Accounting for foreign policy change: the role of policy entrepreneurs Spyros Blavoukos* and Dimitris Bourantonis** Abstract: Foreign policy change is usually associated with systemic changes that are leading to a re-conceptualization of threats and challenges and a subsequent reprioritization of foreign policy objectives. Without negating the significance of such changes, we argue that one additional feature is critical in any account of strategic foreign policy realignment: domestic policy entrepreneurs in pursuit of a political return. The capacity of policy entrepreneurs to orchestrate foreign policy change depends on the political and institutional features of the domestic policy-making process. More conducive to change political settings are those in which the ‘authoritative decision unit’ at the centre of the policy-making system is insulated from political dependencies. The potential of policy entrepreneurs is accentuated by system-wide developments and security crises that testify to the failure of the old policy. We discuss the role of policy entrepreneurs in foreign policy change by reference to two case studies: the incremental Greek-Turkish rapprochement following the Greek foreign policy shift in the late 1990s and the Israeli re-orientation that enabled the signing of the Oslo Peace Agreement in the early 1990s.
Key Words: Foreign Policy Change, Policy Entrepreneur, Greece, Israel
* Lecturer, Department of International and European Economic Studies, Athens University of Economics and Business (
[email protected]) ** Associate Professor, Department of International and European Economic Studies, Athens University of Economics and Business (
[email protected])
Paper prepared for the SGIR 7th Pan-European Conference on IR Stockholm, 9-12 September 2010
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Introduction Foreign policy analysis has tended for a long time to focus on continuity and stability with only sporadic attempts to account for change. Dynamic aspects of foreign policy were overlooked theoretically and analytically primarily due to the bipolar Cold War rigidity and a heavy preoccupation with the stabilizing effects of interdependence (Holsti 1982: 8) as well as doubts about the generalizability value of any case-specific findings (Gilpin 1981: 4-6). This trend has changed more recently, mainly because of systemic changes in international politics and paradigm shifts in the discipline, with a few contributions addressing explicitly the issue of foreign policy change (Rynhold, 2007; Walsh, 2006; Gustavsson, 1999; Checkel 1997, 1993; Rosati et al. 1994; Skidmore, 1994; Carlsnaes, 1993; Hermann, 1990; Goldmann 1988). These contributions offer useful insights on the dynamics of foreign policy change, although they approach the issue from very different angles. It is possible to discern at least four graduated levels of foreign policy change (Hermann 1990: 5-6), of which the last two constitute the focus of this article. Adjustment and program changes entail tactical movements in the realization stage of a policy or in the methods and means used to meet a foreign policy objective. In both cases, what is done and how it is done changes, but not the policy essence or the policy objectives. Problem/goal and international orientation changes refer to more strategic and fundamental changes in the conceptualization of a foreign policy problem/goal or the redirection of a country’s approach to world affairs and position in the international system. Such changes entail the replacement or abandonment of the initial problem/goal and the deriving foreign policy objectives, which may ultimately take the form of an overall international re-orientation of the state and the simultaneous alteration of many of its policies and objectives. The aim of this article is not to question or discredit the insights of previous analyses that account for foreign policy change. We rather complement them by bringing in the foreground explicitly domestic political actors as policy entrepreneurs, arguing that their role is critical in any strategic foreign policy realignment. Our analysis lies within the broader literature that examines domestic sources of foreign policy-making, drawing especially on scholarly works that attribute to the statesmen a key role in the interaction between domestic and international levels of analysis, like Putnam’s metaphor of ‘two-level games’ (1988). The concept of policy entrepreneurship that constitutes the analytical backbone of this article has not been 2
applied previously in foreign policy-making analysis, usually mistakenly conflated with political leadership.1 Policy entrepreneurs embrace and push forward specific proposals advocating policy change in the hope of a future political return that will exceed the incurred cost of taking up any such entrepreneurial activity. In a given systemic international setting, their capacity to orchestrate policy change depends on domestic structural parameters associated with political and institutional features of the policy-making process. An element that affects crucially their change-inducing potential is their capability to capitalize on ‘critical junctures’ of the international system and ‘opportunity windows’ that may facilitate their political venture. Thus, systemic developments and security crises that testify to the failure of the old course of action pave the way for policy entrepreneurs to seek foreign policy change. We examine the role of policy entrepreneurs in two case studies of foreign policy change in the post-Cold War era: the incremental but still incomplete GreekTurkish rapprochement following the Greek foreign policy shift in the late 1990s and the Israeli re-orientation that enabled the Oslo Peace Agreement in the early 1990s. Both cases are primary examples of major foreign policy realignment and constitute the outcome of complex and multidimensional domestic and international processes. The two conflicts are not often analyzed in juxtaposition, despite the existence of a firm comparative base, given their ethnic and statist compound nature. As mentioned before, our intention is not to discredit existing analyses that accredit other domestic and international factors, but rather highlight the significance of policy entrepreneurs in this policy process. In the following section, we elaborate on the concept of policy entrepreneurs and the conditioning political and institutional features that delineate their intervening capacity. Then, we turn to each case study, examining first the international background, then the domestic political and policy-making system and finally the ‘opportunity window’ that facilitated policy entrepreneurs in their endeavors. We revisit the insights of the case studies in a separate section, discussing the interplay between foreign policy entrepreneurs and the other explanatory factors offered in the relevant literature.
