Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making a comparative analysis of foreign policy choices Juliet Kaarbo The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2012 All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2015 2014 2013 2012 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaarbo, Juliet. Coalition politics and cabinet decision making : a comparative analysis of foreign policy choices / Juliet Kaarbo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn978-0-472-11824-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn978-0-472-02834-4 (e-book) 1. International relations—Decision making. 2. International relations—Decision making—Case studies. 3. Cabinet system— Decision making. 4. Cabinet system—Decision making—Case studies. 5. Coalition governments. 6. Coalition governments—Case studies. I. Title. jz1305.k33 2012 327.1—dc23 2012000980 For Ryan, Ellie, and Quinn Contents Preface ix 1. The Importance of Coalition Politics for Foreign Policy and International Relations 1 2.Images of Coalition Politics and Foreign Policy 13 3.Assessing Coalition Politics and Foreign Policy: Quantitative Analyses and the Need for Comparative Case Studies 40 4.Dutch Foreign Policy: Excessive Compromise in Coalition Politics? 67 5.Japanese Foreign Policy: Paralyzed by Coalition Con›ict? 122 6.Turkish Foreign Policy: Hijacked by Ideological Extremes? 180 7. Challenging and Unpacking Images of Coalition Foreign Policy: Implications for International Relations and Governance 232 Appendix: Goldstein Con›ict-Cooperation Scale for WEIS Event Data 247 Notes 249 Bibliography 295 Index 329 Preface This book grows out of my interest in small groups, disagreement, and de- cision units. While in graduate school, I worked closely with the develop- ment of the decision units framework of Peg Hermann, Chuck Hermann, and Joe Hagan. The small-group unit particularly intrigued me, but I was less interested in groupthink, the better-known and -researched psycholog- ical “pathology” that can occur from processes of social in›uence. I wanted to know more about dissent—its psychological effects, how it was treated socially, and how it was embedded politically in many countries. This ap- proach was partly motivated by my interest in any country except the United States. Our knowledge of foreign policy decision making was and still is myopically based on the U.S. system. When I looked around the world, I saw parliamentary systems and coalition cabinets in many impor- tant states. Theories of U.S. policy-making did not easily apply, but little theoretical development had occurred to explain coalition foreign policy. My doctoral dissertation focused on the conditions of junior-party in›uence in coalition cabinet foreign policy and examined several cases of German and Israeli foreign policy. Since then, there has been little further development of our understanding of coalition decision making. Binnur Özkeçeci-Taner’s book, The Role of Ideas in Coalition Government Foreign Pol- icymaking: The Case of Turkey between 1991 and 2002,is the notable excep- tion. As work on the democratic peace developed, bringing back domestic political variables to “mainstream” international relations research, studies included coalitions as a variable to unpack the category of democracy. De- spite these efforts, the question of how a divided cabinet affected foreign policy and particularly decision making remained largely untouched. Yet assumptions and normative judgments about coalitions are often made in scholarly literature, in journalist accounts, and even in popular culture. In The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,the ‹nal book in Stieg Larsson’s tril- ogy, Swedish investigators are talking to the prime minister about the secret