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| 1 |
ID:
117850
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This research tests theories for explaining recent German decisions to deploy or not deploy forces abroad. Underpinning this research is the rejection of a common scholarly reaction to German intervention policy, which is to disregard it as irrational or simply inexplicable, thereby degrading our overall understanding of interventions. Four approaches for unraveling this puzzle are tested, three common to the foreign policy literature but a fourth is borrowed from social psychology. Each of these approaches predicts to subsequent behaviors by first establishing decision maker "problem representations" emphasizing the process of option generation rather than option selection. Verbatim parliamentary statements of German representatives are coded for periods between 1990 and 2006. The study hypothesizes that the observation of problem representations provides a hitherto lacking theoretical structure to decisions. Data from 1,436 speeches provide mixed evidence. First, it indicates that German decision making vis-à-vis foreign military interventions is systematic and theoretically structured. Among the patterns is the importance of institutionalist problem representations. Also, results indicate a strength of realist problem representations and a weakness of historical-cultural problem representations with the main exception of the Lebanon occasion. The study concludes with observations on the generalizability of these findings to other decision-making contexts.
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| 2 |
ID:
112449
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article looks at cases in which political leaders have engaged in seemingly inconsistent behaviour and explores how they framed and justified their decisions. After showing that strategic culture is composed of different facets, I argue that when faced with conflicting pressures from the international environment and their own national constituencies, political leaders intentionally manipulate facets of their own strategic culture to legitimate a decision, made for contingent reasons, to participate (or not) in a military operation. I illustrate this argument by analysing in depth the decision-making process and public justifications of the German participation in the European and Security Defence Policy (ESDP) mission EUFOR Congo in 2006 and its refusal to militarily participate in a similar mission in Chad in 2007. This conception of strategic culture as both a constraint and a resource for policymakers reinforces our understanding of the boundaries of strategic culture's explanatory power, and provides an explanation of seemingly inconsistent foreign policy behaviours.
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