Democratic Institutions and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Abstract The chapter maps the contributions and limitations of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) scholarship in the study of democratic foreign policy and how it connects to International Relations (IR) research agendas. To this purpose, the discussion takes up the distinction between FPA as a subfield and perspective. As a subfield, FPA foregrounds how the diversity of democratic institutions and actors lead to variance in democratic foreign policy. As a perspective, FPA focuses on how individual foreign policy-makers understand and interact with their democratic decision contexts. The chapter argues that FPA scholarship can address important blind spots in IR research on the international behaviour of democracies, playing a leader role in unpacking the democratic politics of foreign policy, an innovator role in theorizing the agency of democratic decision-makers and a bridge builder role to scholarship in comparative politics and psychology. To illustrate this promise, the chapter sketches a research agenda on the politicization of democratic foreign policy.