The thesis is structured on the basis of the key themes identified in the literature review and the chapters that follow explore in greater depth these themes. The thesis is divided into five chapters, with the first two being contextual and the following three being empirical. Chapter one opens with a more detailed discussion on the transformation of world politics and its implications for the conceptualisation and organisation of contemporary foreign policy. In doing so it borrows elements from international relations, globalisation and diplomatic studies literatures. Chapter one provides the agenda for the empirical chapters on Greece that follow. The chapter also focuses on the analytical framework which is based on the employment of different literatures for purposes of facilitating the evaluation of the Greek foreign policy system. More specifically, the chapter reviews institutional approaches to organisational behaviour, a transformational foreign policy analysis and the behavioural model of the foreign policy system.
Chapter two conceptualises a Greek foreign policy system drawing on Clarke and White’s (1981; 1989) theoretical conceptualisation, identifies its constituent elements and discusses the main international and domestic variables that influence Greek foreign policy making structures. This chapter comprises two sections. The first section explores Greece’s international environment and the influence it has over its institutions for foreign policy. The second section focuses on the wider domestic politico-administrative culture and environment of which foreign policy process is just a part. Chapter two portrays certain administrative practices which have dominated Greek politics and have contributed to the moulding of the foreign policy machinery.
The third chapter focuses on developments summarised in the horizontalisation of foreign policy to a number of domestic government departments as well as the development of international policy capacity outside the confines of the MFA. With foreign policy proliferation now embracing a wide cast of government departments and the creation of foreign policy communities constituting key themes in foreign policy discussion, this chapter undertakes the investigation of Greek foreign policy decentralisation and a search for evidence of the emergence of a foreign policy community.
Chapter four narrows down the investigation to the traditionally central actor of the Greek foreign policy machinery namely the MFA. By focusing on the contemporary structure, role and operation of the MFA the chapter seeks to investigate the present position of the ministry within the Greek bureaucracy and to assess its adaptation to the changing operational environment. With adaptation becoming manifested with organisations’ extension of functions and structures, the chapter examines the MFA in the context of the transforming environment and evaluates its adaptability. At the same time, it places the MFA alongside some key assumptions concerning the nature and role of contemporary foreign ministries as well as examines its relevance vis-á-vis declinist theses and contemporary foreign ministry images.
Chapter five focuses on the Greek diplomatic network. Some of the key issues that are addressed concern its functions and role as well as questions regarding its adaptability to current developments. The chapter addresses the key themes which emerge in the wider discussion of the role and operation of overseas diplomatic missions in the context of transforming world politics against which it tests the Greek diplomatic network. The chapter provides a significant amount of data for the understanding of the operation of this part of Greek bureaucracy which has been significantly understudied.
Finally the conclusion revisits the research questions set out above and seeks to contextualise the Greek foreign policy system alongside key assumptions presented in earlier chapters. In other words, by synthesising the employed
analytical framework and findings the last chapter analyses the Greek foreign policy system against the key themes that preoccupy the contemporary management of foreign and international policy.
Chapter 1: Thinking about foreign policy structures
and processes in a transforming world
Introduction
The aim of the present chapter is to explore the main challenges, empirical and analytical, that a transforming world politics (Webber and Smith, 2002; Held et al., 1999) pose to the national management of foreign policy. This exploration is necessary for the identification of the main themes that preoccupy national foreign policy systems in their management of foreign affairs in the 21st century. The chapter is organised on the basis of the key developments in foreign policy management in the context of the changing global politics. Such developments constitute the focus of contemporary foreign policy analysis.
More specifically, the chapter besides discussing conceptual developments in foreign policy analysis, addresses the challenges imposed upon foreign policy machineries in their management of foreign policy by the changing global politics. With the latter constituting the independent variable of the study, the chapter discusses its implications for national foreign policy machineries and their foreign ministries world-wide. This approach enables the formulation of a taxonomy of issues that helps to inform and guide the study of the dependent variable of the study, namely the contemporary Greek foreign policy machinery. Given that most of the available foreign policy management discourse derives from western and European states as well as from what have been termed as mega-foreign ministries1 such as those in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan, it is valuable to explore how Greek foreign policy structures relate to such findings.
1
Foreign ministries are categorised based on the numbers of employees and the number of overseas missions (Garson, 2007: 238)
In the contemporary environment challenges to national governments’ capacity to conduct foreign and international policy is a familiar theme and reflects the blurring of the boundaries between international and domestic policy milieus. In this environment, agencies assigned with responsibility for the conduct of what has been traditionally termed as ‘foreign’ policy, find themselves challenged as roles and responsibilities are relocated. The contemporary polycentric international environment characterised by a proliferation of actors with international policy agendas -including domestic governmental departments with an international mandate - poses significant challenges to the national foreign policy machinery. This underpins its institutional responses and the need to rethink its role and structure.
With the national foreign policy machinery, defined as the part of the national bureaucracy which pursues governmental policy overseas, it is crucial to explore the implications of the changing operational environment for foreign policy bureaucracies. In this light, a broad objective of the present discussion concerns the implications of the changing operational environment for those national structures and processes involved in the management of foreign policy whilst a more specific objective is to explore the aforementioned implications for the foreign ministry, the nucleus of the national foreign policy machinery in its traditional form. The exploration of the latter involves reflection upon the organisational responses of the foreign ministry to the changing policy environment as well as questions with regards to its role and centrality within contemporary national foreign policy bureaucracies.
The discussion is based on the premise that the patterns of change within the foreign ministry’s structure, processes and operation should provide significant evidence regarding state responses to external change as well as their fundamental assumptions about world politics (Hocking, 2007b: 4).With the transformation in world politics reflecting the forces of globalization, regionalization and, to a smaller extent, localisation creating needs for the management of horizontal issues (Harder, 2004: 3) cutting across customary foreign policy’s
vertical organisational domains, the foreign ministry’s traditional hierarchical organisational structure and models of diplomatic representation are deemed no longer sufficient (Cooper, 2001). Therefore, in the light of the debate concerning the impact of a transforming world politics on the ways in which governments manage foreign policy, the study of the structure, operation and role of the foreign ministry may generate useful insights.
In this light, the present chapter seeks to address the transforming relationships between national and international politics and their implications for the understanding and management of foreign policy. In doing so, it draws on literature from International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and Institutionalism. With this in mind, the chapter starts with a number of key developments which make up the changing international environment and their implications for the national management of foreign policy. Then it narrows the discussion to the foreign ministry and considers its role and mandate within the national foreign policy bureaucracy as well as its institutional responses to the transforming policy environment. Finally, the chapter undertakes the exploration of the analytical and theoretical developments of foreign policy within the context of FPA and employs the organisational device of the Foreign Policy System (FPS) which conceptualises foreign policy processes and structures as an integrated system in specific national contexts.