The Future of Foreign Policy Analysis

Abstract

Foreign policy analysis (FPA) occupies a central place in the study of international relations. FPA has produced a substantial amount of scholarship dealing with subjects from the micro and geographically particular to the macro relationship of foreign policy to globalization. It brings together many different subject areas, indeed disciplines, as between international relations and comparative politics or political theory, or history and political science. FPA generates case studies of major world events, and the information that probes behind the surface of things, to make it more possible to hold politicians accountable. Meanwhile, officials themselves are ever more aware that they need assistance, conceptual and empirical, in making sense of how those in other countries conduct themselves and what can feasibly be achieved at the international level. However, each subject under FPA needs to be revitalized through the development of new lines of enquiry and through the struggle with difficult problems. Work is either already under way or should be pursued in eight important areas. These are (i) foreign policy as a site of agency, (ii) foreign policy and state-building, (iii) foreign policy and the domestic, (iv) foreign policy and identity, (v) foreign policy and multilateralism, (vi) foreign policy and power, (vii) foreign policy and transnationalism, and (viii) foreign policy and ethics.