Revisiting French diplomacy in the age of globalization

Abstract

There are a number of good reasons why foreign policy matters to political scientists, most of them related to the dynamics of conflict and cooperation among states and international actors, and to the changing patterns of interaction within the international system. The issues at stake are obviously important and complex enough to justify some form of division of labor, and analysis of foreign policy is logically conducted in the vast majority of cases by scholars of International Relations. However, there is another angle of foreign policy that is critical for a more general understanding of politics, and that should not be ignored by political scientists outside the field of International Relations. Beyond the routines of international institutions and everyday diplomacy, foreign policy and its aftermaths is often critical to determine the structure of political regimes and institutions (...).