Paper short abstract:

Abe Shinzo's Grand Strategy aimed at balancing an assertive China points at the primacy of international factors in explaining foreign policy output. At the very same time, it will be argued, Abe's foreign policy has catered to the vagaries of domestic politics and Premier-centered "spin."

Paper long abstract:

A progressively changing post-Cold War order has brought along mounting insecurity and the need for states to respond to such changes through a reformulation of their main foreign policy line. In the Asia-Pacific, like elsewhere, the growing insistence by public officials on lofty strategic pronouncements is however also the by-product of a changed domestic political landscape, where charismatic leadership rests on the growing vagaries of a media-saturated public opinion environment.

Traditional theories of foreign policy have presented a dichotomous separation of foreign policy formation: the inside-out perspective stresses the domestic determinants of Japan's foreign policy; an outside-in (or systemic) approach favours broader international structural forces and dynamics, such as the distribution of power in the international system. More complex theories have presented a dualist or dialectical framework, where both international and domestic variables impact on foreign policy. This paper uses the case of Abe Shinzo's Grand Strategy and foreign policy formulation to make the case for the primacy of a systemic approach that, at the very same time, caters to the above-mentioned strictures of domestic politics. The presentation will try to advance a novel conceptualization of foreign policy formation in Japan and other mature democracies.