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For an exception to this rule that makes an analytical distinction between the ‘leader’ and the ‘entrepreneur’, clarifying conceptually the two terms, see Malnes 1995.
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Policy Entrepreneurs and Foreign Policy Change Policy entrepreneurs are individual actors at local, national or international level, who initiate policy change in their respective political environment. In that respect, they have a transformative effect on politics, policies, or institutions, shaping the terms of the political debate, (re)framing issues, (re)defining problems, and (re)setting policy agendas. They not only constitute a source of innovation in terms of policy content or direction but also manage to consolidate innovation into lasting change (Sheingate 2003, Mintrom 1997, Mintrom and Vergari 1996). Very much like business entrepreneurs, they invest their resources -special skills and expertise, vision, and/or leadership capacity-, advocating policy change in the hope of a future return. The expected return may take the form of policy outcomes they favor, satisfaction from participation in a policy process, or even personal aggrandizement in the form of increased reputation and/or better career prospects (Kingdon 1995: 122-3). In that respect, policy entrepreneurs have admittedly a complicated utility function, comprising not only material benefits but also being related to policy success and own personal status (Schneider and Teske 1992: 739-40). In most early research done, policy entrepreneurship has been conflated with political leadership and has been treated as a chance occurrence, relying heavily on biographical accounts and personality-related features. However, more recent and systematic studies have examined the conditions that increase the likelihood of a policy entrepreneur emerging in any given organizational milieu and the structural institutional characteristics that facilitate or frustrate entrepreneurial activities (Schneider and Teske 1992; Teske and Schneider 1994). These studies highlight the analytical importance of the entry barriers policy entrepreneurs face in any given policy arena. The permeability of such barriers, which are most often –but not exclusively- institutionalized, dictates the amount of resources the entrepreneurial interloper has to invest in order to advocate policy change. Low entry barriers may encourage policy entrepreneurs; however, if they are too low they may actually discourage entrepreneurial activities since any return may well be rapidly competed away by future newcomers. High entry barriers may provide more entrepreneurship incentives securing a temporary policy monopoly but again very high barriers will have an adverse effect discouraging entrepreneurial ventures. Therefore, the relationship between entry barriers and entrepreneurship is curvilinear with policy entrepreneurs least likely to emerge when entry barriers are very high or very low 4
(Sheingate 2003: 198-9). Thus, the main condition for the emergence of a policy entrepreneur is a positive cost-benefit analysis, in which potential return exceeds the cost of overcoming existing entry barriers embedded in the status quo (Schneider and Teske 1992: 739-41). Still, of course, the emergence of a policy entrepreneur should not be conflated with the success of his/her campaign. In the foreign policy realm, policy entrepreneurs are usually political figures who manage to overcome the inertia of previous foreign policy action (cf. Byman and Pollack, 2001; Hermann et al., 2001), providing directional leadership (Malnes 1995: 92-3). Their preference divergence and the drive of their policy differentiation originate from a different understanding, conceptualization, and prioritization of international challenges, stemming not least from their belief systems, cognitive factors and other idiosyncratic features (Checkel 1997; Moravcsik 1993: 30; Hermann, 1980). Given the high salience of many foreign policy issues, their entry barriers, associated with the domestic political-electoral and institutional setting, are most often than not very significant, which explains to a large extent relative foreign policy continuity and stability. Still, there emerge occasionally ‘critical junctures’ and ‘opportunity windows’ that lower these entry barriers. Although there is always some degree of overlap between the two, the former are related primarily with system-wise developments that alter the terms of international interactions, thus making foreign policy in general more amenable to change to adjust to the new international environment. The latter refer mostly to case-specific developments, like for example a security