Scholarship on South Africa’s Foreign Policy Behaviour: Parsimony versus Eclecticism

ABSTRACT

Some commentators note that much of the literature on South Africa’s foreign policy behaviour is marked by clash of concepts, arguments and normative convictions. This clash has mainly been between two dominant intellectual traditions: realism and liberalism. Works based on each of the perspectives incline towards particular preferences, values and prescriptions – a single vision or a universalising organising principle guides the framing of policy problem, interpretation of empirical observations and prescriptions. The limitation of this mode of enquiry is that it fails to take account of the complexity of the social world and that there are many ways of looking at it. The article argues that neither of the two dominant perspectives ‘comprehensively and persuasively’ explains South Africa’s foreign policy behaviour and practice. Beyond parsimony the paper advocates scholarship grounded in ‘analytic eclecticism’. It is an approach that integrates ideas and variables associated with different theoretical perspectives. This approach is preferable because it ensures that the scholarly endeavour is sufficiently close to the experience of real world actors. It leads to deeper insights into policy behaviour and how to holistically deal with the problems associated with it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.