The Soviet Foreign Policy Belief System: Beliefs, Politics, and Foreign Policy Outcomes

Why do policies persist even when they produce consistently counter-productive results? When and why do they eventually change, and how does such change occur? The hypothesis explored here is that beliefs are a key intervening variable which shape foreign policy by defining the situation and the ran...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International studies quarterly 1993-12, Vol.37 (4), p.373-394
Main Author: Blum, Douglas W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Belief Systems
Beliefs
Capitalism
COALITION
Communism
Foreign Policy
IDEOLOGY
International politics
International relations
Political conditions
POLITICAL EVALUATION
Political ideologies
Political parties
Political revolutions
Political science
Politics
PUBLIC POLICY
Russian politics
Socialism
U.S.S.R
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
USSR
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Summary:Why do policies persist even when they produce consistently counter-productive results? When and why do they eventually change, and how does such change occur? The hypothesis explored here is that beliefs are a key intervening variable which shape foreign policy by defining the situation and the range of politically legitimate positions and priorities. This article traces the evolution of Soviet foreign policy beliefs, and suggests that a belief system approach provides a useful alternative to rational actor and domestic political theories for explaining the pattern of continuity and change in Soviet policy. The central argument is that the stability of core beliefs placed limits on the kinds of options available to policy-makers. Beliefs affected domestic politics and foreign policy by influencing the coalition-building process: coalitions which espoused platforms compatible with the requirements of the belief system had a powerful advantage over those which did not. Therefore, despite contradictory goals and problematic results, Soviet foreign policy remained essentially unchanged until Gorbachev, by which time failures in domestic and international performance combined to delegitimize prevailing beliefs. Only then, and only as mediated by a shift at the core level of the belief system, did Soviet policy depart from its traditional goals.
ISSN:0020-8833
1468-2478
DOI:10.2307/2600837