crisis that highlights the shortcomings of the current foreign policy course and renders the domestic policy-making setting more conducive for a policy entrepreneur to pursue policy change. Entry barriers for a foreign policy entrepreneur emanate from specific political and institutional features of the foreign policy making process, related with its permeability and the degree of insulation of the political locus of power from political dependencies. This process that captures the ‘aggregation function’ of the multiple societal inputs (Hagan 2001: 5-6), assumes an ‘authoritative decision unit’, namely an individual or a set of individuals with the ability and authority to make a decision and commit the resources of a society on a foreign policy issue. Three types of such decision units have been identified in the literature: the powerful leader (e.g. monarch, dictator, a predominant political figure in a democratic system), the single group (e.g. Politburo in the former Soviet Union, a group of Army officers collectively engaged 5
in a military coup, Cabinet under a Prime Minister with a collective policy-making style, etc.) and the multitude of autonomous actors (e.g. coalition governments, actors with veto power over foreign policy decisions, etc.) (Hermann 2001: 47-48, 57-64). The features and properties of each type condition its capacity to induce foreign policy change. Of particular interest are the number of formal and/or informal veto points, the scope of societal involvement, the electoral system that leads to strong or weak, majoritarian or coalition governments, and the policy-making style of the regime leader. Ceteris paribus, less frequent changes occur in highly bureaucratic states with democratic regimes than in autocratic regimes with a minimal policymaking role for the bureaucracy and little or no regime accountability (Welch 2005: 45). In general, autonomy and insulation of the unit from political dependencies (i.e. Army, veto power actors, electoral concerns, coalition partners, etc.) create a policymaking environment more conducive to change. For example, in a democratic regime, foreign policy change is more likely to occur in cases of strong, single-party governments with a Prime Minister dominating decision-making in the Cabinet, few or no veto points (by a President, Constitutional Court or other), and small societal involvement or interest. This discussion of domestic entry barriers to a foreign policy entrepreneur assumes a stable international environment. Systemic changes constitute ‘critical junctures’ in the evolution of the system of international relations, on which policy entrepreneurs may capitalize to induce foreign policy change. The more fundamental and wide-ranging these changes are, the more they increase the entrepreneurial potential of a domestic foreign policy actor. Furthermore, international crises open ‘opportunity windows’ for policy reform (Boin et al. 2005; Keeler 1993), paving the way for a foreign policy entrepreneur. A security crisis, like for example a political or military imbroglio, highlights the inappropriateness of current policies and practices triggering their re-evaluation and providing impetus for change (Welch 2005: 45-46). As mentioned before, both the systemic changes and the conjunctural security crises lower existing entry barriers for policy entrepreneurs, not least by increasing public acquiescence to the necessity of foreign policy redirection and marginalizing domestic opposition to it (cf. Meydani 2009: 21-2). However, the challenging and even collapse of the old foreign policy orthodoxy does not entail teleologically its replacement by a new dominant one. In other words, external or internal shocks of great magnitude do not always lead to 6
change but rather constitute an opportunity for change, with alternative potential ‘orthodoxies’ vying for domination (Legro 2005: 14-5). In that respect, change is more likely to occur after crises and policy failures, when policy-makers that espouse new approaches assess that not only these new approaches address the old deficiencies but also constitute credible political options that can master the necessary political support (Walsh 2006: 491). At this stage, the role of policy entrepreneurs is crucial in delineating the future course of action, pushing forward the own preferred policy agenda and struggling for its consolidation as the ‘new’ foreign policy orthodoxy. New ideas seemingly endure because they appear to generate desirable results or are expected to do so in the near future. In the absence of such results, especially in the early years of the consolidation process, setbacks and reversals are possible, undermining the political investment of the policy entrepreneur.
