introduction for foreign policy essay

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foreign policy

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• Academia - Foreign Policy: 16 Elements of Foreign Policy
• Social Sci LibreTexts - Foreign Policy
• UShistory.org - Foreign Policy: What Now?

foreign policy , general objectives that guide the activities and relationships of one state in its interactions with other states. The development of foreign policy is influenced by domestic considerations, the policies or behaviour of other states, or plans to advance specific geopolitical designs. Leopold von Ranke emphasized the primacy of geography and external threats in shaping foreign policy, but later writers emphasized domestic factors. Diplomacy is the tool of foreign policy, and war, alliances, and international trade may all be manifestations of it.

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94 Defining Foreign Policy

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain what foreign policy is and how it differs from domestic policy
• Identify the objectives of U.S. foreign policy
• Describe the different types of foreign policy
• Identify the U.S. government’s main challenges in the foreign policy realm

When we consider policy as our chapter focus, we are looking broadly at the actions the U.S. government carries out for particular purposes. In the case of foreign policy, that purpose is to manage its relationships with other nations of the world. Another distinction is that policy results from a course of action or a pattern of actions over time, rather than from a single action or decision. For example, U.S. foreign policy with Russia has been forged by several presidents, as well as by cabinet secretaries, House and Senate members, and foreign policy agency bureaucrats. Policy is also purposive, or intended to do something; that is, policymaking is not random. When the United States enters into an international agreement with other countries on aims such as free trade or nuclear disarmament, it does so for specific reasons. With that general definition of policy established, we shall now dig deeper into the specific domain of U.S. foreign policy.

FOREIGN POLICY BASICS

What is foreign policy ? We can think of it on several levels, as “the goals that a state’s officials seek to attain abroad, the values that give rise to those objectives, and the means or instruments used to pursue them.” [1] This definition highlights some of the key topics in U.S. foreign policy, such as national goals abroad and the manner in which the United States tries to achieve them. Note too that we distinguish foreign policy, which is externally focused, from domestic policy, which sets strategies internal to the United States, though the two types of policies can become quite intertwined. So, for example, one might talk about Latino politics as a domestic issue when considering educational policies designed to increase the number of Hispanic Americans who attend and graduate from a U.S. college or university. [2] However, as demonstrated in the primary debates leading up to the 2016 election, Latino politics can quickly become a foreign policy matter when considering topics such as immigration from and foreign trade with countries in Central America and South America. [3]

What are the objectives of U.S. foreign policy? While the goals of a nation’s foreign policy are always open to debate and revision, there are nonetheless four main goals to which we can attribute much of what the U.S. government does in the foreign policy realm: (1) the protection of the U.S. and its citizens, (2) the maintenance of access to key resources and markets, (3) the preservation of a balance of power in the world, and (4) the protection of human rights and democracy.

The first goal is the protection of the United States and the lives of it citizens, both while they are in the United States and when they travel abroad. Related to this security goal is the aim of protecting the country’s allies, or countries with which the United States is friendly and mutually supportive. In the international sphere, threats and dangers can take several forms, including military threats from other nations or terrorist groups and economic threats from boycotts and high tariffs on trade.

In an economic boycott, the United States ceases trade with another country unless or until it changes a policy to which the United States objects. Ceasing trade means U.S. goods cannot be sold in that country and its goods cannot be sold in the United States. For example, in recent years the United States and other countries implemented an economic boycott of Iran as it escalated the development of its nuclear energy program. The recent Iran nuclear deal is a pact in which Iran agrees to halt nuclear development while the United States and six other countries lift economic sanctions to again allow trade with Iran. Barriers to trade also include tariffs, or fees charged for moving goods from one country to another. Protectionist trade policies raise tariffs so that it becomes difficult for imported goods, now more expensive, to compete on price with domestic goods. Free trade agreements seek to reduce these trade barriers.

The second main goal of U.S. foreign policy is to ensure the nation maintains access to key resources and markets across the world. Resources include natural resources, such as oil, and economic resources, including the infusion of foreign capital investment for U.S. domestic infrastructure projects like buildings, bridges, and weapons systems. Of course, access to the international marketplace also means access to goods that American consumers might want, such as Swiss chocolate and Australian wine. U.S. foreign policy also seeks to advance the interests of U.S. business, to both sell domestic products in the international marketplace and support general economic development around the globe (especially in developing countries).

A third main goal is the preservation of a balance of power in the world. A balance of power means no one nation or region is much more powerful militarily than are the countries of the rest of the world. The achievement of a perfect balance of power is probably not possible, but general stability, or predictability in the operation of governments, strong institutions, and the absence of violence within and between nations may be. For much of U.S. history, leaders viewed world stability through the lens of Europe. If the European continent was stable, so too was the world. During the Cold War era that followed World War II, stability was achieved by the existence of dual superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and by the real fear of the nuclear annihilation of which both were capable. Until approximately 1989–1990, advanced industrial democracies aligned themselves behind one of these two superpowers.

Today, in the post–Cold War era, many parts of Europe are politically more free than they were during the years of the Soviet bloc, and there is less fear of nuclear war than when the United States and the Soviet Union had missiles pointed at each other for four straight decades. However, despite the mostly stabilizing presence of the European Union (EU), which now has twenty-eight member countries, several wars have been fought in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Moreover, the EU itself faces some challenges, including a vote in the United Kingdom to leave the EU, the ongoing controversy about how to resolve the national debt of Greece, and the crisis in Europe created by thousands of refugees from the Middle East.

Carefully planned acts of terrorism in the United States, Asia, and Europe have introduced a new type of enemy into the balance of power equation—nonstate or nongovernmental organizations, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS (or ISIL), consisting of various terrorist cells located in many different countries and across all continents.

The fourth main goal of U.S. foreign policy is the protection of human rights and democracy. The payoff of stability that comes from other U.S. foreign policy goals is peace and tranquility. While certainly looking out for its own strategic interests in considering foreign policy strategy, the United States nonetheless attempts to support international peace through many aspects of its foreign policy, such as foreign aid, and through its support of and participation in international organizations such as the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Organization of American States.

The United Nations (UN) is perhaps the foremost international organization in the world today. The main institutional bodies of the UN are the General Assembly and the Security Council. The General Assembly includes all member nations and admits new members and approves the UN budget by a two-thirds majority. The Security Council includes fifteen countries, five of which are permanent members (including the United States) and ten that are non-permanent and rotate on a five two-year-term basis. The entire membership is bound by decisions of the Security Council, which makes all decisions related to international peace and security. Two other important units of the UN are the International Court of Justice in The Hague (Netherlands) and the UN Secretariat, which includes the Secretary-General of the UN and the UN staff directors and employees.

The Creation of the United Nations

One of the unique and challenging aspects of global affairs is the fact that no world-level authority exists to mandate when and how the world’s nations interact. After the failed attempt by President Woodrow Wilson and others to formalize a “League of Nations” in the wake of World War I in the 1920s, and on the heels of a worldwide depression that began in 1929, came World War II, history’s deadliest military conflict. Now, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, it is common to think of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 as the big game-changer. Yet while 9/11 was hugely significant in the United States and abroad, World War II was even more so. The December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) was a comparable surprise-style attack that plunged the United States into war.

The scope of the conflict, fought in Europe and the Pacific Ocean, and Hitler’s nearly successful attempt to take over Europe entirely, struck fear in minds and hearts. The war brought about a sea change in international relations and governance, from the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, to NATO that created a cross-national military shield for Western Europe, to the creation of the UN in 1945, when the representatives of fifty countries met and signed the Charter of the United Nations in San Francisco, California.

