Summary

This five-volume set is the first major collection on this core substantive policy field in international political inquiry. It serves not only to present the history of the field in the form of its most important earlier writings, but also to present the core theoretical texts of this sub-discipline of international relations as it stands today, addressing the current issues and controversies engaging this internationally vibrant community of scholars around the world.

Part One: Historical Development of Foreign Policy Analysis assembles scholarly contributions which have been seminal in the development of foreign policy analysis as an academic field by tracing the important historical pathways, junctures and formative moments in this policy domain.

Parts Two and Three: Current Theoretical Approaches to Foreign Policy Analysis shift the focus to contemporary theoretical approaches to foreign policy analysis over the last decade and a half including modern realism, liberal intergovernmentalism and institutionalism, cognitive and psychological approaches, and more recent social constructivist and poststructuralist thinking.

Part Four: Problems and Debates in Contemporary Foreign Policy Analysis turns the attention away from substance of foreign policy to the question of how such analysis should proceed in the first place. Issues covered include the agency-structure debate, the role of ideas and discourses in FPA, critiques of neorealism and other mainstream approaches, in addition to other controversies and debates of an overarching nature.

Together the four parts provide an unparalleled resource for all international relations, political science and public policy libraries.