Plus ça change, plus c'est la mȇme chose: foreign policy of new regimes and their leaders -a systemist exposition

• Published in: Canadian foreign policy journal 2021-09, Vol.27 (3), p.292-317
• Main Authors: Mahant, Edelgard, Gansen, Sarah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adenauer, Konrad (1876-1967); Foreign policy; Konrad Adenauer; Mandela, Nelson (1918-2013); Mbeki, Thabo; Nelson Mandela; Political leadership; regime change; Syatemism; Vladimir Lenin
• ISSN: 1192-6422; 2157-0817
• DOI: 10.1080/11926422.2021.1973524

This article portrays and diagrammatically analyzes the foreign policies of three different new regimes and their respective leaders. In each instance, the leader enunciated a foreign policy designed to promote not only the interests of the state but also its identity. The article focuses on Vladimir Lenin and Soviet Russia, Konrad Adenauer and the Federal Republic of Germany, and Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki in South Africa. Starting with the objectives of the former regime, the article outlines how the foreign policy of each new regime and the respective leader(s) led to both a divergence and a continuation of that policy. Systemist graphics are used to carry out a systematic synthesis of what can be learned from the three preceding studies in combination with each other. The study unfolds in six sections. The first section provides an overview of the project. Sections two through four focus respectively on the South African, Russian/Soviet, and German cases. The fifth section initiates a systematic synthesis that is based on the preceding set of studies. Sixth, and finally, the concluding section sums up what has been accomplished and says a bit about possible future research.