Foreign Policy Analysis: South American Countries’ Foreign Policy Towards the BRI

How do we explain the different responses of South American countries towards the BRI? Answering this question requires prior comprehension of how scholars approach foreign policy analysis in general and, more specifically, how they study foreign policy in Latin America. This chapter serves two purposes. First, it reviews the foreign policy analysis scholarship, and identifies the common theoretical approaches applied to the subcontinent in this sub-discipline. Second, it proposes a theoretical framework anchored in liberal international relations theory, and singles out two factors for scrutiny, i.e. the intensity of business preferences and the foreign policy decision-making locus. Specifically, it argues that high intensity of business preferences regarding the BRI will lead to either an endorsement or a non-engagement strategy, depending on whether businesses are overwhelmingly interested or uninterested in the initiative. It also contends that low intensity of business preferences—that is, divergent business preferences—enables state actors to capitalise on the intra-business divergence. This, however, will hinge upon the locus of foreign policy decision which, in this research, refers to the diplomatic establishment or the presidency. The chapter closes with three theory-informed assumptions that will be later investigated in the empirical research.