독일 신동방정책 결정 요인과 지속성 연구

Abstract

This paper intends to identify determining as well as sustaining elements of New East Policy of Willy Brandt, in the mutual interaction with the political constellation in Germany. Foreign policies are formulated and sustained by the interaction between domestic socio-political demands and international environments. Based on this general perception, the paper aims at an in-depth investigation of determining and sustaining elements of New East Policy. Systematic research of domestic political circumstances will eventually lead to comprehensive understanding of foreign policies of those times. This paper emphasizes the importance of actors in the decision-making process of foreign policies. Analysis focusing on different actors merits systematic explanation of a causal relationship in the international policy decision making as it focuses on different political orientations of various power groups. In the political constellation of contemporary Germany, Social Democratic Party alone could not have pursued Willy Brandt's New East Policy. Solidarity and partnership with Free Democratic Party was a bolstering bloc in decision-making as well as implementing the Policy. Free Democratic Party was a substantial partner as well as an initiator of the Policy. The reason that the Free Democratic Party supported the New East Policy had something to do with its identity. This paper attentively looks into the fact that the Party actively pursued the Policy because the Policy reflected the commercial and business interests of the German enterprises, a political constituency of the Party, by expanding their trade opportunities with the East. And, the paper assumes that its support and participation constituted an important element that determined and sustained the New East Policy.