Patterns of Role Transition: A Taxonomy, A Research Program, and the Three-Body Problem

In foreign policy, role transition as a process of role change implies at least two roles (a state\u27ʹs old role and its new role) and a dynamic process of role location in which Ego’s role changes over time. If every role for Ego presumes a counter-role for Alter, a pattern of role transition for Ego implies as well a potential process of role transition for Alter. In order to model the process of role transition, a taxonomy of mutually exclusive and logically exhaustive roles and counter-roles is desirable, in order to identify and specify the possible combinations of old and new roles as patterns of role transition. Binary role theory provides a taxonomy that meets these criteria and is employed in this paper to model the process of role transition as a transition in Grand Strategy Orientations. The binary model is complete in a way that three-way (or multi-way) models cannot be. Several hypotheses about the role of domestic politics in foreign policy role transitions, however, suggest the conditions under which unstable triads may become provisionally stable. Application of the resulting model to selected episodes of role transition in triadic relations among China, the Soviet Union, the United States, Japan, and South Korea illustrates the model’s potential descriptive and explanatory power for analyzing strategic triads and the contours of a research program for understanding foreign policy change as a role transition process

Congruence across Levels of Role-taking in U.S. Foreign Policy

A psychosocial approach to national behavior, emphasizing the foreign policy roles selected by states, has proven to be a fertile source of insights into the ways states respond to their external environment. Disaggregating the phenomenon of role into several distinct processes—e.g., roletaking, role contestation, role enactment, and role transition—highlights interactions across different levels of analysis as part of a general process of role location. We focus in this paper specifically on the process of role-taking leading to role selection and conceive of this process as operating simultaneously at the state, domestic, and individual levels of analysis. Rather than assume that states simply choose roles, or that elite policy makers choose roles on behalf of their states, we propose in this paper a systems model and hypotheses about cross-level effects among elements in a complex adaptive system. This model relies on the auxiliary assumption that the congruence of strategic orientations across levels of analysis facilitates role selection, and that this congruence is observable in the rhetoric of political leaders. To analyze these cross-level effects, we employ Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA) coding of national role conceptions (NRCs), coupled with motive imagery assessment of U.S. presidents and statistical measures of U.S. power and domestic political arrangements, to test the theoretical proposition that coherent national role selection will emerge primarily when international, domestic, and individual motivations are congruent (aligned with one another). We hypothesize that these conditions are likely instances of role-taking that result empirically in the selection of strategic role orientations that are congruent with these role demands

Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations: An Ideational Alliance

Constructivist IR scholars study the ways in which international norms, culture, and identities - all intersubjective phenomena - inform foreign policy and affect the reaction to and outcomes of international events. Political psychologists similarly investigate divergent national self-conceptions, as well as the individual cognitive and emotional propensities that shape ideology and policy.https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/books/1126/thumbnail.jp

Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations: An Ideational Alliance

Constructivist IR scholars study the ways in which international norms, culture, and identities - all intersubjective phenomena - inform foreign policy and affect the reaction to and outcomes of international events. Political psychologists similarly investigate divergent national self-conceptions, as well as the individual cognitive and emotional propensities that shape ideology and policy

Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations: An Ideational Alliance

Constructivist IR scholars study the ways in which international norms, culture, and identities - all intersubjective phenomena - inform foreign policy and affect the reaction to and outcomes of international events. Political psychologists similarly investigate divergent national self-conceptions, as well as the individual cognitive and emotional propensities that shape ideology and policy

Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations: An Ideational Alliance

Constructivist IR scholars study the ways in which international norms, culture, and identities - all intersubjective phenomena - inform foreign policy and affect the reaction to and outcomes of international events. Political psychologists similarly investigate divergent national self-conceptions, as well as the individual cognitive and emotional propensities that shape ideology and policy