Today, the United Nations, headquartered in New York City, includes 193 of the 195 nations of the world. It is a voluntary association to which member nations pay dues based on the size of their economy. The UN’s main purposes are to maintain peace and security, promote human rights and social progress, and develop friendly relationships among nations.

Follow-up activity: In addition to facilitating collective decision-making on world matters, the UN carries out many different programs. Go to the UN website to find information about three different UN programs that are carried out around the world.

An ongoing question for the United States in waging the war against terrorism is to what degree it should work in concert with the UN to carry out anti-terrorism initiatives around the world in a multilateral manner, rather than pursuing a “go it alone” strategy of unilateralism. The fact that the U.S. government has such a choice suggests the voluntary nature of the United States (or another country) accepting world-level governance in foreign policy. If the United States truly felt bound by UN opinion regarding the manner in which it carries out its war on terrorism, it would approach the UN Security Council for approval.

Another cross-national organization to which the United States is tied, and that exists to forcefully represent Western allies and in turn forge the peace, is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) . NATO was formed after World War II as the Cold War between East and West started to emerge. While more militaristic in approach than the United Nations, NATO has the goal of protecting the interests of Europe and the West and the assurance of support and defense from partner nations. However, while it is a strong military coalition, it has not sought to expand and take over other countries. Rather, the peace and stability of Europe are its main goals. NATO initially included only Western European nations and the United States. However, since the end of the Cold War, additional countries from the East, such as Turkey, have entered into the NATO alliance.

Besides participating in the UN and NATO, the United States also distributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year in foreign aid to improve the quality of life of citizens in developing countries. The United States may also forgive the foreign debts of these countries. By definition, developing countries are not modernized in terms of infrastructure and social services and thus suffer from instability. Helping them modernize and develop stable governments is intended as a benefit to them and a prop to the stability of the world. An alternative view of U.S. assistance is that there are more nefarious goals at work, that perhaps it is intended to buy influence in developing countries, secure a position in the region, obtain access to resources, or foster dependence on the United States.

The United States pursues its four main foreign policy goals through several different foreign policy types, or distinct substantive areas of foreign policy in which the United States is engaged. These types are trade, diplomacy, sanctions, military/defense, intelligence, foreign aid, and global environmental policy.

Trade policy is the way the United States interacts with other countries to ease the flow of commerce and goods and services between countries. A country is said to be engaging in protectionism when it does not permit other countries to sell goods and services within its borders, or when it charges them very high tariffs (or import taxes) to do so. At the other end of the spectrum is a free trade approach, in which a country allows the unfettered flow of goods and services between itself and other countries. At times the United States has been free trade–oriented, while at other times it has been protectionist. Perhaps its most free trade–oriented move was the 1991 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This pact removed trade barriers and other transaction costs levied on goods moving between the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Critics see a free trade approach as problematic and instead advocate for protectionist policies that shield U.S. companies and their products against cheaper foreign products that might be imported here. One of the more prominent recent examples of protectionist policies occurred in the steel industry, as U.S. companies in the international steel marketplace struggled with competition from Chinese factories in particular.

The balance of trade is the relationship between a country’s inflow and outflow of goods. The United States sells many goods and services around the world, but overall it maintains a trade deficit, in which more goods and services are coming in from other countries than are going out to be sold overseas. The current U.S. trade deficit is $37.4 billion, which means the value of what the United States imports from other countries is much larger than the value of what it exports to other countries. [4] This trade deficit has led some to advocate for protectionist trade policies.

For many, foreign policy is synonymous with diplomacy. Diplomacy is the establishment and maintenance of a formal relationship between countries that governs their interactions on matters as diverse as tourism, the taxation of goods they trade, and the landing of planes on each other’s runways. While diplomatic relations are not always rosy, when they are operating it does suggest that things are going well between the countries. Diplomatic relations are formalized through the sharing of ambassadors. Ambassadors are country representatives who live and maintain an office (known as an embassy) in the other country. Just as exchanging ambassadors formalizes the bilateral relationship between countries, calling them home signifies the end of the relationship. Diplomacy tends to be the U.S. government’s first step when it tries to resolve a conflict with another country.

To illustrate how international relations play out when countries come into conflict, consider what has become known as the Hainan Island incident. In 2001, a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese jet fighter near Chinese airspace, where U.S. planes were not authorized to be. The Chinese jet fighter crashed and the pilot died. The U.S. plane made an emergency landing on the island of Hainan. China retrieved the aircraft and captured the U.S. pilots. U.S. ambassadors then attempted to negotiate for their return. These negotiations were slow and ended up involving officials of the president’s cabinet, but they ultimately worked. Had they not succeeded, an escalating set of options likely would have included diplomatic sanctions (removal of ambassadors), economic sanctions (such as an embargo on trade and the flow of money between the countries), minor military options (such as establishment of a no-fly zone just outside Chinese airspace), or more significant military options (such as a focused campaign to enter China and get the pilots back). Nonmilitary tools to influence another country, like economic sanctions, are referred to as soft power , while the use of military power is termed hard power . [5]

At the more serious end of the foreign policy decision-making spectrum, and usually as a last resort when diplomacy fails, the U.S. military and defense establishment exists to provide the United States the ability to wage war against other state and nonstate actors. Such war can be offensive, as were the Iraq War in 2003 and the 1989 removal of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega. Or it can be defensive, as a means to respond to aggression from others, such as the Persian Gulf War in 1991, also known as Operation Desert Storm. The potential for military engagement, and indeed the scattering about the globe of hundreds of U.S. military installations, can also be a potential source of foreign policy strength for the United States. On the other hand, in the world of diplomacy, such an approach can be seen as imperialistic by other world nations.

Intelligence policy is related to defense and includes the overt and covert gathering of information from foreign sources that might be of strategic interest to the United States. The intelligence world, perhaps more than any other area of foreign policy, captures the imagination of the general public. Many books, television shows, and movies entertain us (with varying degrees of accuracy) through stories about U.S. intelligence operations and people.

Foreign aid and global environmental policy are the final two foreign policy types. With both, as with the other types, the United States operates as a strategic actor with its own interests in mind, but here it also acts as an international steward trying to serve the common good. With foreign aid, the United States provides material and economic aid to other countries, especially developing countries, in order to improve their stability and their citizens’ quality of life. This type of aid is sometimes called humanitarian aid; in 2013 the U.S. contribution totaled $32 billion. Military aid is classified under military/defense or national security policy (and totaled $8 billion in 2013). At $40 billion the total U.S. foreign aid budget for 2013 was sizeable, though it represented less than 1 percent of the entire federal budget. [6]

Global environmental policy addresses world-level environmental matters such as climate change and global warming, the thinning of the ozone layer, rainforest depletion in areas along the Equator, and ocean pollution and species extinction. The United States’ commitment to such issues has varied considerably over the years. For example, the United States was the largest country not to sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions. However, few would argue that the U.S. government has not been a leader on global environmental matters.

UNIQUE CHALLENGES IN FOREIGN POLICY

U.S. foreign policy is a massive and complex enterprise. What are its unique challenges for the country?

First, there exists no true world-level authority dictating how the nations of the world should relate to one another. If one nation negotiates in bad faith or lies to another, there is no central world-level government authority to sanction that country. This makes diplomacy and international coordination an ongoing bargain as issues evolve and governmental leaders and nations change. Foreign relations are certainly made smoother by the existence of cross-national voluntary associations like the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the African Union. However, these associations do not have strict enforcement authority over specific nations, unless a group of member nations takes action in some manner (which is ultimately voluntary).

