Synthesis and reformulation of foreign policy change: Japan and East Asian financial regionalism

Abstract

c What explains major foreign policy changes? Why and when does the state change its foreign policy? Despite the importance of foreign policy change, which can (re) shape the nature of a given state's international relations vis-a-vis other states and international systems, explanations of foreign policy change have received only sporadic attention in foreign policy analysis literature. Against this backdrop, I offer in this article a new framework designed to capture both motivational and processual aspects of foreign policy change. I develop the framework by critically examining and synthesising two recent systematic explorations of foreign policy change: one framework within the tradition of rationalism (broadly defined) - David Welch's Painful Choice: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (2005) - and the other within constructivism - Jeffrey Legro's Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order (2006). For the motivational analysis, I link the role of crisis-defining ideas to threat perception to sharpen prospect theory. I illustrate this reformulated synthesis with an example of Japan's policy shift toward East Asian financial regionalism.