Impression Theory And Foreign Policy Analysis

This dissertation is aimed at the study of theoretical construction and examination-an exploration into the model of explanation for foreign policies, to be more specific. Many such models were formed after WWII that can be grouped into mainly two schools, one focusing on the impact of domestic politics, interstate dynamics and the international system upon foreign-policy making, the other focusing on the motivation of the personality, belief and ideology of individual decision-makers. However, little research has been done on the perceiving process and result of decision-makers, and most of such research was centered on the decision-making process in specific cases rather than the formulation of general foreign policies that guide a country's external behavior. A possible reason for this is that social perception, the process of human inquiry of the world, is a dynamic variable while foreign policy is a static variable, thus very difficult to set up certain relevance between them, not to say to develop any universal rules or theories.As an endeavor to apply the basic theory and paradigms of perceptive social psychology to the study of international studies, this dissertation is centered on the exploration of the connections between impression and foreign policy. Impression is an old concept, a result of social perceptive process. In the 1960s, with the joint development of perceptive psychology and social psychology, psychologists came to realize the mechanism of how impression would influence and determine one's social behavior. Then, as a special social behavior, how is a foreign-policy maker's behavior influenced by his impression? What is the relationship between impression and foreign policy as well as external behavior? What kind of foreign policy tends to be the result of specific impression? These are the theoretical concerns to be addressed in the dissertation.This dissertation is intended to follow an experimentalist approach. Above all, it means that we must acknowledge that there is a general law to determine various events of international politics and that such law is perceivable. In other words, it is the ultimate goal of this dissertation to find out the necessary variables concerning the subjects under study and to explain the relationship of such variables, so as to come up with a model of a country's foreign-policy making. There are two major variables in the model, one (independent variable) concerning decision-makers' impression of other countries on the micro level, the other (dependent variable) concerning foreign policy. It is the primary hypothesis of the dissertation that there exists a causal relationship between these two variables. Yet how can one examine the validity of such "hypothesis of scientific significance?" By experimentalist approach, existing literature will be first critically examined to acknowledge the merits of previous studies and, more importantly, to point out their weaknesses or deficiency, thus determining a new angle to conduct further research. Next, new hypotheses closely related to the question on hand will be raised on the basis of a complete literature review. Furthermore, such hypotheses will be strictly experimented and tested with historical data and statistics. Finally, a more in-depth analysis will be conducted on the experiments so as to arrive at the conclusion of the dissertation.According to above schedule, this dissertation is divided into three parts: existing literature on various theories of foreign-policy making will be reviewed in the Preface to reach the start point of the dissertation. Part I is focused on theoretical construction. Chapter II discusses the concept of theory and theoretical construction in international relations from the perspective of scientific philosophy. The classic credo put forward by Waltz that "Theory is the explanation of laws" has served as a standardized definition of theory. But what are the specific contents of "explanation of laws?" It is found out in this dissertation that the nature of theory is still a law, but it is to explain less abstract laws and phenomena with more abstract laws. On such basis, this dissertation is focused on the illustration of methods of theoretical construction of international relations from an experimentalist perspective, namely inductive approach, deductive approach and comparative approach. Chapter III mainly analyzes the factor of impression in foreign-policy making. Impression is a basic tool of the dissertation as well as a major variable of the research. Does it play an important role in foreign-policy making? What is the relationship between impression and foreign policy? What foreign policy will arise from specific types of impression? Through a systematic study of these questions, this chapter will construct a theoretical framework to reveal the relationship between impression and foreign policy by the following steps: one is to raise the hypothesis, next is to conceptualize "impression" and "foreign policy," and thirdly, to deduce an "impression hypothesis" of foreign-policy making with the help of perceptive social psychology. In the hypothesis, the independent variable is the impression of decision-makers of other countries, and the dependent variable is the foreign policy determined. That is to say, different impression lead to different foreign policies. Finally, this chapter defines independent variable and dependent variable on their functional levels respectively, thus developing the specific hypotheses that are both testable and less abstract. The main task of Part II is theoretical examination. Chapter IV discusses the approaches and methods of theoretical examination and draws a roadmap for examination of "impression theory." Chapters V and VI are centered on the study of specific cases. As planned, these two chapters will examine China's Korea policy making from 1949 to 1980 and the US' Taiwan policy in Kennedy and Johnson eras respectively, so as to demonstrate the role and impact of impression on foreign-policy making. Part III is further analysis of the theory, focusing on the possible impression deviation in foreign-policy making as well as the potential consequences it may generate. In the end, suggestions are given on reducing such impression deviation.