Foreign Policy Analysis

This book's introduction to foreign policy analysis focuses on decision makers and decision making. Each chapter is organised around puzzles and questions to which undergraduates can relate. The book emphasizes the importance of individuals in foreign policy decision making, while also placing decision makers within their context.

This book presents the evolution of the field of foreign policy analysis and explains the theories that have structured research in this area over the last 50 years. It provides the essentials of emerging theoretical trends, data and methodological pitfalls and major case-studies and is designed to be a key entry point for graduate students, upper-level undergraduates and scholars into the discipline. The volume features an eclectic panorama of different conceptual, theoretical and methodological approaches to foreign political analysis, focusing on different models of analysis such as two-level game analysis, bureaucratic politics, strategic culture, cybernetics, poliheuristic analysis, cognitive mapping, gender studies, groupthink and the systemic sources of foreign policy. The authors also clarify conceptual notions such as doctrines, ideologies and national interest, through the lenses of foreign policy analysis.

Aimed at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students, this book covers the theory of foreign policy analysis. Beginning with an overview, it then tackles theory and research at multiple levels of analysis, ending with an examination of the areas in which the next generation of foreign policy analysts can make important contributions.

Rethinking Foreign Policy Analysis presents the definitive treatment to integrate theories of foreign policy analysis and international relations--addressing the agent-centered, micro-political study of decisions by leaders and the structure-oriented macro political study of state interactions in an international system.

This exciting new book aims to re-invigorate the conversation between foreign policy analysis and international relations. It opens up the discussion, situating existing debates in foreign policy in relation to contemporary concerns in international relations, and provide a concise and accessible account of key areas in foreign policy analysis that are often ignored. Focusing on how the process of foreign policy decision making affects the conduct of states in the international system, and analysing the relationship between policy, agency and actors, the work examines: foreign policy and bureaucracies domestic sources of foreign policy foreign policy and the state foreign policy and globalization foreign policy and change. This work builds on and expands the theoretical canvas of foreign policy analysis, shaping its ongoing dialogue with international relations and offering an important introduction to the field. It is essential reading for all students of foreign policy and international relations.

Henrik Larsen presents discourse analysis as an alternative approach to foreign policy analysis. Through an extensive empirical study of British and French policies towards Europe in the 1980s, he demonstrates the importance of political discourse in shaping foreign policy. The author discusses key theoretical problems within traditional belief system approaches and proposes an alternative one: political discourse analysis. The theory is illustrated through detailed analyses of British and French discourses on Europe, nation/state security and the nature of international relations.

¿This is the first significant attempt to examine the state of a key subfield of international relations in areas outside of North America.... It also provides a treasure trove of resources for further reading and promises to spark new and innovative research designs.¿ ¿Trevor Rubenzer, University of South Carolina ¿This unique book deserves a place in the libraries of universities around the world as an important reference work for specialists in foreign policy analysis and international relations theory.¿ ¿Stephen G. Walker, Arizona State University North American scholars typically do not hesitate to make pronouncements about foreign policy processes and outcomes in other countries. And despite ample evidence to the contrary, the perception that foreign policy analysis is still largely a North American scholarly enterprise persists. Foreign Policy Analysis Beyond North America challenges this perception, providing a rich overview of work by scholars in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and also highlighting theoretical and empirical insights that may catalyze new waves of progress in the field. Klaus Brummer is associate professor of political science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Valerie M. Hudson is professor and George H.W. Bush Chair in the School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.

Building on constructivist approaches to international relations this book develops a narrative theory of identity, action and foreign policy, which is then applied to account for the evolution of Finnish foreign policy. The book adopts an innovative approach by showing how foreign policy orientations need to be seen as grounded in overlapping and competing sets of identity narratives that reappear in different forms through history. By emphasising the dynamism implicit within identity narratives the book not only challenges traditional rationalist materialist approaches to foreign policy analysis, but also the current tendency to depict the story of Finnish foreign policy, identity and history as one of a gradual move towards a Western location. Rather the book emphasises elements of multiplicity and contingency, whilst re-establishing foreign policy as a highly political process concerned with power and the right to define reality and national subjectivity.