Accounting for the U-Turn in the Greek-Turkish Relations Following the 1974 Cyprus imbroglio, the relations between Greece and Turkey have been often tense, escalating occasionally very close to total military engagement. The Greek accession to the EC/EU in 1981 introduced an additional dimension to the bilateral confrontation, with Greece vehemently and consistently opposing the enhancement of the EC/EU-Turkish relationship. Throughout the 1980s and most part of the 1990s, the Greek side blocked financial support to the frail Turkish economy and most importantly rejected the Turkish candidacy for EU membership. As a result, Greece was portrayed for long as the sole culprit for the lack of progress in the EC/EU-Turkish relations, allowing several EC/EU partners to hide their own concerns behind the cloak of Greek intransigence (Reuter 2000: 3). Thus, the Greek consent to the Turkish EU candidacy at the Helsinki European Council, in December 1999, signalled a major shift in the Greek foreign policy. The ‘package deal’ agreement comprised three components: first, an explicit EU commitment on the accession of Cyprus in the EU even without prior settlement of the island’s inter-communal conflict; second, addressing the International Court of Justice within a reasonable time frame for the settlement of the bilateral seabed dispute; and third, a concrete ‘roadmap’ for the Turkish accession to the EU. The Greek stance in Helsinki marked the culmination of a process of gradual transformation from a conflicting to a more constructive foreign policy approach. This transformation entailed among other components the full communitarization of the Greek-Turkish relationship, counting 7
on engagement and socialization effects to bring about the normalization of bilateral relations (Tsakonas 2010, Heraclides 2004). The Greek foreign policy shift owed much to the new systemic environment that emerged after the cataclysmic 1989 events and the turmoil in the Balkan region that unleashed the old specter of Balkan nationalism and irredentism and nurtured the perennial Greek ‘insecurity syndrome’ (Prodromou 1997: 129). The new environment raised new security challenges for Greece at the northern borders of the country, which resulted in the overstretching of available national resources to counter security threats. At the same time, the end of bipolarity loosened NATO constraints over Turkish foreign policy resulting in its greater assertiveness in the Balkans and the broader region, not least through the strategic partnership with Israel in the mid1990s. The potential security threat of this muscular Turkish foreign policy suggests that the Greek foreign policy shift had also a realpolitik dimension with Greece not being able to afford a two-front challenge and thus seeking alternative means to counter the Turkish threat. In this international context, the EU articulated incrementally in the 1990s its enlargement policy to fill in the political void in Central and Eastern Europe. The 1993 eligibility criteria, which constituted the cornerstone of the EU’s conditionality approach to enlargement, linked EU membership with domestic reforms in the candidate countries and adjustment to the EU norms and modus operandi. Given Turkey’s urge for a closer relationship with the EU and eventual membership, the enlargement process and the conditionality approach provided the overarching policy framework and the necessary instruments for the communitarization of the GreekTurkish relations and the Greek foreign policy shift. The linkage of the EU enlargement and the Greek-Turkish relationship was cemented by the Cypriot candidacy for EU membership. In the Cold War environment, the Cypriot political leadership had consistently rejected the EU prospect so as not to impede the negotiations for the settlement of the island’s political problem (Kranidiotis and Kokkonis, 1990). The systemic changes addressed these concerns and paved the way for the Cypriot application, which became one of the main priorities of the Greek foreign policy in the 1990s. To counter concerns of EU member-states that the EU would import the problem further complicating the EU-Turkish relationship, Greece sought synergistic linkages with other EU ‘history-making’ negotiations and made
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instrumental use of other countries’ urge to enlargement progress (Ioakimidis 1996: 75). These international systemic developments created a conducive environment for changing course in the Greek foreign policy vis-à-vis Turkey. The shift was further facilitated by the domestic political and policy-making system. To avoid fragmentation and earlier political instability, the Greek political and electoral system after the collapse of the junta regime in 1974 has overwhelmingly nurtured strong parliamentary majorities and single party governments. The preference for a powerful, unified executive and the charismatic figures that reined political parties further contributed to the concentration of political power in the hands of the Prime Minister. In that respect, the Prime Minister evolved from primus inter pares to primus solus within the Cabinet, minimising the role and autonomy of other ministers. Therefore, changes in the Prime Ministerial post may entail substantial policy shifts even if there is no political party alteration in power. In the foreign policy domain, in particular, limited institutionalization and the personalized policy-making style and ethos suggest that a change of the person in office may spell abrupt changes in the Greek foreign policy (Ioakimidis 1999: 156). Such change at the very centre of the Greek political system occurred after the domination of the ‘modernisation’ fraction in the succession race within the ruling PASOK party in the mid-1990s. The fraction, led