Description
This paper introduces a “leader-centered framework of foreign policy change.” The framework seeks to account for the role of leaders in bringing about major redirections in a country’s foreign policy, in the sense of broader substantive reorientations that entail multiple decisions in its implementation. More specifically, the framework highlights the possible independent and systematic effect of leaders on both the direction of foreign policy change (substance) and the way foreign policy change is brought about in the domestic political arena (process). The framework is distinct from alternative frameworks in that it evolves around individual leaders and, in doing so, systemically incorporates insights from the Public Policy literature. This paper applies the framework to account for a major reorientation in Western Germany’s foreign policy towards the Eastern bloc, in form of Willy Brandt’s “Eastern Policy” (Ostpolitik).
