Research Design

4.1.1 Selection of Cases

Empirically, the study investigates the foreign policy of four Western states—the United States of America, West Germany, Sweden and Switzerland—which shaped their foreign policies toward South Africa under apartheid quite differently. The governments of the four states also influenced the international debate on international sanctions against South Africa in a different way and reacted with quite dissimilar policies to the raising movement towards international action against the South African government in the mid-1980s.

The two main selection criteria include therefore the basic orientation of the four states’ foreign policy toward South Africa under apartheid and the evolution of this basic orientation over time. The basic orientation of the four states’ South Africa policy can be characterized along the two dimensions ‘interference vs. non-interference’ and ‘cooperation vs. conflict’. ‘Interference vs. non-interference’ refers to whether the principle foreign policy approach was rather interventionist or non-interventionist. ‘Cooperation vs. conflict’ indicates whether the policy rather followed the principle of engagement with or isolation of the apart-heid regime.

The evolution over time as the second selection criteria considers to what extent the basic foreign policy orientation was subject to change over the period of investigation.

Changes in the four countries’ foreign policies could have happened dramatically or moder-ately or not at all. Table 4 below illustrates how the four selected states can be characterized according to these two criteria. It is obvious that the four selected cases show some significant

variance with respect to these two dimensions. Also indicated in Table 4 are relevant context variables that have to be considered as important control variables in the realm of this study.

Table 4: Selection Criteria and Control Variables for Case Studies

United States West Germany Sweden Switzerland Selection criteria: Geopolitical position superpower middle-power small power small power Political system liberal democracy liberal democracy liberal democracy liberal democracy Governmental system presidential, federal parliamentary,

The U.S. interfered regularly in the political situation in southern Africa and changed its foreign policy toward South Africa quite dramatically in the mid-1980s from a policy of engagement with the apartheid government to a policy of isolation. West Germany’s policy of non-interference changed moderately with the imposition of E.C. sanctions against South Africa in the mid-1980s. Sweden and Switzerland, on the other hand, both pursued a rather stable and consistent South Africa policy from 1977 to 1994, each with a very different focal point: whereas the Swedish government had always been leading the way in Western anti-apartheid protest, the Swiss government always argued against interference in South African affairs.

Apart from their different reactions to international developments regarding apart-heid in South Africa, the four states feature distinct similarities and differences in other rele-vant dimensions. Geopolitically, all four were unambiguously part of the Western group of states in the bipolar Cold War world order. Economically, the four states are highly integrated into world markets, also with rather close economic ties to South Africa. Regarding their geopolitical position, Sweden and Switzerland are comparable regarding their political and economic power and their declared state of neutrality in international conflicts. The United States and Germany are both representatives of powerful global economies.

But, of course, there are major geopolitical differences too: the U.S. as one of the two global superpowers takes an exceptional position in the global political system. West Ger-many can be described as a political middle-power whereas Sweden and Switzerland are counted as small nations in terms of population size and political and military power, but with comparatively strong economies. Comparatively large differences exist also regarding the four states’ political and governmental systems. The U.S. presidential system differs signifi-cantly from the parliamentary systems in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. Switzerland, on the other hand, features a well-established direct-democratic system with periodical popular votes on policy issues. Switzerland is also the only of the four cases that did not experience significant changes in the overall political majority between 1977 and 1996. The U.S., Ger-many and Sweden had at least one major government reshuffle in this period.

4.1.2 Design of the Individual Steps of Analysis

Research Question 1 (Qualitative Case Study)

The reconstruction of the four states’ foreign policy design towards South Africa draws on the available literature and a supplementary analysis of primary documents (Hudson 1997; Hill 1993). For the Swiss case, additionally 22 interviews (Hodder 1994) with civil servants in the administration and the diplomatic corps, members of parliament, NGO representatives and scholars were conducted (see, Kvale 1996).