The European Union is the single supranational entity with some real and significant authority over its member nations. Adoption of its common currency, the euro, brings with it concessions from countries on a variety of matters, and the EU’s economic and environmental regulations are the strictest in the world. Yet even the EU has enforcement issues, as evidenced by the battle within its ranks to force member Greece to reduce its national debt or the recurring problem of Spain overfishing in the North Atlantic Ocean. The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (commonly referred to as Brexit, short for British exit) also points to the struggles that supra-national institutions like the EU can face.

International relations take place in a relatively open venue in which it is seldom clear how to achieve collective action among countries generally or between the United States and specific other nations in particular. When does it make sense to sign a multinational pact and when doesn’t it? Is a particular bilateral economic agreement truly as beneficial to the United States as to the other party, or are we giving away too much in the deal? These are open and complicated questions, which the various schools of thought discussed later in the chapter will help us answer.

A second challenge for the United States is the widely differing views among countries about the role of government in people’s lives. The government of hardline communist North Korea regulates everything in its people’s lives every day. At the other end of the spectrum are countries with little government activity at all, such as parts of the island of New Guinea. In between is a vast array of diverse approaches to governance. Countries like Sweden provide cradle-to-grave human services programs like health care and education that in some parts of India are minimal at best. In Egypt, the nonprofit sector provides many services rather than the government. The United States relishes its tradition of freedom and the principle of limited government, but practice and reality can be somewhat different. In the end, it falls somewhere in the middle of this continuum because of its focus on law and order, educational and training services, and old-age pensions and health care in the form of Social Security and Medicare.

The challenge of pinpointing the appropriate role of government may sound more like a domestic than a foreign policy matter, and to some degree it is an internal choice about the way government interacts with the people. Yet the internal (or domestic) relationship between a government and its people can often become intertwined with foreign policy. For example, the narrow stance on personal liberty that Iran has taken in recent decades led other countries to impose economic sanctions that crippled the country internally. Some of these sanctions have eased in light of the new nuclear deal with Iran. So the domestic and foreign policy realms are intertwined in terms of what we view as national priorities—whether they consist of nation building abroad or infrastructure building here at home, for example. This latter choice is often described as the “guns versus butter” debate.

A third, and related, unique challenge for the United States in the foreign policy realm is other countries’ varying ideas about the appropriate form of government. These forms range from democracies on one side to various authoritarian (or nondemocratic) forms of government on the other. Relations between the United States and democratic states tend to operate more smoothly, proceeding from the shared core assumption that government’s authority comes from the people. Monarchies and other nondemocratic forms of government do not share this assumption, which can complicate foreign policy discussions immensely. People in the United States often assume that people who live in a nondemocratic country would prefer to live in a democratic one. However, in some regions of the world, such as the Middle East, this does not seem to be the case—people often prefer having stability within a nondemocratic system over changing to a less predictable democratic form of government. Or they may believe in a theocratic form of government. And the United States does have formal relations with some more totalitarian and monarchical governments, such as Saudi Arabia, when it is in U.S. interests to do so.

A fourth challenge is that many new foreign policy issues transcend borders. That is, there are no longer simply friendly states and enemy states. Problems around the world that might affect the United States, such as terrorism, the international slave trade, and climate change, originate with groups and issues that are not country-specific. They are transnational. So, for example, while we can readily name the enemies of the Allied forces in World War II (Germany, Italy, and Japan), the U.S. war against terrorism has been aimed at terrorist groups that do not fit neatly within the borders of any one country with which the United States could quickly interact to solve the problem. Intelligence-gathering and focused military intervention are needed more than traditional diplomatic relations, and relations can become complicated when the United States wants to pursue terrorists within other countries’ borders. An ongoing example is the use of U.S. drone strikes on terrorist targets within the nation of Pakistan, in addition to the 2011 campaign that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda.

The fifth and final unique challenge is the varying conditions of the countries in the world and their effect on what is possible in terms of foreign policy and diplomatic relations. Relations between the United States and a stable industrial democracy are going to be easier than between the United States and an unstable developing country being run by a military junta (a group that has taken control of the government by force). Moreover, an unstable country will be more focused on establishing internal stability than on broader world concerns like environmental policy. In fact, developing countries are temporarily exempt from the requirements of certain treaties while they seek to develop stable industrial and governmental frameworks.

link to learning

The Council on Foreign Relations is one of the nation’s oldest organizations that exist to promote thoughtful discussion on U.S. foreign policy.

As the president, Congress, and others carry out U.S. foreign policy in the areas of trade, diplomacy, defense, intelligence, foreign aid, and global environmental policy, they pursue a variety of objectives and face a multitude of challenges. The four main objectives of U.S. foreign policy are the protection of the United States and its citizens and allies, the assurance of continuing access to international resources and markets, the preservation of a balance of power in the world, and the protection of human rights and democracy.

The challenges of the massive and complex enterprise of U.S. foreign policy are many. First, there exists no true world-level authority dictating how the nations of the world should relate to one another. A second challenge is the widely differing views among countries about the role of government in people’s lives. A third is other countries’ varying ideas about the appropriate form of government. A fourth challenge is that many new foreign policy issues transcend borders. Finally, the varying conditions of the countries in the world affect what is possible in foreign policy and diplomatic relations.

think it over

• What are two key differences between domestic policymaking and foreign policymaking?
• Eugene R. Wittkopf, Christopher M. Jones, and Charles W. Kegley, Jr. 2007. American Foreign Policy: Pattern and Process, 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. ↵
• Michelle Camacho Liu. 2011. Investing in Higher Education for Latinos: Trends in Latino College Access and Success. Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures. http://www.ncsl.org/documents/educ/trendsinlatinosuccess.pdf (May 12, 2016). ↵
• Charlene Barshefsky and James T. Hill. 2008. U.S.–Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality. Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations. i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/LatinAmerica_TF.pdf (May 12, 2016). ↵
• U.S. Census Bureau, "Foreign Trade: U.S. International Trade Data" https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/data/index.html (May 12, 2016). ↵
• Joseph S. Nye, Jr. 2005. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. Washington, DC: Public Affairs. ↵
• U.S. Agency for International Development, "U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants (Greenbook)," https://explorer.usaid.gov/reports-greenbook.html (June 18, 2016); C. Eugene Emery Jr., and Amy Sherman. 2016. "Marco Rubio says foreign aid is less than 1 percent of federal budget," Politifact, 11 March 2016. www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/11/marco-rubio/marco-rubio-says-foreign-aid-less-1-percent-federa/ . ↵

American Government 2e Copyright © 2019 by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Approaches to Foreign Policy: Introduction

Learning objectives.

