22). This assumption grants nationalism an “intervening” role affecting state- elites’ ability to dispense “rational” policy-options.45In sum, NCR prescribes nationalism with mostly “intervening” and, sometimes “independent” functions in foreign policy-making, pending on prevailing external conditions. Nationalism serves mainly as an “intervening” variable under structurally determinate conditions, whereas under a low-pressure, external environment, it may develop concurrent independent functions in affecting actor behaviour/preferences (Sterling-Folker 1997:22; Desch 1998:169).46

Superficially, NCR’s incorporation of external and domestic-level theorisation looks similar to other middle-grounding frameworks deriving from both liberal and realist traditions. However, Sterling-Folker argues that, unlike the liberal construct, both the systemic and the domestic can be deductively incorporated, and “act as simultaneous independent variables in the [neoclassical] realist argument” (1997:22). This is done by separating and juxtaposing both contexts under the “environment-process” nexus, with the international system acting

44_{This means that the international system imposes pressures on, and opportunities to the “self-help” units that}

constitute it, but according to Waltz, it cannot determine “how effectively” these units (state actors) “will respond to those pressures and possibilities” (1979:71).

45

According to Sterling-Folker, the domestic process, serving as an “opaque filter” through which assessments, choices and judgements are being made regarding the international realm, would not only “inhibit actors from objectively judging choices, behaviours and outcomes”, but could even act as “a barrier to their survival during time of major external crisis” (1997:19-20).

46

Desch (1998) in his analysis of how cultural theories may supplement realist theorising, suggest the possibility of domestic factors having a more independent role under specific structural conditions. According to him, under a “structurally indeterminate” environment, where states have more policy-options and domestic bargaining have greater leverage, domestic factors may have more independent impact on state behaviour/ preferences (1998:168-169). Conversely, under a “structurally determinate” environment, where a state has limited policy-choices, and is expected to respond primarily to systemic-material imperatives, he asserts that domestic factors has less independent impact on foreign policy-making, but may still act as “intervening” variables that can limit the effectiveness of state responses towards the structural condition (1998:169). Desch, nevertheless, contends that domestic factor is mostly an “intervening” variable in realist theories (1998:170). This argument is also noted in Brooks’ assumption on domestic and non-realist variables shaping state behaviour/preferences-of-action, under his “postclassical realist” construct (see Brooks 1997).

as the anarchic “environment” that disposes a set of constraining conditions, while domestic factors serve as the internal “process” through which systemic constraints are translated into policy-outcomes (Sterling-Folker 1997:4-8; Taliaffero 2006:479-480; Dessler 1989). Ontologically, this “environment-process” nexus separates NCR from the liberal-oriented “two-level game” framework that incorporates both systemic and domestic as process-based variables, which actually renders the latter deductively inconsistent and theoretically inhospitable to domestic-level theorising (Sterling-Folker 1997:4).47 NCR also differs from postclassical/defensive realism that purports to entertain domestic/unit-level analysis. Unlike NCR, the latter variant is susceptible to charges of reductionism, “because its first-order systemic argument does not account for much of the actual behaviour, thus forcing its adherents to contract out the bulk of their explanatory work to domestic-level variables introduced on an ad-hoc basis” (Gideon Rose 1998:150-151). Last, but not least, NCR needs to be differentiated from analytical eclecticism (Katzenstein 2008; Katzenstein and Okawara 2001), despite their convergence on the importance of adopting a holistic approach that derives analytical tools from other theoretical traditions to comprehensively explain state behaviour and international outcomes. Unlike neoclassical realists, whose basic theoretical assumptions/arguments derived from IR realism, which explain their advocacy for the primacy of power politics and first-order systemic/external explanation, while not discounting other levels and types of variables of analysis, proponents of analytical eclecticism do not favour specific research traditions, but rather, draw selectively elements from multiple theoretical paradigms to generate their explanations. In doing so, they also totally eschew parsimony, in preference for a non-“method-driven” analysis (see Katzenstein 2008), which inevitably leads to an absence of clear, systematic analytical frameworks to produce theoretically informed understandings of foreign policy and interstate relations. Such differences, and its incompatibility with this thesis’ research objectives (i.e. to provide a systematic analysis via a discernible analytical construct, and to enhance IR realism’s

47 _{According to Sterling-Folker, since realism is essentially an environment-based theory, while liberalism}

claims to be a process-based theory, the incorporation of domestic factors as process-based variables by the former is deductively consistent compared to the latter (1997:4-5). The ontological nuance makes this thesis’ framework theoretically different from previous works like those of Bong (2002) and Chung (2004) that employ the liberal-oriented “two-level-game” or other mid-range constructs.

explanatory power and relevance), are the reasons why NCR is chosen ahead of analytical eclecticism, as the central analytical framework for this study.

Diagram 2

NCR MODEL OF NATIONALISM AND STATE BEHAVIOUR/PREFERENCES48

Y

favourable

C B

Assertive-Nationalist FP Freedom/flexibility of FP Choices

(actual policy)

X

Unfavourable favourable

D A

Non-action Moderate-Conciliatory FP

(cloaked in Nationalist FP rhetoric) (actual policy)

unfavourable

X = Domestic Political Resolve (vis-à-vis domestic nationalist pressure) Y = Relative Power Position (vis-à-vis disputant-state/China)

Based on the stipulated assumptions, a modest NCR model can be generated by juxtaposing the external (independent) and the domestic (intervening/independent) variables in two separate axes, to represent their interactions, which produce foreign policy-outcomes (dependent variable). Represented in Diagram 2, the external variables identified earlier are incorporated into the model to measure Japan’s relative power position vis-à-vis the disputant-state, China (as perceived by state-elites), along the Y-axis. Meanwhile, nationalism is factored with other domestic determinants, to measure the domestic political resolve of state-elites, specifically against nationalist pressure, along the X-axis. Independently, both axes provide a measure of state-elites perception/calculation in terms of the degree to which they feel confident, or vulnerable against the pressure imposed by the respective set of variables, based on a “favourable-to-unfavourable” continuum. Ceteris

paribus, each axis generates its respective hypothesis on the expected Japanese behaviour/policy-option: (H1) by the Y-axis, and (H2), the X-axis. Essentially, the juxtaposition of X- and Y-axes would yield four more sub-hypotheses (H3-H6) representing the likely foreign policy-options under specific external-internal conditions and time context (marked by QuadrantAtoD;see also Table 2).49

Table 2