ENVIRONMENT ENVIRONMENT
Demands Decisions and Actions Support ENVIRONMENT ENVIRONMENT
Figure 1.1 The Basic Political System adopted from Easton, D., A Framework for Political Analysis. Prentice-Hall., 1965, p. 112
Hence, viewed under the light of the transformation of world politics it adds to the equation agents outside the traditional foreign policy machinery, located in its external environment but at the same time forming an integral part of the system. In doing so, a re-defined and transformed foreign policy system allows for the incorporation of processes that cut across domestic departmental barriers but also foreign and domestic policy milieus. Arguably, despite the space for innovation that the FPS approach allows, it is also characterised by certain weaknesses which
O U T P U T S I N P U T S
THE POLITICAL
SYSTEM
derive from its very behaviouralist nature (Gyngell and Wesley, 2003; Clarke, 1982: 20; 1989: 39). However, whilst recognising these problems the FPS approach offers valuable insights for the present investigation.
Behavioral models have been argued to ‘provide the worst possible answer – study everything’ to theoretical questions. This problem is aggravated by the inability to disaggregate the system without violating the central notion that it represents a process. Supporters of the FPS concept argue that the added value of the approach is that it essentially acknowledges that not all variables of the process are the same for all cases. Environments for instance, which is where part of the foreign policy problem is rooted, differ in each case (Allen, 1981: 95; Smith, 1981: 55-56). More specifically, the given domestic social, cultural and economic patterns or perceptions of the international system itself constitute the main tools for the explanation of foreign policy systems’ behavior (Farrands, 1981: 36-50; Smith, 1981: 55-56).
Conclusion
The present chapter discussed developments since the end of the Cold War in the management of foreign affairs and their implications for national foreign policy machineries. The aim of this chapter, as stated in the methodology section, was to identify and highlight the major issues that preoccupy contemporary foreign policy systems and synthesise them into a single taxonomy of themes upon which the research questions and the empirical part of the thesis are based. Such themes are directly related to the changing relationship between domestic and international politics which result in the re-conceptualisation of foreign policy and the re-organisation of its processes and structures.
More specifically, the chapter highlighted that the changing international and domestic policy milieus led to specific developments in the realm of the management of foreign policy. The polycentrism of contemporary global politics
enhanced the enlargement of national and international foreign policy and diplomatic agendas and brought into the foreign policy process a number of government departments with a traditionally domestic mandate. The involvement of such actors in the national foreign policy process has resulted in diffusion in the management of foreign policy into a wider cast of agents thus creating foreign policy communities, which embrace actors horizontally outside the confines of the foreign ministry. The phenomenon of the widening foreign policy communities has triggered discussion with regards to the centrality and relevance of the foreign ministry in contemporary foreign policy machineries. Those discussions are closely linked to the course of change and adaptation that foreign ministries have embarked upon which was discussed in the previous sections. Furthermore, this development has raised increased demands for international policy coordination which constitutes a continuing theme in national management of foreign policy. The direct involvement of home ministries and dealings with their opposite numbers in contrast to the past monopoly of the foreign ministry in communication has raised a number of questions concerning the latter’s centrality in the foreign policy process. Foreign ministries, traditionally the core elements of national foreign policy machineries, located at the boundary of two linked systems, the national and international and organised around geographical and vertical divisions which reflect the national/international divide are faced with challenges stemming from the borderless networked world which calls for horizontal management of issues. In this environment the foreign ministry’s structure, role and relevance are questioned and need exploration.
In the wider discussion of re-organisation of national foreign policy machineries, the re-thinking of overseas diplomatic missions occupies a significant part. Diplomatic missions, the nerve endings of the foreign policy machinery, are faced with a number of challenges which call for their reorganisation. Based on the fact that the content, instruments and target of foreign policy is changing, as previous discussion demonstrated, the agenda and structure of overseas missions as well as the role of diplomats are undergoing profound change. Embassies are expected
to represent the whole of government overseas whilst public diplomacy becomes the top priority of their mission and in many cases the axis for their re-organisation. The aforementioned issues, as summarised here and analysed in the previous sections, have provided the thematic foundation for the exploration of the Greek foreign policy machinery pursued in the following empirical chapters. These themes are addressed and explored for the case of Greece in order of discussion in chapters three, four and five which focus respectively on the Greek foreign policy community, the MFA and the diplomatic network. The analysis in these three chapters is underlain by institutionalist thinking for purposes of illuminating questions regarding the responses of those elements of the Greek foreign policy machinery to the changing operational environment.
And whilst the aforementioned developments have given implications for a number of advanced foreign policy bureaucracies, the degree to which they relate to smaller states’ machineries requires exploration. In other words, the responses of smaller states’ foreign policy machineries need to be investigated. This is because the responses of national foreign policy machineries to environmental stimuli are determined by their particular bureaucratic culture as well as the historical and political circumstances particular to this country. Arguably, foreign policy machineries are influenced by social and political circumstances such as social modernisation, external penetration and dependence and therefore, they need to be conceptualised as systems which receive input from their surrounding environments as the model of Clarke and White discussed on pages 72-75. For this purpose, it is deemed necessary, before the exploration of the above themes starts, to conceptualise the Greek national foreign policy machinery as a system, which comprises parameters and influences drawn from its particular domestic and international environments. Chapter two embarks upon this conceptualisation and functions as an inventory of factors which, according to the literature, have contributed to the existing images of the Greek foreign policy machinery.
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