• Students will be able to explain isolationism and engagement, idealism and realism, and unilateralism and multilateralism.
• Students will be able to identify these approaches to foreign policy in real-life examples and apply them in foreign-policy scenarios.
• (5 Minutes) Watch: How Do Governments Approach Foreign Policy? (3:35 video) and fill out Part 1 of the guided reading handout.
• Group 1:  Isolationism Versus Engagement
• Group 2:  Idealism Versus Realism
• Group 3: Unilateralism Versus Multilateralism
• (15 Minutes) Jigsaw: Rearrange the students into groups of six students, two from each of the groups in the previous steps. Let students take turns explaining the foreign policy approach they read about in step 2.
• (15 Minutes) What Would You Do Activity: Project the What Would You Do Activities and complete them as a class, asking students to make arguments in keeping with the foreign policy approaches they have learned about.
• Watch  How Did the United States Approach the Tiananmen Square Crackdown? (7:15 video) and complete Part 5 of the guided reading handout.
• Ask students to select a foreign policy topic currently in the news and write a paragraph identifying the approaches that the United States is using to address that topic
• Assign (or have students choose) a national political party platform . (The American Presidency Project has party platforms available going back to 1840.) Ask students to annotate the party platform, identifying the foreign policy approach or approaches the platform espouses.

an official partnership between two or more parties based on cooperation in pursuit of a common goal, generally involving security or defense.

an unmanned, remotely piloted vehicle generally used for reconnaissance and combat. Also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

refers to the amount of greenhouse gases an entity, such as a country or company, produces.

the tasks and activities of governing, or running, a country.

undertaken among three or more entities, usually countries. The term frequently describes organizations such as the United Nations (UN).

commonly accepted standard of behavior. Because international law is not always binding, international relations is highly influenced by norms.

disease outbreak that has reached at least several countries, affecting a large group of people.

a nearly universal international agreement reached in 2015 that requires signatories to offer concrete emissions reductions pledges, establishes rules to monitor their performance against those pledges, and sets up a process to review and increase the ambition of the pledges over time. The Paris Agreement’s goal is to limit global warming by 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures.

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Article contents

Methods of foreign policy analysis.

• Philip B.K. Potter Philip B.K. Potter Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics, University of Virginia
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.34
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 30 November 2017

Foreign policy analysis (FPA) is the study of how states, or the individuals that lead them, make foreign policy, execute foreign policy, and react to the foreign policies of other states. This topical breadth results in a subfield that encompasses a variety of questions and levels of analysis, and a correspondingly diverse set of methodological approaches. There are four methods which have become central in foreign policy analysis: archival research, content analysis, interviews, and focus groups. The first major phase of FPA research is termed “comparative foreign policy.” Proponents of comparative foreign policy sought to achieve comprehensive theories of foreign policy behavior through quantitative analysis of “events” data. An important strand of this behavioral work addressed the relationship between trade dependence and foreign policy compliance. On the other hand, second-generation FPA methodology largely abandoned universalized theory-building in favor of historical methods and qualitative analysis. Second-generation FPA researchers place particular emphasis on developing case study methodologies driven by social science principles. Meanwhile, the third-generation of FPA scholarship combines innovative quantitative and qualitative methods. Several methods of foreign policy analysis used by third-generation FPA researchers include computer assisted coding, experiments, simulation, surveys, network analysis, and prediction markets. Ultimately, additional attention should be given to determining the degree to which current methods of foreign policy analysis allow predictive or prescriptive conclusions. FPA scholars should also focus more in reengaging foreign policy analysis with the core of international relations research.

• foreign policy analysis
• methodological approaches
• comparative foreign policy
• events data analysis
• case study methodologies
• network analysis
• prediction markets
• foreign policy behavior

Introduction

The periodic reassessment of research methods is important to the vitality of any academic discipline, but it has particular salience for a relatively young field such as foreign policy analysis (FPA). Hudson and Vore ( 1995 :221) acknowledge as much in their review of the FPA literature, noting that, “in the study of foreign policy decision-making, the issues are not theoretical but methodological.” I define foreign policy analysis as the study of how states, or the individuals that lead them, make foreign policy, execute foreign policy, and react to the foreign policies of other states. This topical breadth results in a subfield that encompasses a variety of questions and levels of analysis, and a correspondingly diverse set of methodological approaches. This essay surveys FPA’s methodological development from its inception to the present and, in the process, outlines the body of existing methodological practice and identifies opportunities for future progress. The objective is to provide both an indication of the role that various quantitative and qualitative methods play in the FPA literature and an entryway for contemporary researchers seeking to apply these approaches to future work. Where appropriate, the reader is directed to more specific guides to the intricacies and execution of each method.

For the sake of organizational clarity, this review follows a stylized format roughly based on Neack, Hey, and Haney’s ( 1995 ) concept of “generational change” in foreign policy analysis. The section that immediately follows is partially archeological, that is, it surveys methods of events data analysis that were important to the early development of FPA, but in some cases have fallen out of widespread usage. The second section, which surveys qualitative methods, most closely reflects the current state of the art in the discipline. The third and final section addresses both cutting-edge and underutilized approaches.

The Methodological Origins of Foreign Policy Analysis

The unique historical context and intellectual environment of the early 1950s – specifically, the Cold War and the behavioral revolution – crucially shaped the early methodological development of foreign policy analysis. These origins have proven central to the methodological arc of the sub-discipline.

FPA was born of the opportunities presented by the largely atheoretical nature of historically oriented diplomatic analysis and the exclusion of political leadership and decision-making from the prevailing theories espoused by mainline international relations. Prior to the advent of FPA as a distinct subfield, the study of foreign policy relied on traditional methods and had long been the domain of political historians and diplomatic strategists in the tradition of thinkers such as Thucydides and Machiavelli. Early FPA researchers saw this longstanding tradition as part of their heritage, but, inspired by the methodological imperatives of the behavioral revolution, believed that systematizing the study of foreign policy would lead to progress in the form of generalizable and cumulative findings. Thus, from its inception, FPA was an explicitly theoretical exercise aimed at uncovering the systematic elements of foreign policy interactions, and the methods deployed reflected this.

Simultaneously, in response to the near monopoly of system-level theory in international relations, the pioneers of FPA argued that individual leaders or groups of decision makers are often the primary drivers of outcomes in international interactions (Snyder et al. 1954 ). Thus, at the very core of FPA’s intellectual identity lies a revisionist methodology (vis-à-vis diplomatic history) applied to a revisionist conception of the basic unit of analysis (vis-à-vis mainline international relations).

The strategic environment, specifically the position of the US in the early Cold War, also figured prominently in the early development of FPA methods. In the face of this protracted geopolitical conflict, American political leaders became unusually involved in the FPA academic endeavor. The promise of concrete conclusions and general enthusiasm for “scientific” approaches to political problems that stemmed from the success of the Manhattan Project led the US government to invest large sums in early FPA efforts. With funding came the expansion of major research centers such as the Rand Corporation and the Brookings Institution that were instrumental to the maturation of FPA as a subfield and methodological approach in international relations. However, the money and attention from the policy community came with strings attached – most notably, an expectation for immediately relevant research. Over time this requirement became increasingly difficult to reconcile with the relatively high uncertainty surrounding quantitative estimates of foreign policy phenomenon.

The first major phase of FPA research that emerged from this crucible is termed “comparative foreign policy.” Proponents of comparative foreign policy argued that controlled comparison of the domestic sources of external conduct across different countries could produce comprehensive theories of foreign policy behavior. Methodologically speaking, these scholars sought to achieve these ends primarily through quantitative analysis of “events” data, which I describe in detail in the section that follows. However, this transition to quantitative analysis was, at least in part, a refinement of even earlier attempts to develop a more robust understanding of the foreign-policy decision making process. Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin’s ( 1954 ) classic essay was arguably the first to encourage international relations scholars to reopen the “black box” of the state in order to study the actions of individual leaders. A significant body of early qualitative case study research flowed from this call to arms. To take just two examples, Paige ( 1968 ) took a decision making approach to understanding the origins of the Korean War, while Allison ( 1971 ) followed along similar lines with his well-known study of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The decision making school provided a useful groundwork, particularly by identifying the leader as a crucial unit of analysis, a tradition that has persisted in FPA ever since. However, the developments of the behavioral revolution eventually overtook the primarily qualitative methods of these early FPA scholars. An increasing premium was placed on the generalizability garnered by operationalizing foreign policy interactions numerically and analyzing them quantitatively. This transition gave rise to the comparative foreign policy literature, which maintained an emphasis on decision making and scientific analysis, but moved away from case study analysis in favor of events data.