by C. Simitis, ran on a political platform of socioeconomic modernisation, expressing an alternative political culture (Diamandouros 1997: 32). The ‘modernisation period’ marked the shift from the socialist-populist period to one characterised by pragmatism, a managerial discourse and a technocratic approach to policy-making. They were all packed in a project for the rationalisation and Europeanisation of the Greek society and economy, as well as Greece’s gradual reinstatement at the EU level especially through economic convergence with the European partners and EMU membership (Lyrintzis 2005: 250, Tsoukalis 2000: 40-1). Accession to the EMU became the central point of reference for the readjustment of PASOK’s ideological, programmatic and social profile as well as the major national priority of this period (Moschonas 2001: 14). In such a political environment, an adversarial and conflict-prone foreign policy would have endangered Greece’s chances to achieve structural reform and EMU membership. Hence, the re-prioritization of Greek foreign policy objectives after the 1996 ‘change of guards’ in PASOK brought along a partial albeit substantial 9
strategic re-conceptualisation, which got flesh and bones with a considerable time lag and only after the intra-partisan solidification of the ‘modernisation fraction’ sidelined political concerns and opposition. This re-conceptualisation took off after the change of leadership at the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the beginning of 1999, bringing forward G. A. Papandreou, an ardent supporter of a more engaging and constructive relationship with Turkey, who orchestrated the final stage of the Greek foreign policy shift regarding the European future of Turkey (Rumelili 2003). Finally, the first days of the Simitis administration coincided with the Imia/Kardak imbroglio in January 1996 that brought Greece and Turkey on the brink of war over a couple of islets in the Aegean Sea. The escalation to an armed conflict was avoided only after US intervention, highlighting for yet another time the inefficiency of EU structures to cope with a security crisis (Georgiades 2000). As Simitis puts it, the incident illustrated the failure of earlier approaches to Turkey’s containment and put into great jeopardy the new, EMU-related, policy priorities. In the Greek view, it manifested the continuing Turkish aggression and the Greek vulnerability to it, urging for a new strategic approach to the bilateral relations. Thus, in the aftermath of the crisis, there emerged the need for a new course in the Greek foreign policy vis-à-vis Turkey (Simitis 2005: 72-99).
The Making of the 1993 Oslo Accords: A Major Change in Israeli Foreign Policy The negotiation and adoption of the Oslo Accords in August 1993 constituted a major change in Israel’s foreign policy. It marked a radical shift from its previous hard-line foreign policy towards the Palestinians in two ways. First, in negotiating and signing the Oslo Accords, Israel held direct talks with the PLO as the authentic representative of the Palestinian people, reversing its long-held rejection of PLO as a negotiating partner (Shlaim 2001: 512). All Israeli Governments (since the capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967) had consistently rejected the PLO as a negotiating partner in the past, seeking to negotiate instead with alternative partners, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria or even delegations of local Palestinians from the West Bank. Second, in Oslo, Israel officially recognized the legitimate and political rights of the Palestinian people while in return the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in conditions of peace and security (Rynhold 2007: 423). To recall, up to Oslo Israel had no intention to commit to a peace process, only to register a presence in the negotiations. In Oslo, the Israeli Prime Minister and leader of the 10
Labor Party, Y. Rabin, agreed with the PLO for a withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank and affirmed the Palestinian right of selfgovernment within those areas through the creation of a Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian rule was to last for a five-year interim period to be granted in stages during which a permanent agreement would be negotiated. Remaining difficult and controversial issues, like the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, security and borders, were excluded deliberately from the Accords and left to be decided later. Like in the Greek case discussed above, international developments, in particular the end of bipolarism but more importantly the 1991 Gulf War, created permissive conditions for the Israeli foreign policy reorientation. First, the US emerged as the supreme and undisputed, extra-regional power in the region, willing to exercise some pressure on Israel to foster closer relations with its Arab allies in the Gulf War and consolidate its dominant role in the Middle East. The US factor gains further in importance when combined with how Israeli decision-makers perceived their country to be weakened –militarily, strategically and politically- in the new order created in the region. Despite the fact that the 1991 Gulf War crippled Iraq as a serious threat, it also showed the Israelis that their reliance on their armed forces to defend their territory had been overstated and had to rely more than ever before on the US (Kelman 1997: 187). The Israeli perception that the country’s potential role as a strategic asset for the US in the Middle East had become less significant after the end of the Cold War, made Israel more vulnerable to US pressures to engage in a peace process (Barnett 1999: 18). At the same time, the Rabin government rightly perceived that the Gulf War had caused serious division among the