The Year Book of World Affairs, 1979 by George W. Keeton & Georg Schwarzenberger

Author:George W. Keeton & Georg Schwarzenberger [Keeton, George W. & Schwarzenberger, Georg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000607529
Google: KU6fDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52803706
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Small Developing States and the External Operational Environment

By

AGRIPPAH T. MUGOMBA

"All things being equal, the State with great economic resources and a large population has more influence on events outside its frontiers, greater security from pressure and attack, more prestige, and a larger element of choice in respect of the national policy it pursues. A small State is more vulnerable to pressure, more likely to give way under stress, more limited in respect of the political options open to it and subject to a tighter connection between domestic and external affairs." David Vital, The Inequality of States (1967).

THE study of the foreign-policy behaviour of "small States" is still somewhat an underdeveloped and neglected area of international relations. The vast body of literature existing which is devoted to comparative foreign-policy analysis focuses mainly on the large and powerful States (and, to a lesser extent, the middle Powers) which, traditionally, have always been assumed to have a much greater impact on international politics than small States, whether developed or underdeveloped. Where regional studies do exist in substantial numbers, they often dwell on the domestic politics of small States (and in particular the underdeveloped ones) which are assumed to explain, in the majority of cases, their external behaviour.1 More precisely, an assumption appears to be manifest that most, or probably all, small States which pursue comparatively active international policies do so quite consciously in the belief that attention can be shifted away from salient issues pertaining to the domestic arena to those in the wider external environment. This paper will attempt to argue that this is often an erroneous interpretation of small-State international politics. It offers the view that displacement is a strategy available to and employed by most States in the international system. Furthermore, it contends that except for those very small States which are categorised as mini-States or micro-States, a fairly large number of small States pursue genuinely active foreign policies, although this is likely to depend on which issue-areas they perceive to be most salient in the external, operational environment and the interests they value most, often to the extent of ignoring the limitations on the range of means available to them.

Although a number of general theoretical studies have appeared since the late 1960s focusing more directly on the foreign policies of small States,2 there is a definite need for more critical ones. Even more important is the need to give adequate attention to the problems of defining " foreign policy " in an operationally meaningful sense; for without that the concept " small State " itself is troublesome to deal with. It is not necessarily an exaggeration to say that there is no broad consensus among international-relations scholars on what is or constitutes a foreign policy. It is a fact, however, that most writers employ the instrumental definition of foreign policy, which suggests that policy is goal-oriented behaviour aiming at producing certain intended effects.3 Such a definition limits itself almost exclusively to the foreign policies pursued by the greater States,

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