Comparative Foreign Policy and Events Data Analysis

The demand for foreign policy research that was scientific, generalizable, and policy relevant caught nascent foreign policy analysts unprepared. Where other areas of political science could respond to the challenge presented by the behavioral revolution with numerical data already at their disposal, the traditional fodder for diplomatic analysis – histories, documents, interviews, biographies, and memoirs – were less easily reduced into the sort of data necessary for rigorous, quantitative hypothesis testing.

This reality set foreign policy analysis somewhat behind other areas of political science because it had to overcome two distinct obstacles. First, new data had to be collected that was better suited to statistical analyses. Second, methods had to be developed with which to analyze these data within a behavioral framework. Among others, Rosenau ( 1966 ; 1968 ), McClelland ( 1970 ), and Brecher et al. ( 1969 ) took up these early challenges.

These early foreign policy analysts sought to develop a quantifiable unit of foreign policy interaction. McClelland conceived of this core unit of analysis as the foreign policy “event,” which is simply a formalized observation of a conflictual or cooperative interaction between states. McClelland’s intention was to fill the gap between the traditional narrative approach to foreign policy analysis and empirical techniques that relied upon discrete quantifiable data that could be explored in statistical analyses (Schrodt 1994 ). In effect, the foreign policy event takes a qualitative observation of foreign policy interaction and reduces it to a numerical or categorical form suited for statistical analysis.

The process of generating events data was and is time-consuming and costly. It is most commonly accomplished through the content analysis of thousands of newspaper reports on the interactions among nations in light of a previously defined set of criteria or codebook. Each observation uncovered in this way is then assigned some numerical score or a categorical code, which can then be analyzed quantitatively (Schrodt 1994 ). This potentially lengthy process requires that the researcher accomplish some or all of the following: identify sources, identify a period of analysis, create or borrow a coding scheme, train coders, generate the data, and check for reliability.

Foreign policy scholars have generated a significant number of important events datasets that remain central to quantitative methods of foreign policy analysis. The best of them are impressive collections offering decades-long periods of analysis, coverage of many countries (if not the entire international system) and standards of intercoder reliability well in excess of 80 percent (Burgess and Lawton 1972 ). The paragraphs that follow describe a subset of the available data. Particular attention is given to projects that were seminal to the methodological development of the field and those that generated datasets still widely used by contemporary scholars.

The World Event/Interaction Survey (WEIS)

The World Event/Interaction Survey Project began at the University of Southern California under the direction of Charles McClelland as a research project on the characteristics and processes of the international system (McClelland and Hoggard 1969 ). The initial WEIS dataset records the flow of action and response between countries (as well as non-governmental actors such as NATO and the United Nations) captured from a daily content analysis of the New York Times from January 1966 through December 1978 . This reliance on the New York Times produces a well-known bias toward western perspectives, which was acknowledged from the outset by McClelland and his co-authors. However, they argued that by using a single source they were better able to remove the “noise” surrounding observations. Furthermore, the inclusion of non-state actors raises important methodological issues with regard to the basic unit of analysis. This question has taken on increased salience with the rise in concern about terrorist activities by non-state international entities.

The basic unit of analysis in the dataset is the interaction, which is simply a verbal or physical exchange between nations ranging from agreements to threats to military force. Each of these observations is coded to identify the actors, target, date, action category, and arena. The WEIS databank also provides brief qualitative textual descriptions of each event. These narratives provide context, which facilitates the process of identifying and understanding outliers and applying statistical findings back to political reality – both important for successful events analysis. The initial WEIS effort has been continuously updated and is presently current through 1993 (Tomlinson 1993 ). Other projects, such as the Kansas Event Data System, have applied WEIS coding rules to new research.

WEIS data has been widely used in the FPA literature, both by McClelland and his students and by outsiders who took advantage of these public domain data to test their own questions. The applications are diverse, underlining the versatility of well-designed events datasets. Several early examples are noted by Rummel ( 1979 ): Tanter ( 1974 ) used these data to understand the dynamics of the two major Berlin crises of the Cold War ( 1948–1949 and 1961 ); Kegley et al. ( 1974 ) explored patterns of international conflict and cooperation; while many others began the ongoing process of understanding the relationships among key contextual variables such as relative development, size, and political system, on international conflict, cooperation, and systemic stability (Rosenau 1974 ). Applications continue to this day. For example, Reuveny and Kang ( 1996b ) utilized WEIS data in their exploration of causality in the relationship between international trade and conflict.

The Conflict and Peace Data Bank (COPDAB)

The COPDAB project was designed by Azar and colleagues (Azar 1980 ; 1982 ; Azar et al. 1972 ) as a longitudinal dataset of international and domestic events developed through content analysis of daily newspapers. In an advance over WEIS methods, COPDAB data is drawn from a wide variety of international and regional media outlets, thereby avoiding some potential bias issues.

COPDAB coders scored each event on a 16-point ordinal scale ranging from cooperative interactions to full-scale violence. The resulting dataset covers the interactions of 135 countries from 1948 to 1978 and can be analyzed at levels of aggregation ranging from the day to the year. Each record includes nine variables: date of event, actor initiating the event, target of the event, issue area(s), contextual information about the incident, and the source of the information about the event. The COPDAB dataset is particularly useful for those interested in the interactions between interstate and civil conflict and cooperation, as complementary datasets exist for both international and domestic events.

While the WEIS and COPDAB datasets are clearly conceptually related, scholars have disagreed about their compatibility (Howell 1983 ; Vincent 1983 ; Goldstein and Freeman 1990 ). The underlying definitions of conflict and cooperation are quite similar; however, coding differences introduce the potential for inconsistencies. Reuveny and Kang ( 1996a ) explore this issue in detail with a series of statistical tests and time-series analyses. They argue that COPDAB and WEIS are indeed compatible for the overlapping period between 1966 and 1978 . Building on this logic, they combine the WEIS and COPDAB series to create a larger events dataset covering the period from 1948 to 1993 that is potentially useful for scholars interested in working with a longer period of analysis.

International Crisis Behavior Project (ICB)

Although the final two projects outlined here (the International Crisis Behavior project and the Correlates of War [COW] project) are often excluded from discussions of foreign policy analysis, they are clearly a continuation of events research and are among the most frequently updated and widely used events datasets. The distinctive feature of the ICB and COW datasets is that they primarily focus on international conflict and therefore lack the range of conflictual and cooperative events that characterize the data projects discussed to this point. Researchers should note, however, that the ICB project does provide some indirect data on cooperation.

Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld launched the International Crisis Behavior project in 1975 with the goal of creating a comparative resource for those studying the concept of “international crisis.” There are two defining conditions for a crisis, which are built on work done by Azar (of the COPDAB project): “(1) a change in type and/or an increase in intensity of disruptive, that is, hostile verbal or physical, interactions between two or more states, with a heightened probability of military hostilities; that, in turn, (2) destabilizes their relationship and challenges the structure of an international system – global, dominant, or subsystem” (Brecher and Ben-Yehuda 1985 ).