Arab states. As Peres, the Foreign Affairs Minister in the Rabin government, put it, “…no longer were the Arab States inevitably united among themselves, and united against Israel. An Arab state had engaged in naked aggression against a sister state. An international coalition, including Arab states, had been formed to beat back the aggressor” (Peres 1995: 319). It had become also apparent to the Rabin Government that international systemic changes had weakened the PLO. The dissolution of the Soviet Union deprived PLO from its most important diplomatic patron. Furthermore, Arafat’s stand in favor of Saddam Hussein not only caused much international opprobrium but also resulted in the cutting off financial assistance from Arab states, like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (Bercovitch 1997: 224). For the Israelis, a politically and financially weaker PLO was 11
a potentially more malleable and receptive negotiating partner. If Israel wanted a deal with the Palestinians, it could no longer avoid the PLO; the alternative would be a rejectionist and more radical section of Palestinians, like Hamas, which would be worse, as far as Israel was concerned, than PLO. Thus, these international developments created a conducive environment for Israel to change its policy vis-àvis the PLO. Still, change had to go through the rough waters of Israeli domestic politics that revolve around intra-party frictions, coalition-building and electoral politics (Arian 1998: 74). Because of Israel’s proportional electoral system, a single Israeli party seldom enjoys an absolute majority in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset). That means that both major parties (Likud or Labor Party) govern routinely in cooperation with smaller parties or rarely in cooperation with each other in coalitions of national unity. The most important foreign and security policy issues remain in the competence of the Prime Minister, who usually comes from the largest party in the Knesset. Prime Ministers have also tended to take on the defense portfolio, thus removing a potential source of intra-governmental opposition in the making of foreign and security policy. In that respect, the Prime Minister plays a very influential, though by no means exclusive, role in the decision-making process (Barnett 1999: 17). Heading the coalition that rules the Knesset, the Prime Minister has to take into consideration intra-coalition politics and make the necessary compromises to ensure the coalition’s political viability. The 1992 electoral victory of the Labor Party, headed by Rabin after a bitter struggle with Peres in the party’s primaries, served as the triggering event for Israel’s foreign policy U-turn. The Party ran on a political platform of re-conceptualization and reprioritization of security-related national objectives, associated politically with an alternative, more engaging, political culture (Inbar 1991). This platform emanated from a fraction within the Labor party, consisted mainly of a younger generation of politicians that had been less engaged in war and conflict than the old guard and, consequently, less associated with realist security approaches (Hazan 2000: 375). The new approach entailed a cultural shift vis-à-vis the ‘threat from the Arab world’ (Rynhold 2007: 428-32). In contrast to the conflict-prone foreign and security policy of the earlier years based on containing conflicts through military strength, the new political culture embraced engagement in combination with a willingness to take calculated risks for building peace with the ‘enemy’ through dialogue and 12
compromises. In the aftermath of the party’s electoral victory, a segment of this fraction, centered in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headed by Peres who orchestrated the whole venture, capitalized on the series of informal talks with PLO representatives that had been going on throughout the 1980s to establish the Oslo track of secret negotiations. This track that remained completely compartmentalized within the Israeli administration, achieved progress on the basic principles of a peace agreement formula, in contrast to the official negotiations between the Jordanian-Palestinian and Israeli delegation held in parallel in Washington. From the beginning, PM Rabin had low expectations from the Oslo track. However, after the grounding of the official negotiations and the imminent deadlock that would entail the shelving of the party’s electoral platform and a severe political setback, he was convinced to upgrade negotiations in Oslo, leading to the eventual breakthrough (Peri 1996: 359). The outbreak of the first Palestinian Intifada, in 1987, contributed to the ascendance and consolidation of the alternative political culture by generating serious security concerns to the Israeli public and a broad criticism over crisis management. The Palestinian uprising led to the transformation of the Arab-Israeli conflict from an interstate to an intra-state dispute, having a very negative impact on the Israeli economy and society (Makovsky 1996: 88-9; Ezrahi 1997: 71-2). As a result, the Israeli public became critical of the exclusive reliance on military force to solve Israel’s problems, including those created by Intifada, and more amenable to some form of a peaceful accommodation with the Palestinians. The shock caused by Intifada made the domestic political setting more receptive to foreign policy change, illustrating the limits of the previous policy and highlighting the need for a new approach (Rynhold 2007: 426; Auerbach and Greenbaum 2000: 37-45; Rabin 1996). By its impact on public opinion, the Intifada reinforced the proponents of the alternative political culture within the Labor Party, thus accelerating its political transformation and final embracement of the new approach.
