A realist-constructivist explanation of the puzzle
The anomaly of a post-revolution government cozying up to the main ally of the previous oppressive regime in the face of public opposition needs an explanation that can contribute to foreign policy theorising. I argue that a realist-constructivist approach that combines classical realism’s emphasis on power struggle and constructivism’s emphasis on actor’s ideology is better suited than structuralist theories to offer such explanation. While structuralists offer explanations of this anomaly, they stop short of contributing to foreign policy theorising.
Economic structuralists, such as dependency theorists, would attribute this policy to Tunisia’s heavy economic dependence on France.2 Indeed, on the eve of the uprising, Tunisia was relying on foreign, especially French aid, to cover its serious trade deficits (Lesch, 2014: 76). According to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, between 2006 and 2010, France allocated 950 million Euro in foreign assistance, including loans and grants, to Tunisia (Tunisia Live, 2011a). France was also Tunisia’s greatest tourist market with an annual average of 1.4 million French tourists visiting Tunisia (“France Hopes to Lift ‘Very Soon’ Its Travel Restrictions to Nation”, 2011). In addition, France was Tunisia’s largest investor, with 1,250 French enterprises constituting the core of the country’s economy. These enterprises covered practically all economic sectors, ranging from the textile and apparel industry to automobiles, microelectronics, aeronautics and services. According to official figures, French investments in Tunisia amounted to 140 billion Euro in 2009, making France Tunisia’s main economic partner.3 Dependency theory, however, is hardly convertible into state policy. In Latin America, where this theory emerged. International Relations scholars mixed it with Morgenthauian assumptions about the state, the statesman and the national interest to create a foundation for suppositions about foreign policy and peripheral state dependence (Tickner, 2008: 739-740).
Political structuralists such as Waltz, within neo-realism, also present theories of international politics that neither imply nor require a theory of foreign policy. His balance of power theory “cannot answer questions about matters at a different level of generality”, and must therefore not be criticised for not explaining particular policies of states (Waltz, 1979: 72).
A theory of international politics ... can tell us what international conditions national policies have to cope with. To think that a theory of international politics can in itself say how the coping is likely to be done is the opposite of the reductionist error.
(ibid.: 121)
Like Waltz’ theory, Alexander Wendt’s social constructivist theory is systemic in the sense of making the international system both the dependent and independent variable, and is therefore not about explaining state interests, preferences or identities. Wendt is not interested in foreign policy; rather, his interest is in international politics only (Wendt, 1999: 11) His version of constructivism treats the state as “an actor which cannot be reduced to its parts” (Smith, 2001: 50), thus offering little scope for foreign policy analysis. Accordingly, a state’s interests and preferences are formed by interacting with other states, not through debates between domestic actors or as a result of domestic political process.
[Wendt’s] actors are not the officials who make decisions, or the interest groups or companies, or political parties or military juntas. Rather, the actors are the states-as-persons, and there is no need to look into the black box of the foreign policy process. It is in this sense that foreign policy is what states make it (ibid.).
Contrary to structural constructivists and similar to most foreign policy analysts, non-structural constructivists employ the assumption that actors make their worlds emphasise foreign policy as a realm of choice where “actors interpret, decide, pronounce, and implement” (ibid.: 38). Non-structural constructivists define policies as declarations of an agent’s intentions linked to its interests, and thus pave the way to offer a theory of agency and make a vital contribution to a theory of foreign policy.4 This theory stresses that actors such as foreign policy decision-makers, and structures such as states and the international political and economic systems, are mutually constituted, as actors are not mere agents of structures. While structures constrain and enable actors, actors constitute structures through norms, rules and cultures (Hopf, 1998: 172-173).
Thus, non-structural constructivists move beyond the decades-old split of the two fields of international politics and foreign policy analysis, which laid the foundation of the distinction between foreign policymakers as agents on the one hand and the structure of the international system on the other (Kubalkova, 200 lb: 15-19).
A constructivist strand that opened room for foreign policy analysis is the one founded by Nick Onuf and carried on by the Miami IR Group. Like foreign policy analysts, this group focuses exactly on the linkage between social structures and calculating agents, and "looks at the interface between institutions, agents and rules, with the aim of showing how these led to the foreign policy choices made by the collective agents known as states”.
Onuf defines a rule as "a statement that tells people what we should do”, and argues that actors follow rules because they live in a world that is socially constructed by these rules, but actors also interpret rales and make choices over whether to follow particular rales (Smith, 2001: 51-53). Nevertheless, this group focuses exclusively on agent preferences driven externally through international institutions and rales and ignores agent preferences driven internally.
A neoclassical realist analysis of foreign policy can fill in this gap because it considers domestic politics as an important factor in foreign policy analysis.5 It is based on the conception of foreign policies as responses of leaders to international events and actions of other states shaped by expectations regarding the domestic political support or opposition that a policy is expected to produce. In other words, political leaders view foreign policy as both a potential threat to, as well as an opportunity to strengthen their domestic political position (Huth, 1996: 185-186), and must therefore take domestic political institutions and rales seriously.
This approach builds on Putnam's conception of international politics as a two-level game of bargaining between and within states (Putnam, 1993), and thus theorise foreign policy as partly shaped by the domestic political concerns of leaders. It also rests on Morgenthau’s proposition that contingent contexts are an important element in foreign policy analysis (Salem, 2012). Morgenthau’s assumption of rationality in foreign policy decision-making (Kubalkova, 2001b: 26), however, often overshadows his emphasis on the political and cultural context within which foreign policy is formulated. For example, Kowert criticises rationalists for their inability to contribute to a theory of preferences or foreign policy because they exclude national interest formation from their research agendas (Kowert, 2001:281). Finnemore also takes issue with two assumptions shared by rationalist theorists of international politics: first, the preferences of states and other actors are unproblematic, as actors are claimed to “know what they want and that those wants are readily discernable to researchers”, and second, those preferences can be simply deducted from objective conditions and material characteristics of a state (Finnemore, 1996: 7-8). Morgenthau’s assumption of rationality does not lead necessarily to these faults. He distinguishes between "good, that is rational, foreign policy and foreign policy as it actually is”, that is foreign policies that follow such irrational elements as emotion, personality, prejudice, and subjective preference. This distinction is aimed at highlighting the contingency of a rational foreign policy that “ought to be rational in view of its own moral and practical purposes” (Morgenthau, 1960: 5-9). Thus, two types of foreign policy analysis can be discerned: a normative analysis of how decision-makers ought to act, and an explanatory analysis that takes into consideration the ideational elements which furnish the ultimate goals of a particular foreign policy and the practical constraints that shape it.6 As Keohane correctly puts it. Morgenthau never declared ideals as unimportant in determining state goals; he only claimed that foreign policymakers can ignore ideals because power is a necessary means and therefore the immediate aim (Keohane, 1984: 121).