The ICB project is congruent with many of the core concepts in FPA – for example, in the operationalization of key elements of decision maker perception. This is perhaps unsurprising, as many of the ICB’s primary researchers are steeped in the FPA tradition. To take one example, Michael Brecher’s ( 1974 ) book on Israeli foreign policy decisions, which pre-dates his work on the ICB project, is often cited as a seminal contribution to FPA that seeks to characterize a nation’s psychological and cultural environment as an access point to an understanding of its foreign policy.

As of January 2009 , the core systemic dataset that results from this definition codes 452 incidents from the end of World War I through 2006 (version 9.0). Each crisis is coded for a number of variables, ranging from characterizations of decision maker perception to operationalizations of structural and environmental factors as well as crisis characteristics and outcomes.

The ICB project is unusual in that it proceeds simultaneously at multiple complementary levels. There are independent actor and system level datasets that allow the researcher to explore distinctions between systemic and national level explanations for crisis emergence and behavior. In addition, the project provides qualitative data in the form of a brief narrative description of each crisis, 9 in-depth volumes comprising 15 in-depth case studies; and 14 other unpublished studies. These serve as an aid to the researcher interested in adding additional nuance to statistical findings generated from quantitative analysis.

Correlates of War Project (COW)

Like the ICB project, the COW project does not attempt to capture multiple tiers of conflict and cooperation, but rather focuses on conflict. Two definitions were developed by the COW project in the 1980s, namely, a “militarized interstate dispute” (MID), and a “militarized interstate crisis” (MIC). The former is defined as: “[A] set of interactions between or among states involving threats to use military force, displays of military force, or actual uses of military force […] these acts must be explicit, overt, non-accidental, and government sanctioned” (Gochman and Maoz 1984 ). This “evolves into a militarized interstate crisis when a member of the interstate system on each side of the dispute indicates by its actions its willingness to go to war to defend its interests or to obtain its objectives.” These are steps two and three along a four-step ladder of growing belligerence, beginning with an “interstate dispute” and culminating in an “interstate war” (Leng and Singer 1988 ).

The majority of scholars currently working with COW events data use the MID dataset. The current version of the dataset contains 2331 militarized disputes from 1816 to 2001 coded for duration, outcome, and level of fatality. In addition, there are several complementary datasets on various metrics of international interaction (ranging from alliance to power to geography) that are associated with the broader COW project and can be easily mapped onto the MID dataset. This body of quantitative data is perhaps the most widely used at the present time – particularly among scholars interested in conflict.

Trade Dependence and Foreign Policy Compliance

An important strand of the behavioral work of the 1970s and 1980s addressed the relationship between trade dependence and foreign policy compliance. While this was far from the only research question to draw on quantitative data, the methodological challenges that confronted it were representative of those faced by quantitative FPA in general and are therefore worthy of some attention. Several scholars working in this area (e.g., Richardson and Kegley 1980 ; Moon 1983 ; 1985 ) argued that relatively smaller and weaker states adopt the foreign policies of their dominant trading partners. Thus, economic dependence severely constrains the independent decision making of leaders in states that are economically reliant on larger patrons. However, consensus on this conclusion was elusive, in large part because of how difficult it is to measure the two key concepts – dependence and compliance. The inevitable result was that discussion of the relationship became bogged down in issues of definition and operationalization. This is symptomatic of a larger issue in the quantitative study of foreign policy. Because the operationalization of the amorphous concepts in foreign policy necessitates discretion from the researcher, it is easy to critique the underlying assumptions that gave rise to the data, not to mention the model. Furthermore, if more than one scholar takes on a question in FPA, they typically settle on different operationalizations of the same underlying phenomenon. A high profile example of this trend can be found in the proliferation of events datasets on conflict and cooperation that has already been discussed. The unfortunate result is that many studies are not comparable or cumulative to the degree we find in the hard sciences.

Events Data – Methodological Challenges

Events data analysis poses a number of methodological challenges that should be taken into account by those analyzing foreign policy. The first of these issues relates to the very core of the events data endeavor – that is, the idea that foreign policy incidents can be reduced to a single quantifiable value. Despite the best efforts of the designers of the data projects described here, it remains difficult to effectively accomplish a cardinal or even ordinal ranking of disparate foreign policy events. However, many of the statistical approaches widely used in political science require cardinal level data, or at least data spaced at even thresholds. As a result, those seeking to generate statistical models of events data need to be particularly careful to apply methods that rely upon defensible assumptions about the nature of the underlying data.

Researchers should also be aware of methodological issues that may arise from the relative sparseness of positive observations in events data. The degree to which this is a problem depends on the type of model and the level of aggregation that is used, but if one considers the daily probability of a foreign policy event it is apparent that null observations would dominate the dataset. King and Zeng ( 1999 ; 2001 ) demonstrate that bias and inappropriately inflated statistical significance may arise in models of zero-inflated data. This is particularly problematic in instances where these null data contain no real information. There are several potential solutions to this problem should it arise. Tomz, King, and Zeng ( 1999 ) suggest a rare events correction for logistic analysis, which they have made available as an addition to the widely used STATA software. A less sophisticated check for rare events bias is to simply drop a random subset of null observations in order to confirm that findings derived from the remaining sample are consistent with the original result.

The non-independence of foreign policy events presents an additional methodological challenge. Non-independence simply means that positive foreign policy interactions tend to contribute to future positive interactions, while negative events are associated with subsequent negative events. At first appearance this might seem obvious, but this reality undercuts an assumption of independence that underpins most statistical models used in quantitative foreign policy analysis. Beck, Katz, and Tucker ( 1998 ) did much of the work that brought this problem to the attention of the discipline and they suggest a solution that entails generating a natural cubic spline with knots at the first and second derivative.

FPA scholars working with events data should also guard against selection bias (sometimes referred to as selection effects) when designing research, as inattention to this methodological challenge can significantly skew findings from both quantitative and qualitative tests. Selection bias typically arises from pre- or post-sampling that preferentially includes or excludes a particular type of observation from the sample that is subsequently used in testing. This is particularly easy to do when working with data on foreign policy because it is relatively easy to identify events, but difficult to tease out non-events. The trouble is that without an accurate characterization of non-events it is impossible to say anything about the causes or incidence of the events. To take one prominent recent example of this methodological challenge, Robert Pape’s recent work on the causes of suicide terror ( 2005 ) has come under fire for “sampling on the dependent variable” (Ashworth et al. 2008 ). Because Pape limits his sample to incidents of suicide terror, he effectively leaves out the instances in which such attacks did not occur. As a result, his research design prevents him from effectively speaking of when suicide terror does and does not occur.

Beyond issues related to the application of statistical methods to events data, there is an additional conceptual concern regarding the unit of analysis that should command attention from foreign policy researchers. Because FPA concerns the foreign policy of states, but sees this policy as emerging from the actions of individuals, traditional units of analysis are blurred. The foreign policy event is the result of the interaction and interplay between leaders, organizations, institutions, and states; however, many of the microfoundational theories that underpin the FPA endeavor are cast at the level of the individual decision maker. As a result, events analysis brings with it the nascent challenge of explaining how individual actions aggregate to the foreign policy actions of states. To put the issue more succinctly, while FPA theories distinguish themselves from mainline international relations by opening the black box of the state, the empirical data collected by scholars interested in events analysis typically returned to the state as the central unit of analysis.

