The Multiple Faces of South African Foreign Policy
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209805300408 |
| Date | 01 December 1998 |
| Published date | 01 December 1998 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ANDREW
F.
COOPER
The
multiple
faces
of
South African
foreign
policy
THE
'NEW'
SOUTH
AFRICA
PROVIDES
AN
INTERESTING
CASE
STUDY
of
the
interaction
between
international and
domestic
politics.
What
Robert
Putnam
describes
as
the
'puzzling
tangles"
between
external
and
domestic
factors seem
especially
salient
here because
of
the
trans-
formational
component
in
South
Africa.
Externally,
the end
of
the
apartheid
regime
has
widened
the
range
of
available
options.
The
chal-
lenge
is
to
gauge
more
precisely
the
nature
of
choice
in
terms
of
both
a
significant
recalibration
of
international
affairs
and
a
fundamental
re-
definition
of
domestic
needs
and
interests.
Since
its
election
in
May
1994,
the
African
National
Congress
(ANC)
has
been
pre-occupied
with economic
and
social
reconstruction, which
it
has
pursued
with
a
high
degree
of
sensitivity
to
the
constraints
imposed
by
the
global
sys-
tem.
Internally,
reforms
have
been
shaped
to
fit
with
many
of
the
orthodoxies
set
by
the
external
environment,
often
when
these
are
at
odds
with
proposals
put
forward
during
ANC's
long period
of
liberation
struggle.
Only
through
an
appreciation
of
the
mix
of
competing
inter-
national
and
domestic
pressures
may
the
complexity
of
South
African
foreign
policy
be
appreciated.
Far
from
combining
to
produce inertia,
Professor,
Department
of
Political
Science,
University
ofWaterloo;
Visiting
Professor,
University
ofStellenbosch,
1997
Research
support
from
the
Social
Sciences
and
Humanities
Research
Council
of
Canada
is
gratefully
acknowledged.
i
Robert
D.
Putnam,
'Diplomacy
and
domestic
politics:
the
logic
of
two-level
games,
International
Organization
42(summer
1988),
423.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
Autumn
1998
Andrew
F.
Cooper
these
sharp
tensions
provide
South
African
foreign
policy
with
multi-
ple
faces.
Although
they
often
diverge,
each
serves
as
a
key
explanation
and
point
of
navigation
not
only
for descriptive
but
also
for
conceptu-
al
exploration.
Examining
South
African
in
a
diffuse fashion
allows
a
break
from
the
rigidity
of
the
traditionally
dominant
interpretations
of
its
foreign
policy.
The
long
shadow
of
structural
realism
still
hangs
over
much
of
the
discussion,2
but
it
presents
a
disembodied
portrait
of
foreign poli-
cy
in
which
international conditions
are
privileged
at
the
expense
of
domestic
factors.
Moreover,
the
search
for
national economic
well-
being
remains overshadowed
by
the
traditional
search
for
security
within
the
international
system.
Amidst
all
of
the
dramatic
evidence
of
change,
little or no
attempt
has
been
made
to
direct
attention
to the
study
of
the location
(or
re-location)
of
South
Africa in
the
interna-
tional
political
economy.
This
is
not
to
suggest
that
the domestic
deter-
minants
of
international
behaviour
have been
completely
neglected
in
the
scholarship.
Nonetheless,
the
use
of
this dualistic
lens in
the treat-
ment
of
South
African
foreign
policy
has
been
restricted
for
the
most
part
to
the
paradigm
of
bureaucratic
politics
and
the
'management'
of
foreign
policy.
3
Larger
questions
about
the
evolution
of
state-societal
relationships
or
the configuration
of
domestic
political
and economic
institutions
still
get
short
shrift.'
This
article
is
intended
not
so
much
as
an
extended
critique
of
the
literature
5
as
a
way in
which
some
of
the
puzzling
tangles
between
the
international
and
the
domestic
can
be
teased
out
and
made
more
coherent.
To
capture
the
essence
of
the
multiple
faces
of
South
African
foreign
policy,
I
have
applied
a
framework
of
foreign
policy
behaviour
2
For
example,
Deon
Fourie,
'Regional
security
prospects,'
in
Walter
Carlsnaes
and
Marie
Muller,
Change
and South
African External
Relations
Oohannesburg:
Interna-
tional
Thomson
1997),
268-278.
3
See,
for
example,
Marie
Muller,
'The
institutional
dimension:
The
Department
of
Foreign
Affairs
and
Overseas
Mission,'
in
ibid,
51-72.
For
the
older
tradition
see
Deon
Geldenhys,
The
Diplomacy
Of
Isolation:
South
African
Foreign
Policy
Making
Oohannesburg:
Macmillan, South
African
Institute
of International
Affairs
1984).
4
These
questions
form
the basis
of
the works
of
Peter
J.
Katzenstein
(Small
States
in
World
Markets:
Industrial
Policy
in
Europe
[Ithaca:
Cornell
University
Press
1985D,
and Peter
Gourevitch
(Politics
in
Hard
Times: Responses
to International
Economic
Crises
[ithaca:
Cornell
University
Press
1986D.
5
For
one
such
critique,
see
Roger
Southall,
'The
New
South
Africa
in
the
new
world
order:
beyond
the
double
whammy,'
Third
World
Quarterly15(March
1994),
134-5.
706
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Autumn
1998
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