Policy Entrepreneurs and Foreign Policy Change The two case studies provide different insights as regards the entry barriers and the expected return for the policy entrepreneurs that advocated the change of foreign policy course in Greece and Israel. Starting from the Greek case, the political and institutional features of the Greek policy-making system provide to a large extent an insulated environment to initiate a policy turn, not only by means of the indisputable 13
political role of the Prime Minister but also through the personalized style of foreign policy-making. In the Greek case, the authoritative decision unit takes the form of a predominant political figure, thus rendering foreign policy change seemingly feasible for a policy entrepreneur at the heart of the system. However, political domination for the Simitis administration was neither easy nor uncontested. The ascendance of the alternative political culture advocated by the ‘modernization faction’ of the PASOK ruling party was incremental both in the Greek society and in the party itself. The rise of Simitis at the Premiership office in 1996 did not bring forward the full consolidation of his power and authority, which explains to some extent the time lag in the foreign policy U-turn, from 1996 to 1999. Long held security and threat perceptions within the PASOK party and across the electorate more generally constituted severe political obstacles to this venture and held the new strategy in abeyance up to a few months prior to the Helsinki deal (Tsakonas 2010: 65-72). Thus, despite a conducive institutional and policy-making environment, there existed severe entry barriers, mainly related with domestic intra- and cross-partisan political opposition that set into question the political viability of the prospective new foreign policy course and its agents. Despite the existing high entry barriers that should normally dissuade any foreign policy entrepreneur from initiating change, two elements rendered the costbenefit analysis positive for the Simitis administration. First, the 1996 Imia/Kardak security crisis led to the overwhelming realization of the inefficiencies of the existing strategy –at least in the higher strata of the Greek policy-making system- leading, in the words of the Greek premier, to “… a qualitative change in Turkey’s revisionist behavior towards Greece” (Simitis 1996). In view of such large-scale failure, the crisis opened an ‘opportunity window’ to revisit bilateral relations (Athanassopoulou 1997). Although it would take some time to communicate this failure to the Greek public –and this effort was still incomplete by 1999 as discussed earlier-, the crisis set in motion the process of articulating a full-blown alternative strategy that could generate credible expectations for addressing old deficiencies. Second, the return of this foreign policy change for the Simitis administration was very high. The normalization of the Greek-Turkish relationship was considered of critical importance for meeting the primary objective of EMU accession, with which the PASOK ‘modernizers’ had been fully associated. More than the economic benefits that derived from membership in the Eurozone, the Simitis administration treasured the political 14
connotations of such a development with Greece moving to the EU political core, and the induced modernization of the country as a result of the required structural adjustments to meet the Maastricht criteria (Simitis 2005: 168-72). Not only military expenditures -a direct corollary of the continuing tension- constituted an extremely heavy burden for the Greek economy that was at the time in the process of macroeconomic convergence but also any new crisis could easily destabilize and undermine the Greek efforts. Thus, foreign policy change entailed a high political return for the Simitis’ entrepreneurship in the form of the broader success of the ‘modernization’ venture in Greek politics. The Israeli case differs from the Greek one as regards the kind of entry barriers the foreign policy entrepreneur faces. These entry barriers appear at two levels: at the political level, like in the Greek case, they are related with the appeal of the new proposed course of action to the electorate and the deriving electoral success of the policy entrepreneur. At the institutional level, they derive primarily from the institutional political architecture that nurtures weak coalition governments rather than strong single party governments like in the Greek political system. In that respect, intra-coalition politics and balance emanate as highly significant constraints to potential policy entrepreneurs that need to appease first their coalition partners and ensure coalition viability. More is so in highly salient and contested foreign policy issues, like the Oslo accords, whereby intra-coalition dissent could easily overthrow the government and stop the realignment process. Still, despite such high entry barriers, foreign policy change did occur in Oslo, which suggests that we should not a priori consider coalition governments an insurmountable obstacle to foreign policy shift. The Israeli case is an example of how foreign policy reorientation may forge a coalition, with coalition politics triggering rather than hindering change. To do so, Prime Minister Rabin had to insulate reactions from his own Labor party and invest on a post-electoral cooperation with the leftist party of Meretz that shared similar foreign policy aspirations (Rynhold 2007: 430-2). The emphasis on intra-coalition dynamics does not imply that electoral concerns are not relevant in the analysis of the Israeli change of course. They are linked with the expected return of Rabin as policy entrepreneur, namely political survival. The outbreak of the 1987 Intifada was crucial not only in the sense of raising concerns at parts of the country’s political elite about the followed course of action but also because it triggered a broader public discourse that set in question previous 15
practices. In response to the changing public attitude, Rabin orchestrated the Labor Party’s own rupture with the old approach, reinstating on the road to the 1992 national elections the Party’s long-held advocacy of ‘territorial compromise’ to resolve the conflict and promising an agreement with Palestinians within six to nine months after the elections. Despite Rabin’s initial reluctance to negotiate with the PLO, he accepted Arafat as a negotiating partner, partly due to pragmatic interest to push through negotiations and partly due to the growing public appeal of the expected peace (Auerbach and Greenbaum 2000: 42-8; Hazan 2000: 373). After all, Rabin’s political survival, as both Prime Minister heading the coalition government and as leader of the Labor Party, depended on delivering the promised agreement with the Palestinians (Kelman 1997: 188).
