Unfinished transformation: The three phases of complexity’s emergence into international relations and foreign policy

Abstract

Ever since the end of the Cold War and, in particular, since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a fierce debate has been taking place both in the academic and the political world about the problems traditional concepts and theories of international relations and foreign policy have in explaining change in international politics. Complexity as a conceptual framework for explaining international politics emerged as a result of this debate and has been making important contributions to it.This article is intended to assess the impact complexity has had on this debate over the last 20 years. It is argued that one can identify three distinct phases of complexity’s emergence into the field of international politics. Whilst the framework has been quite successful in explaining change in international politics and developing concepts to adjust foreign policy to the existence of self-organising complex-adaptive systems, the framework still has some way to go in developing clear alternative strategies for the development of foreign policies processes which not only take account of the complexity encountered by policy-makers but use this complexity to improve policy-outcomes. To this end, the article concludes by suggesting areas for further research.