Eason, Thomas
(2023)
Beyond Blair: governmental politics, perceptions, and the British decision to invade Iraq.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
This thesis has two aims: i) to create a new Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) framework that analysts can use to develop detailed narratives that explain foreign policy decisions with reference to both the formation of individual perceptions as well as the role of broader bureaucratic processes in policymaking; and ii) to develop one of the most detailed academic accounts of the British decision to invade Iraq in 2003 which, using the new framework, decentres the Prime Minister and shines a new light on how previously overlooked actors and bureaucratic structures shaped the UK’s path to war. Drawing upon memoirs, declassified government documents, and testimonies made to the Iraq Inquiry, this thesis develops its new FPA framework, coined the Politics and Perceptions Framework, and tests and demonstrates it by applying it to the British decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
The new Politics and Perceptions Framework is developed by fusing two dominant approaches within FPA, the Governmental Politics Model (GPM) and the Cognitive Approach. This thesis argues that while the GPM can explain policymaking at the group level using the language of ‘pulling and hauling of policy’ and ‘bargaining advantages’, its reductionist and much-critiqued claim that ‘where you stand depends upon where you sit’ offers little towards explaining individual-level decisions and perception formation. On the other hand, this thesis argues that the Cognitive Approach is good at explaining individual-level decision-making and perception formation but has little to say about the impact of group-level decision-making and bureaucratic processes on policy-making. To address these limitations, this thesis creates a new framework that replaces the GPM’s ‘stand-sit’ proposition with a collection of cognitive biases while retaining its idea of group-level decision-making. It argues that this fusion uses the strengths of the two approaches to address their respective limitations.
The thesis applies the Politics and Perceptions Framework to the Iraq case and uses it as a vehicle to test and demonstrate the framework’s value when compared to its two parent literatures. It argues that the new framework can explain individual perception formation better than the original GPM, which regularly fails to offer explanations throughout the case, and that it can explain group-level decision-making better than the Cognitive Approach, which similarly fails to explain how actors worked together to form policy decisions.
Additionally, by applying the Politics and Perceptions Framework to the Iraq case, this thesis also offers new insights into the British decision to invade Iraq, which builds on existing knowledge by developing a narrative that analyses a broader range of actors beyond Blair, the actor that has been the centre of most academic research on the case. It draws attention to crucial critical junctures in the UK’s path to war that have so far been absent from more Blair-centric narratives, highlights different factors that shaped (at times contrasting) perceptions within the British government, and offers new insights into the UK’s diplomatic strategy towards both the US and the UN in this period.
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