Conclusions The two case studies highlight the significance of policy entrepreneurs in initiating foreign policy change. In an international systemic environment in flux, they associated their political future with a new course of foreign policy action, either in pursuit of a broader political agenda –of modernization, in the Greek case- or to ensure political viability in a domestic political environment in transition –as was the Israeli case. In their venture, they had to overcome political and institutional entry barriers, the former related with strong inertia of long-held security and political preoccupations and the latter deriving from the institutional features and bottlenecks of the domestic policy-making system. The high entry barriers were substantially lowered by conjunctural security crises that testified to the failure of old practices, opening ‘opportunity windows’ to these policy entrepreneurs to push forward their foreign policy proposals. It is important to reinstate in these concluding points that our analysis does not intend to discredit other insights in the relevant literature. Rather, we want to complement them, adhering to the view that it is very difficult to employ monocausality to account for foreign policy change, attributing it to a single factor or by reference to a single theoretical paradigm. Plausible explanations abound in the relevant literature. Realist scholars emphasize the collapse of the bipolar world as the most important parameter in the two cases discussed. The constructivist school of thought focuses on the ascendance of a new policy paradigm and political culture associated with a generational shift, social learning processes and socialization 16
effects. Institutionalists prefer the policy-making dimension with the quest for the power locus, electoral and coalition politics, and the political enfranchisement of socioeconomic interest groups. We believe that most of the times it is difficult to identify the relative weight of each parameter, not least because they constitute to our understanding a single set simultaneously in action with many linkages. In this broad set of explanatory factors, we posit that policy entrepreneurship has been understated in the analysis of foreign policy change and thus, we have sought to bring it in the foreground, stressing its analytical value and appropriateness. Actually, policy entrepreneurship may be useful in addressing one additional issue that we have not touched upon, namely consolidation of the new foreign policy. We analyze national critical junctures in the foreign policy domain without claiming that these changes are necessarily consolidated in the long run or that they may not be upturned or remain incomplete as the change-inducing policy entrepreneurship evolves. Neither the Greek-Turkish relations have been fully normalized, nor has the Israel-Palestine dispute been settled. Of course, other developments have also played their role for this lack of progress. Still, both these directional changes in foreign policy have been compromised at some point, either because they failed to deliver the expected results or because the political entrepreneur was removed from office before having embedded the new course of action. The causal mechanisms of transforming foreign policy change to a new foreign policy path differ and equally so may differ the role and importance of policy entrepreneurship in the policy entrenchment process. Finally, directly linked with the entrenchment prospects of a foreign policy shift, the effect of policy entrepreneurship may not only be exhibited in the content of foreign policy but also bring about structural changes in the terms and the institutional milieu of policy-making. To ensure the consolidation and longevity of the new foreign policy course, the policy entrepreneur may be inclined to raise further the political and institutional entry barriers to dissuade future competitors. This may be possible by reinforcing, for example, in the policy-making process the role of the authoritative decision unit he/she occupies or by altering the electoral system to shed off political dependencies. This point highlights and reinforces our underlying assumption of an evolving and reciprocal relationship between human agency and social structures, which lies at the heart of the agency-structure problématique in international relations. 17
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