Study of Foreign Policies of New Revolutionary Governments in Middle East and North Africa on the Basis of “Continuity Model of James N. Rosenau”

Revolutionary developments, which started in some countries of the Middle East and North Africa, especially Tunisia, and soon spread to other countries like Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Oman and even Syria, and ended in victory of revolutions in some of those countries, including Egypt and Libya, face every foreign policy and international relations analyst with this question: what foreign policy will new revolutionary governments in these countries adopt to meet their national interests and deal with external developments? The main goal of this paper is to study foreign policy of these governments on the basis of James Rosenau’s “continuity” model. Therefore, this paper first identifies large- and small-scale approaches to analysis of foreign policy of countries before focusing on the two-level combined model of analysis which is best represented by Rosenau’s model. Based on this model, we reach the conclusion that to identify, study, and even predict foreign policy approaches of new regional governments, one must analyze such factors as the person who makes decisions, the part he plays, governance variables of new governments, as well as society and/or nongovernmental variables which include major value-based orientations. Finally, environmental variables, namely, environmental limitations and opportunities facing the new governments, are discussed and these factors are carefully identified and assessed.