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The Uses of Foreign Policy in Indonesia An Approach to the Analysis of Foreign Policy in the Less Developed Countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Franklin B. Weinstein
Franklin B. Weinstein
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

Most of the writing on foreign policy in the less developed countries stresses either the importance of idiosyncratic sources of policy or the identification of a number of relatively long-term factors which influence the formation of policy. These studies are helpful in many ways, but in one important respect they are unsatisfying. They do not give us a clear picture of how foreign policy relates to the political and economic problems that constitute the essence of being a less developed country.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , April 1972 , pp. 356 - 381
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1972

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References

1 Examples of accounts which emphasize idiosyncratic sources, especially the personalities and psychological problems of die top leaders, include: Levi, Werner, The Challenge of World Politics in South and Southeast Asia (Englewood Cliffs 1968), 13–14 and 155–56Google Scholar; Zartman, I. William, International Relations in the New Africa (Englewood Cliffs 1966), 47 and 53Google Scholar; Bunnell, Frederick P., “Guided Democracy Foreign Policy: 1960–1965,” Indonesia, II (October 1966), 37–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Thompson, W. Scott, Ghana's Foreign Policy, 1957–1966 (Princeton 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Long-term factors such as size and geographical location, historical and cultural background, and industrial and military capabilities are stressed in: Johnstone, William C., Burma's Foreign Policy: A Study in Neutralism (Cambridge, Mass. 1963)Google Scholar; Smith, Roger M., Cambodia's Foreign Policy (Ithaca 1965)Google Scholar; and Phillips, Claude S. Jr., The Development of Nigerian Foreign Policy (Evanston 1964)Google Scholar. Ideology is given substantial emphasis in Bunnell, and in Weadierbee, Donald E., Ideology in Indonesia: Sukarno's Indonesian Revolution (New Haven 1966)Google Scholar. The importance of domestic politics as a determinant of foreign policy has been argued by Hindley, Donald, “Indonesia's Confrontation with Malaysia: A Search for Motives,” Asian Survey, IV (June 1964), 904–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; by Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (New York 1958), 247–48Google Scholar; and by Phillips. Curtis', Robert“Malaysia and Indonesia,” New Left Review, XXVIII (November-December 1964), 5–32Google Scholar, and Kahin's, George McT.“Malaysia and Indonesia,” Pacific Affairs, XXXVII (Fall 1964), 253–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, are studies that combine analysis of historical and sociological factors with a discussion of domestic political considerations. Gordon, Bernard K., The Dimensions of Conflict in Southeast Asia (Englewood Cliffs 1966), 68–119Google Scholar, and Zartman, 53, have suggested “pure” external goals, like expansionism, as a motivation for policy. Zartman (80–81, 144–48) has also argued that the leaders of weak countries are faced with so many external conditions which they are powerless to control that they fall victim to a kind of “situational determinism.”

2 One study which does contain an enlightening discussion of the relationship between underdevelopment and foreign policy is Good, Robert C., “State-Building as a Determinant of Foreign Policy in the New States,” in Martin, Laurence W., ed., Neutralism and Nonalignment: The New States in World Affairs (New York 1962), 3–12Google Scholar.

3 Snyder, Richard C., Bruck, H. W. and Sapin, Burton, eds., Foreign Policy Decision- Malting: An Approach to the Study of International Politics (New York 1962)Google Scholar.

4 Paige, Glenn D., The Korean Decision: June 24–30, 1950 (New York 1968)Google Scholar.

5 Rosenau, James N., “Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy,” in Farrell, R. Barry, ed., Approaches to Comparative and International Politics (Evanston 1966), 27–92Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., 42–43. Rosenau defines his variables as follows: idiosyncratic-all those aspects of a decision-maker that distinguish his foreign policy behavior from that of every other decision-maker; role-behavior that is generated by the roles decision-makers occupy; governmental-those aspects of a government's structure that limit or enhance the foreign policy choices of decision-makers; societal-the nongovernmental aspects of a society which influence its external behavior; systemic-aspects of the external environment that influence foreign policy choices.

7 For general critiques of Rosenau, see Brecher, Michael, Steinberg, Blema, and Stein, Janice, “A Framework for Research on Foreign Policy Behavior,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, XIII (March 1969), 79Google Scholar; and Hanrieder, Wolfram F., “International and Comparative Politics: Toward a Synthesis?” World Politics, xx (April 1968), 487–89.Google Scholar

8 Rosenau (fn. 5), 48.

9 Brecher and others (fn. 7), 79–93.

10 Brecher is not alone in this assumption. See, for example, Burgess, Philip M., Elite Images and Foreign Policy Outcomes: A Study of Norway (Columbus 1967).Google Scholar

11 A good example of the difficulty of getting analysts to use a common framework under even the best of conditions is Rosenau's attempt to produce a volume of essays in which a framework he devised for researching linkages between national and international systems was to be applied. In a volume consisting of essays by authors who had agreed to use Rosenau's framework, Rosenau candidly notes that fewer than half the chapters closely followed the initial format. See Rosenau, , ed., Linkage Politics: Essays on the Convergence of National and International Systems (New York 1969), 15Google Scholar.

12 A similar contest was conducted in 1957 by the Pembangunan Publishing Company. An analysis of the essays was published in Pauker, Guy J., “Indonesian Images of Their National Self,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XXII (Fall 1958), 305–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 For examples, see Johnstone (fn. i), 248–49, and Brecher, Michael, India and World Politics: Krishna Menon's View of the World (New York 1968), 306Google Scholar.

14 Zartman (fn. i), 48–49.

15 See Pye, Lucian W., Politics, Personality, and Nation Building: Burma's Search for Identity (New Haven 1962).Google Scholar

16 This formulation is also found in Phillips (fn. 1), 144.

17 Feith, Herbert, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca 1962).Google Scholar

18 Pye (fn. 15).

19 For an extended discussion of the political uses of Indonesian foreign policy, see Weinstein, Franklin B., Indonesia Abandons Confrontation: An Inquiry into the Functions of Indonesian Foreign Policy (Ithaca 1969)Google Scholar.

20 For a discussion of the limited capacity of even a dictator to convert his whim into foreign policy, see Levi, Werner, “Ideology, Interests, and Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly, XIV (March 1970), 26Google Scholar. As Levi puts it, a dictator may be able “to go a bit farther than others, but he cannot go all the way,” because he too is bound by both internal and external constraints. A useful account of the conditions under which personal idiosyncracies can influence policy is found in Greenstein, Fred I., Personality and Politics: Problems of Evidence, Influence, and Conceptualization (Chicago 1969), 33–62Google Scholar.

21 See Kahin (fn. 1), 264.

22 The Yani-Sukarno exchange was described by army officers interviewed in Bandung in October 1969.

23 The following discussion is drawn from Weinstein (fn. 19), 2–11.

24 These assertions are based on interviews conducted in Djakarta in 1968–1970.

25 Idiosyncratic variables also need to be considered in their relationship to attitudes and politics, but that is beyond the scope of this limited illustration.

26 See Gordon (fn. i), 120–40; Levi (fn. 1), 155–56; and Rosenau (fn. 5), 4711.