Each country‘s foreign policy
tends to reflect its
political culture
. This concept rep-
resents a society‘s widely held, traditional values and its fundamental practices that are
slow to change (Paquette, 2003; Jung, 2002). Leaders tend to formulate policies that are compatible with t
heir society‘s political culture because the leaders share many or all of
those values. Also, even if they do not share a particular value, lead- ers want to avoid the backlash that adopting policies counter to the political culture might cause. To analyze
any country‘s political culture, you would look into such things as how a people feel
about themselves and their country, how they view oth- ers, what role they think their country should play in the world, and what they see as moral behavior.