Research Question 2 (Intervention/Outcome Analysis)

The classical design for such an investigation of the effects of an intervention would be the experiment. In the social sciences, however, experiments are hardly feasible. Quasi-experimental designs (Widmer and Hirschi 2005; Cook and Campbell 1979) are therefore typically applied to assess the effects of interventions. Quasi-experiments share with all other

experiments a similar purpose—to test descriptive causal hypotheses about manipulable causes—as well as many structural details. But, by definition, quasi-experiments lack random assignment (Shadish et al. 2001: 13-14).

Theory-based evaluation (Shadish et al. 2001; Chen 1990, 2005; Mohr 1995) sug-gests two basic dimensions in which the effects of a policy intervention can be assessed: 1) the goal dimension, 2) the dimension of side effects (not intended effects). The test of the hypotheses on the potential effects of different types of foreign policy intervention in this step of analysis takes these two effect dimensions into account. Technically, the effect of major policy changes and interventions on the four states’ foreign policy behavior will be tested using integrated autoregressive moving-average (ARIMA) models (Weiss 1997) for each states’ international relations with South Africa. Then, transfer function models (Box and Jenkins 1976: 141-203; McCleary and Hay 1980: 247-261) are applied to measure the degree of change introduced by individual foreign policy interventions and to estimate the amount of time required for these changes to be actualized (for more detail, see Section 4.5.2).

Research Question 3 (Impact Analysis)

A systematic analysis of these different, potentially influential developments on the political situation in South Africa is widely missing and also the causalities between the different developments on the domestic, regional and international level remain mostly unclear. I there-fore estimate in this third part of analysis the evolution and the interdependencies between different developments on the national, regional and international level using Vector Autore-gressive (VAR) models (Enders 2004; Freeman et al. 1989: 264-318). VAR analysis is basi-cally a natural extension of transfer function analysis, although each variable is treated sym-metrically now. VAR analysis is therefore especially beneficial when there is little or no confidence whether a variable is actually endogenous or exogenous, as seems to be the case regarding the interconnections between domestic, regional and international developments regarding South Africa under apartheid. The VAR model includes for each variable an equa-tion explaining its evoluequa-tion based on its own lags and the lags of all the other variables in the model. Not significant explaining and dependent variables can then be dropped from the model, keeping only those variables for which there is empirical evidence that they are actu-ally connected (for more detail, see Section 4.5.3).

The research design for this study as outlined in the three steps of analysis includes one time series case study for each of the four selected states’ foreign policy towards South Africa under apartheid. Event data, as described in detail in the following section, provides a rich set of variables that can be used to identify and systematically analyze the links between foreign policy design and intervention as independent variables and the resulting effects on the international level as dependent variables. Such a dynamic approach to studying the ef-fects of foreign policy interventions differs from prevailing cross-sectional studies on interna-tional politics. Apart from this fundamental difference in the research design, an event data based analysis of the dynamics of foreign policy interventions also opens the opportunity to consider stronger political variables such as diplomacy, verbal statements, negotiations etc. to measure and explain foreign policy outcomes.

A cross sectional comparison between the four states is carried out only in a descrip-tive way, based on the findings for each time series case study. The variety of intervening variables as listed in Table 4 above does not allow for a systematic comparison of the four states’ foreign policies and their effects. But, considering the specifics of the four cases as outline in the previous section, the research design allows at least for a few pair-wise com-parisons of individual aspects: Economic power, in particular exports and investment (U.S., West Germany) and finance (U.S., West Germany, Switzerland); region (West Germany, Sweden, Switzerland); geopolitical position (Sweden, Switzerland); foreign policy principles (Sweden, Switzerland) (according to a most similar systems strategy, see Enders 2004). It is clear that the United States of America in particular constitutes a unique case when it comes to international politics. The inclusion of the U.S. in this study, however, is not only crucial due to its role as a global superpower and its significant role in international relations with South Africa under apartheid, but also with regards to the analysis of the other three cases’

foreign policies towards South Africa; U.S. foreign policy provides important intervening variables that cannot be omitted in a case specific analysis of the foreign policies of West Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.