There are also very practical concerns to bear in mind – simple tasks related to data manipulation remain some of the primary challenges confronting researchers interested in working with events data. It can be a nontrivial task to gather and combine data on foreign policy events with the various explanatory and control variables that are required for regression analysis. Researchers confronted with these difficulties should be aware of the EUGene software developed by Scott Bennett and Allan Stam ( 2000 ). EUGene is a basic data management tool that simplifies quantitative analysis of foreign policy interactions. The software offers several advantages. First, it allows for relatively easy transition between commonly used units of analysis – country–year, dyad–year, and directed dyad–year. Second, the software is capable of easily combining many of the events datasets discussed here with basic demographic and geopolitical data including data uploaded by the user.

Finally, there is the issue of collecting new events data. The substantial early investments in projects like WEIS and COPDAB were made at the high point of governmental and institutional enthusiasm for events datasets – both datasets were products of the National Science Foundation’s well funded Data Development for International Research (DDIR) project. However, DDIR funding and government and private support for events data collection projects in general declined markedly by the mid-1990s. While this decline had many causes, it was in part brought on by the difficulties that comparative foreign policy had delivering on its early promise. It proved far more challenging than expected to build policy relevant quantitative models with predictive capacity. The relative decline in interest on the part of traditional funding sources raises the issue of how new events data might be generated. Computer coding of electronically stored sources, which will be discussed in greater detail later in this essay, has emerged as one way to address this dilemma.

Qualitative Methods of Foreign Policy Analysis

The behavioral revolution and Cold War politics proved fertile ground for the emergence of FPA. However, the first major challenge for the young field also stemmed from this dual heritage. The problem was that these divergent intellectual pedigrees gave rise to methodological requirements that were at times mutually exclusive – on the one hand, an imperative from behavioralism for generalizability, and, on the other, a low tolerance for error on the part of Cold Warriors seeking to immediately inform policy with scientific findings. The emerging recognition of this tension and the seemingly unavoidable high error terms in quantitative models of foreign policy brought an end to the exuberance among academics and the US government for quantitative, events-driven foreign policy research. Policy makers backed away from direct involvement in the FPA endeavor, while academics tempered their commitment to events data and quantitative methods. What emerged was a second generation of FPA methodology, one that largely abandoned universalized theory-building in favor of historical methods and qualitative analysis (Neack et al. 1995 ).

The primary weapon in the arsenal of second-generation FPA researchers is the case study. However, this transition should not be viewed as a complete departure from that which came before it. Many of these scholars place particular emphasis on developing case study methodologies driven by social science principles, with the explicit goal of building techniques that provide intellectual rigor comparable to that of quantitative approaches. The result has been a robust discussion of the role and execution of qualitative methods.

It is admittedly artificial to divide methods of foreign policy analysis by “generation,” as this implies clean transitions that are in reality far more blurred. While the concept of generational change is useful for understanding the broad developments in the field, the reader should be aware that there are many exceptions to the general rule. Alongside second generation case studies were a wide range of quantitative approaches that, while often abandoning the drive toward universalized theory that characterized previous work in comparative foreign policy, stressed both the outputs and the outcomes of foreign policy processes and actions. Similarly, careful qualitative analysis of foreign-policy decision making has always been an element of foreign policy analysis, and therefore cannot only be considered to have followed sequentially on the quantitative work done in comparative foreign policy (although it did take on renewed prominence).

Case Study Analysis

There is no shortage of examples of the excellent use of case study methodology in foreign policy analysis. Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision ( 1971 ) is often cited as a seminal piece of research in this area with an innovative methodological approach. While Allison’s volume is concerned with a single incident – the Cuban missile crisis – the book is not a single case study, but rather three. Allison explored the US decision making process in the context of three competing explanatory theories: a rational actor model, an organizational process model, and a government politics model. Each of these three explanatory models receives independent analysis in a separate section of the book. Allison ( 1971 :258) argues that these three models combine to provide a clear understanding of decision making in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis: “Model I fixes the broader context, the larger national patterns, and the shared images. Within this context, Model II illuminates the organizational routines that produce the information, options, and action. Model III focuses in greater detail on the individuals who constitute a government and the politics and procedures by which their competing perceptions and preferences are combined.”

Another important strand of qualitative foreign policy analysis draws on work from political psychology to theoretically inform case study analysis of the foreign policy decision making process. These efforts began with “operational code analysis,” which involves determining how decision makers’ core beliefs shape their foreign policy reactions (George 1969 ; Holsti 1970 ). Operational codes include decision makers’ beliefs about the likelihood of violence, their ability to shape or prevent it, as well as leadership strategies and styles.

Robert Axelrod applies a related technique, termed cognitive mapping, to understand the influence of leadership beliefs on foreign policy interactions. Cognitive mapping entails defining a decision maker’s stated goals and then determining the causal linkages between these goals as a way of predicting likely behavior. Several applications of this technique can be found in an edited volume titled Structure of Decision (Axelrod 1976 ). A more recent application of cognitive mapping can be found in Johnston’s ( 1995 ) work on Chinese–American relations.

This early work developed into a substantial body of foreign policy analysis based more broadly on the psychology of decision makers, a method that figures prominently in analyses conducted at the individual level. Larson ( 1985 ) is a leading example of this sort of scholarship. In her book, Origins of Containment , she traces the path of Cold War politics in the context of the cognitive psychology of American policy makers.

A great deal of work has been done in recent years to improve and formalize case study methodology. One such volume, King, Keohane, and Verba’s Designing Social Inquiry ( 1994 ), has been influential (and controversial) enough that it is often referred to simply by the initials of its authors – KKV. King, Keohane, and Verba draw on their diverse methodological backgrounds to argue that the core logic of causal inference and control should apply as much to qualitative work as it does to quantitative research. They suggest that, by applying the logic of statistics, it is possible to produce theoretically robust and generalizable results while increasing certainty in the validity of qualitative findings.

Bennett and George’s ( 2005 ) more recent work on case study analysis has also emerged as an important contribution to the development of robust qualitative methods. This book lays out methods for designing case studies that are maximally useful for the formulation of policy, which remains a fundamental goal of foreign policy analysis. Bennett and George suggest greater emphasis on within-case analysis, process tracing, and theory building. While these suggestions differ markedly from those of KKV, the underlying goal is quite similar – to create scientific case studies from which lessons can be systematically drawn. In this sense, both volumes speak convincingly to the aforementioned tension between nuance and generalizability that plagues methods of foreign policy analysis.

This issue of generalizability has developed into the core methodological challenge surrounding case study analysis both in foreign policy analysis and in political science more generally. While systematic knowledge of foreign policy interactions does not necessarily require the numerical comparability that comes with quantitative research, some degree of generalizability remains important to the independent identity of foreign policy analysis, as it is this forward-looking element that separates the sub-discipline from diplomatic history. However, comparisons across cases are difficult for two reasons. First, case studies require such a depth of knowledge and investment of time that it is unusual for a scholar to accomplish more than a handful of them on any given question, though there are important exceptions (e.g., Brecher 2008 ). Second, the comparatively loose structure of case studies can hinder comparison, as many analyses fail to address the same subjects on the same terms. One way that these challenges can be overcome is through collaboration within a consistent framework.

An example of such collaboration can be found in a relatively recent volume edited by Beasley et al. ( 2002 ). The volume brings together qualitative work from 15 independent researchers systematically exploring the foreign policies of 13 states. Through the coordinating efforts of the editor, the volume maintains a degree of comparability across the cases while drawing on the deep knowledge of the individual contributors. As a result, the reader is able to engage in comparative analysis within a coherent theoretical framework, allowing for the quick identification of patterns and outliers. There are several examples of similarly structured volumes, and they indicate an important role for collaboration as an approach to boosting the sample sizes of qualitative analyses and thereby the generalizability of findings. The result is “comparative foreign policy,” but of a qualitative variety.

