Importance of Power

Abstract:
This paper examines the development of an elite African-American foreign affairs community (AAFAC). It pays particular attention to the construction of an organised network, consisting of individual activists, black organisations, and the black press. The paper highlights the foreign affairs activities of notables such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, A. Phillip Randolph, Walter White and Ralph Bunche, in addition to the following organisations: the Niagara Movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Council on African Affairs (CAA). Indeed the evidence presented indicates that the aforementioned organisations utilised their respective publications, to propagate their commitment to the liberation of the global black constituency. The central themes of the paper examines AAFAC?s efforts to encourage U.S. political officials to support their international agenda in addition to highlighting AAFAC?s efforts to compel the 1919 Peace Conference and the United Nations Organisation (1945) to adopt policies promoting international racial equality. This paper identifies how the formation and evolutionary development of an African-American foreign affairs network was assisted by the first and second World wars and the subsequent peace conferences. In short AAFAC utilised allied propaganda regarding the sanctity of democratic freedoms to advance their calls for international racial equality. Significantly the liberal agenda pioneered by U.S. interventionists provided the language and political consciousness which AAFAC exploited to advance their international agenda.This paper identifies the pivotal role of the Roosevelt administration?s foreign policies regarding its support of the four freedoms and its partial acceptance of the principle of racial equality during WWII and how it impacted on AAFAC?s relative power pertaining to foreign affairs. It also recognises African-Americans accumulation of insider knowledge as a factor in AAFAC?s greater influence after WWII which was due in part to the U.S. administration?s recruitment of individuals like Ralph Bunche into the foreign policy establishment. This paper also identifies the Truman administration?s recognition of African-Americans strategic importance to U.S. foreign policy in relation to race relations and the emerging cold war as it relates to the inclusion of three African-Americans as consultants to the U.S. delegation at the UNO. The evidence will demonstrate that AAFAC?s knowledge of the post WWII domestic and international context facilitated the expansion of the foreign affairs activities and helped them to acquire significant links with U.S. foreign policy makers and ultimately advance, but also transform their international agenda. In short the African-American network?s inclusion at the UNO Conference in 1945 will be contrasted with AAFAC?s failure to win concessions from the Wilson administration or the League of Nations in 1919. This raises questions regarding AAFAC?s competency in regard to international issues subsequent to WWI or points to the pervasive character of the colour-line in relation to U.S. foreign policy and international politics.



Power Politics in Foreign Policy:
The Influence of Bureaucratic Minorities
JULIET KAARBO
University of Kansas
Scholars of foreign policy-making have concentrated on how the most powerful domestic actors influence foreign policy and have largely ignored the influence of less powerful, minority actors. This article argues that bureaucratic minorities — subordinates and less powerful departments — can and do influence foreign policy. Despite the extensive scholarship on bureaucratic politics and the central importance of `power' in the theory, we know little about the nature and effects of asymmetrical power relations. Drawing from various research, this article proposes that bureaucratic minorities can adopt strategies based on rewards and costs, manipulation of decision procedures, and information to bypass or exploit their status to influence policy. The choice and effectiveness of these strategies may depend on whether or not the actor is a vertical minority (a subordinate influencing a superior) or a horizontal minority (a representative from a less powerful department influencing other departments). Further investigations of the conditions under which minority players have influence can be part of a much needed revival of the bureaucratic politics perspective on foreign policy-making.

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