The Role of National Culture in Foreign Policy Making. Anti-Semitism in Europe and European-Israeli Relations

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International relations, grade: 1,0, Eastern Illinois University, language: English, abstract: Over the last decades, the foreign policies of the European Union member countries have become more and more consistent. However, up to date, the European countries differ significantly in their views on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East conflict. This study tries to explain these differences by focusing on a factor that has been largely ignored by existing literature on foreign policy making: culture. More precisely, this study tests the argument that anti-Semitism as a cultural trait influences a state´s foreign policy toward Israel. In order to test this argument, we are examining the levels of anti-Semitism in five European states (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) as well as the quality of their relations with Israel. The findings suggest that the countries with the highest levels of anti-Semitism indeed have the worst relations with Israel and vice versa. Thus, anti-Semitism (and, more generally, culture) seems to be an important factor that deserves greater attention from scholars that are trying to understand the process of foreign policy making.