Limitations of the Extended Liberal Framework

As all theoretical frameworks, this extended liberal theoretical account has its limitations and exogenises certain factors that my have an impact on foreign policy towards Latin America. However, it is impossible to take all factors into account in one single study. By holding some of them constant, including EU membership, the policy ‘recipient’ (Latin America), and – at least to some de- gree – the countries’ position in the international setting, it is therefore possible to minimise variation in these potential influencing factors.

One account this investigation does not consider in depth is that advanced in particular by historical institutionalists: it does not especially focus on provid- ing an historically inspired account of critical junctures, unintended conse- quences and path dependence shaping foreign policy towards Latin America in Europe (e.g. Fioretos 2011; Capoccia and Kelemen 2007; Aspinwall and Schneider 2000). Of course, the idea that historical factors such as colonial- ism are at the root of divergent levels of foreign policy activity towards Latin America is highly intuitive and appealing. This is particularly so given that with Spain, one of the countries under study was in fact a colonial power in the region. Moreover, Britain had a vast empire that did not include Latin America (but did include parts of the Caribbean where the UK still has over- seas territories), so that its focus may be drawn away from Latin America as a result of a traditional focus on other regions. This is a perfectly valid consider- ation. However, there are several aspects that led me away from providing an historical institutionalist account in the strict sense of the term.

Firstly, the fact that Britain, after the Latin American republics became in- dependent quickly rose to a position akin to that of a quasi-colonial power (Fowler 2008: 67ff) somewhat weakens the argument that the UK does not have a history with Latin America. The question of why it turned away from the region is for researchers of history to answer, but the present work is con- cerned with what factors shape the UK’s (and the the other two countries’) rela- tions with Latin America today. While historical institutionalist accounts have a great deal of value, they require a different, more evolutionally-oriented re- search design than the one employed in this study, which essentially presents

a snapshot of foreign policy-making towards Latin America spanning roughly the past half-decade (see Chapter 1). Foreign policy and the diplomatic service in particular is a fast-moving field with high staff turnover, making it difficult to access previous members of Latin America departments at ministries of for- eign affairs, for instance. A study with a more in-depth historical focus would thus have required a very different research methodology and a focus centred more exclusively on historical factors in order to get a handle on these issues.

More importantly however, this study claims that the factors a more his- torically based account might emphasise can be comprised within this study’s framework. For instance, one of the independent variables conceptualised by my investigation involves domestic norms. There is no reason why, for ex- ample, in Spain such a norm could not be historically based – Spanish policy- makers may feel that they have a particular responsibility for a region where Spanish colonisers committed a range of atrocities, or for a region with which they have cultural and historical commonalities. Indeed, there is evidence from previous research in particular for the latter (e.g. Barbé 2009). Although this is historically based, it may have become a national norm into which policy makers could potentially be socialised and is therefore commensurate with the liberal constructivist approach contemplated above. It is rather obvious that levels of foreign policy activity towards Latin America have historical roots. However, how these historical roots have transformed into today’s explanat- ory variables for policy fields such as development policy or the interaction of national and European policy vis-à-vis the region is something that this study can explore. While not a historical institutionalist account, therefore, the in- vestigation is nevertheless historically aware.

At the same time, I do not dive deeper into the group dynamics, bureau- cratic and organisational processes, or the psychological factors that also form part of many FPA-based studies (Hudson 2007). Again, this is not to say that they do not matter – previous theorising and research, most famously by Al- lison (1971) – on organisational processes and bureaucratic politics – and Janis (1972) – on the influence of ‘groupthink’ on foreign policy – has shown that they do. But in the context of this investigation, where the goal is cross-case and cross-country comparison of foreign policy towards Latin America, a frame- work allowing for such comparison above the level of the individual or even small-group dynamics must be established. While it is important to be aware of the existence of ‘more macro’ and ‘more micro’ influencing factors, a single study cannot possibly take them all into account, especially if it wants to go beyond the in-depth study of one single case.

Yet another factor that has to be considered in a study of policy towards Latin America is the specific relevance of the United States as a potential in-

fluence on European countries’ policies towards Latin America (Grabendorff 2005). The UK’s transatlanticism has been shown to be particularly strong (For- ster 2000: 47; Williams 2004: 912), and Bulmer-Thomas (1989b: 200) has also pointed to the US’s importance in Britain’s relations with Latin America. Sim- ilarly, previous research has shown that the US plays a role when Germany con- siders policy towards the region, taking into account US interests (Grabendorff 1993: 45f, 74ff), but at the same time wanting to ensure the US is not the ‘only game in town’ in Latin America (Bodemer 2006: 265). Finally, in the case of Spanish policy towards Latin America, the US’s role is very complex. Under the Conservative Aznar government, Spain tried to move closer to the US on policy towards Latin America, while the Socialist Zapatero government tried to recover some of its autonomy (del Arenal 2005: 115). Additionally, it mat- ters who occupies the Oval Office: while Zapatero’s relations with Bush were frosty, he tried very hard to get on a better footing with Obama (Powell 2009). In a long-term perspective, pursuing a strong Latin America policy without compromising the relationship with the US has always been a balancing act for the Spanish government (Bodemer 1987: 84; Moltó 2010; Gratius 2010: 4).

However, there are two reasons that can be adduced to justify exogenising the ‘US factor’ to some degree. One is that US influence in Latin America and hence, by proxy, its influence on other countries’ policies towards the region is waning, both because Latin America is becoming more independent (Weisbrot 2011: 70) and because of declining attention from Washington (Gandasegui 2011). Secondly, as discussed above, the US is taken into consideration by all three countries. US influence as such is therefore constant across the three countries under study, and the way it plays out in each country is mediated by domestic factors. Even so, however, it is important not to lose sight of the US’s presence in European foreign policy-making generally and policy-making towards Latin America in particular.