The politics of domestic antimilitarism: State identity in Japan's arms export and outer space use policies

This dissertation addresses the question of how identity-based and more traditional power- and interest-based factors together influence foreign policy outcomes. State identity structures concrete policy outcomes through its influence on policy rhetoric, its structuring of public opinion, the coalition-building opportunities it enables, and its institutionalization into the policymaking process. In tandem with these processes, domestic and international political actors seek to influence policy outcomes to fulfill their own objectives, based on their own understanding of their interests. This model of policymaking departs from realist models of international relations that conceptualize the state as a unitary actor, from traditional interest-based models by demonstrating how rhetoric and identity affect how actors choose to pursue their interests, and from the views of radical constructivists and critical theorists who reject the notion that identity and interests can be disaggregated.; In immediate postwar Japan (1945--1960), political actors actively debated the question of Japan's international role after its defeat in the Second World War. The codification of a new state identity of "domestic antimilitarism" was the result of a deeply political process, and represented a compromise position among diverse alternatives. While this new state identity became hegemonic by 1960, a contentious "politics of domestic antimilitarism" continues to influence debate over foreign policy during the Cold War and post-Cold War periods.; In four case chapters, the dissertation first demonstrates how Japan's postwar state identity of domestic antimilitarism fundamentally altered the debate, adoption, and subsequent evolution of government policy on the export of arms and the use of outer space. Next, it examines how these two policies together with the continued politics of domestic antimilitarism have affected post-Cold War security policymaking in the cases of theater missile defense (TMD) and surveillance satellites. The concluding chapter considers Japan's response to recent terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, arguing that the politics of domestic antimilitarism continue to be evident in Japanese security policymaking into the 21st century.