Democratizing Foreign Policy?: Lessons from South Africa

9780739105856

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Philip Nel

Genre Nonfiction

Format Hardcover

Dimensions 9.00 (w) x 6.00 (h) x 0.69 (d)

Pages 234

Publisher The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group Inc

Publication Date December 2003

ISBN 9780739105856

Book ISBN 10 073910585X

About Book

Are ordinary citizens capable of shaping foreign policy? To answer this question, fifteen established and emerging scholars use South Africa as a case study to assess the extent to which democratic consolidation can be translated into the realm of foreign policy. Contributors discuss the South African Development Community as an arena of transnational democracy, the impact of European Union trade policy, and the significance of South Africa's controversial 'arms deals' as they explore the opportunities and constraints facing recently democratized societies in the Southern Hemisphere. Democratizing Foreign Policy? Lessons from South Africa provides a broad-ranging assessment—investigating conceptual issues regarding the role of women, think tanks, civil society, labor movements, and the impact of globalization upon the process of foreign policy making—of the opportunities and challenges involved in opening the process of foreign policy making to civil society and the need to do so if the developing world is to better manage the complexities of globalization.

Reviews

Politikon

This well-crafted volume asks a central question, and answers it fairly conclusively: has post-apartheid South Africa lived up to the promise of a democratized polity, including its foreign policy approach? While the authors assembled here hace a decidedly critical orientation, and may be biased as a result, it is nonetheless refreshing to read so many articles that cut through the fluff of government propaganda and challenge foreign policy analysts and South Africans alike to think about the current reality.

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