Foreign Policy Analysis beyond North America Boulder by Klaus Brummer and Valerie M. Hudson, eds.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Edelgard Mahant, Glendon College, York UniversityForeign policy analysis (FPA) is still largely dominated by scholars based in the US, although there have been some significant contributions by Western European experts. A book that deals with the field as it exists in most of the rest of the world is, therefore, a very welcome addition to the literature. This edited volume includes chapters on China, Japan, India, Africa, the Arab world, Latin America, and finally, North America and Europe, which are lumped together in one last chapter.The editors were faced with the problem that FPA in the American sense does not exist in much of the rest of the world, and the contributors dealt with this dilemma with varying degrees of success. Those focusing on countries or areas where there is a growing body of literature in the FPA tradition had the easiest time. Huiyun Feng's excellent chapter on China demonstrates how Chinese scholars have related their analyses of the foreign policy of various countries to traditional Chinese philosophies. Chinese scholars have also written about identity building in new countries, a core concept of constructivism. Rita Giacalone, writing about Latin America, successfully analyzes a rich literature that not only applies theories developed elsewhere (realism, historical institutionalism, Marxism) but also develops new theoretical concepts such as peripheral neo-realism and peripheral neo-idealism.Amelia Hadfield and Valerie Hudson, writing about North America and Europe, had the largest corpus of literature to read and draw on. Their chapter makes a useful distinction between Foreign Policy Analysis (American) and Analysis of Foreign Policy (AFP) (European). They identify several characteristics of AFP: a tendency to draw on international relations, rather than political science, theory; a tendency to analyze the foreign policy of European states in terms of their role in the EU; and the American effort to predict in contrast to the European search for understanding. The chapter, however, has its weaknesses. The writers are fond of esoteric terms (nomothetic, hybridity, mesoscopic) that will drive most readers to their online dictionaries. Worse, I did not notice a single reference to any work by Central and East European or Russian scholars, here or elsewhere in the book.Sumit Ganguly and Manjeet Pardesi, writing about India, had a difficult time. There appears to be no Indian academic literature in the FPA tradition. Much of what is written attempts to be policy relevant and is based on realism, often without the writer consciously realizing that this is what s/he is doing. Ganguly and Pardesi point out that Jawaharlal Nehru's foreign policy had an ideational component, but this does not tell us much about foreign policy scholarship in India. And unlike their Chinese counterparts, Indian scholars have made little or no attempt to draw on traditional Indian thinkers and apply their ideas to contemporary FPA.Raymond Hinnebusch, writing about the Arab world, begins with a promising analysis of Bahgat Korany's work on the role of leadership in the foreign policy of some Arab states, but soon falls into a discussion of the foreign policy of Arab states, rather than FPA as practised there (or not). …