Partner Country Characteristics as Factors in Foreign Policy Behaviour: Germany’s Relations with Developing Countries

Abstract

This article seeks to identify partner country characteristics as potential explanatory factors for Germany’s foreign policy actions in its bilateral relations with developing countries. From this starting point, two different types of foreign policy actions have been considered: Diplomatic cooperation and development cooperation. Firstly, a comprehensive panel data set has been assembled, containing a set of indicators capturing the socio-economic, demographic, geographic and political characteristics of 101 developing countries from the 2000–2017 period as well as Germany’s foreign policy actions in these countries. Subsequently, a regression analysis was carried out to examine the impact of the country characteristics on Germany’s bilateral foreign policy actions. The analysis has shown that dyad partner characteristics influence Germany’s bilateral foreign policy behaviour with developing countries across both types of foreign policy actions. Based on the identified relationships, one can draw some informed inferences regarding Germany’s foreign policy conduct with developing countries.