Another interesting solution to the issue of case comparability is found in the qualitative research that has emerged from the qualitative side of the International Crisis Behavior Project, which was already mentioned in the context of events data analysis. These case studies, though they were written over many years and appear in a variety of different outlets, follow a similar format and concern themselves with a consistent set of issues. As a result, they are an explicitly cumulative effort. With each new case study, the body of comparable knowledge increases and this expansion is accompanied by improvement in the robustness of findings.

Gathering Qualitative Data

Those interested in applying case study methodology will need raw material with which to build their analysis. For many questions, considerable ground can be covered using basic library research techniques and secondary sources. However, some of the most fruitful case studies (in terms of their contribution to the existing body of knowledge) bring new information to light. There are several methods of obtaining original qualitative data. The sections that follow will briefly discuss four methods that have become central in foreign policy analysis: archival research, content analysis, interviews, and focus groups.

Archival Research

Original source material can be a crucial element of a quality case study. Typically, scholars uncover such information through archival research. Relevant foreign policy materials are commonly found in the document collections housed in presidential libraries, national archives, and universities. While the basic concept behind archival research is self-explanatory, the actual process of gaining access to collections and navigating their contents can intimidate the neophyte. There are a number of guides to archival methods that can alleviate such anxiety. Directions for identifying and searching appropriate archival sources as well as tips for navigating the archives themselves can be found in Marc Trachtenberg’s ( 2006 ) recent volume on methods – Appendix II will be of particular interest to those seeking to utilize archival methods. Hill ( 1993 ), Larson ( 2001 ), and Lustick ( 1996 ) provide additional detail on the nuances of archival research.

Content Analysis

Content analysis is a hybrid method that has played a longstanding and important role in quantitative and qualitative foreign policy analysis. The section of this essay on events data already discussed the ways in which content has been used to generate quantitative data for statistical analysis. For example, some of the earliest approaches to events data generation coded the content of elite communication (Winham 1969 ). However, more detailed content analyses have also been used to generate the raw material for case studies or other qualitative analyses. Ole Holsti ( 1969 ) was a pioneer of this method, while, more recently, Steve Walker and his students at Arizona State have developed a typology and quantitative content analysis scheme for operational code analysis (Walker et al. 1998 ). Those interested in additional detail on the mechanics of content analysis should consult Weber ( 1985 ), Neuendorf ( 2002 ), and West ( 2001 ).

Because the role of the individual figures so prominently in foreign policy analysis, interviews can be a particularly valuable method for accessing information about the mechanics of the decision making process. Interviews enable FPA scholars to delve deeply into the idiosyncrasies of the foreign policy process, gleaning deep insights from decision makers and those around them. Over time, FPA scholars have developed a robust set of interview methods designed to enable researchers to maximize the acquisition of information without introducing biases into findings.

There are a number of excellent examples of innovative interview methods in foreign policy analysis, which can serve as models for those interested in interview research. Prime among them are FPA classics such as Yuen Foong Khong’s Analogies at War ( 1992 ). Based on a series of interviews with senior officials (and archival research), Khong argues that leaders routinely reference the past when making foreign policy decisions and that this cognitive bias can profoundly alter decision making. Schoutlz ( 1987 ) does similar interview work in the context of US policy toward Latin America. More recently, Silber and Little ( 1995 ) draw on a series of interviews to uncover the foreign policy interactions at play in the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. Berg ( 2001 ), Brenner et al. ( 1985 ), McCracken ( 1988 ), Mishler ( 1986 ), and Seidman ( 1998 ) provide useful, in-depth tutorials on interview methods.

Focus Groups

Focus group research is a derivative of interview methodology in which the researcher attempts to facilitate an organized discussion among the participants. In foreign policy analysis this typically takes the form of a meeting of experts in a particular foreign policy area, or participants in a prior foreign policy decision. Focus group methods can be particularly informative because the emerging consensus that comes from such discussions pools the knowledge of the participating individuals and therefore can overcome some of the potential biases of recollection and self-inflation that accompany individual interviews. However, concerns arise as well, due to some of the very same pathologies that FPA scholars have identified in the context of group decision making. For example, Janis’s ( 1972 ) concept of groupthink can take hold in such settings, with focus group members avoiding controversy and settling instead on a comfortable consensus, even if this consensus is out of step with reality. Along similar lines, the value of elite focus groups can suffer due to deference to higher-ranking participants and domination of the discussion by more talkative individuals who might overshadow important contributions by those less inclined to assert themselves (Krueger 2000 ).

Third Generation Methods of Foreign Policy Analyses

Neack, Hey, and Haney’s ( 1995 ) concept of generational change, to which this review has adhered thus far, captures only part of the methodological richness of FPA. There have long been methods of foreign policy analysis that fall outside this strict quantitative/qualitative divide, and there has been considerable recent growth in these alternative methods. Meanwhile, the distinction between quantitative and qualitative approaches to FPA has become increasingly blurred as the relative advantages of each approach have become more widely recognized. These events auger the arrival of a third generation of FPA scholarship that combines innovative quantitative and qualitative methods, thereby bridging the internal contradictions that split the second wave from the first and unifying a variety of methods of foreign policy analysis.

Several methods of foreign policy analysis are available to aspiring third generation foreign policy analysts seeking to move beyond events data and case studies including: computer assisted coding, experiments, simulation, surveys, network analysis, and prediction markets. The sections that follow will briefly introduce each of these methods, though the list is by no means exhaustive.

Machine Coding

Computer assisted coding of electronically stored information offers several advantages and represents an important methodological innovation that is likely to play an increasingly significant role in the future of foreign policy analysis. First, machine coding can be more reliable than human coding simply because it removes the possibility of individual error and the resulting questions of intercoder reliability. Second, machine coding is extremely rapid. Where earlier events datasets were generated over periods of many years, computers can sift through huge quantities of data in minutes. The result is that machine coding greatly reduces the cost of events data generation – effectively bringing control over such data to the masses (Gerner et al. 1994 ; Schrodt and Gerner, 1994 ). However, the obvious benefits of machine coding are accompanied by two important caveats: the initial programming that creates the coding rules must be accurate, and the raw data must exist in a machine readable format (Gerner et al. 1994 ). Advocates of human coding often counter that the low cost and speed of machine coding are accomplished at the expense of accuracy and nuance.

At present, the best example of a machine coded events project is the Kansas Event Data System (KEDS). This project is among the most active events datasets, due in part to the relatively low cost and speed of generating data in this manner. KEDS provides a computer program that enables users to specify and create personalized events datasets with a variety of output options. The researchers on the KEDS team use this software to code news reports and generate political event data focusing on the Middle East, the Balkans, and West Africa; however, this approach can be extended to other regions or the international system as a whole.

The machine coding community, including members of the KEDS project, is particularly interested in predictive models built on the unique capacities of this technology (Schrodt, 1979 ; 1994 ; Gerner et al. 1994 ; Schrodt and Gerner 2000 ; Shellman forthcoming ). Machine coding not only partially circumvents the need for large financial investments in events data by reducing the required labor and time, but also has the potential to address some of the concerns about the lack of predictive capacity that caused the decline in external funding in the first place. Because machine coding concentrates the researcher’s effort on developing decision rules rather than on the coding itself, once underway these programs can generate empirical data in real time. Such models that draw on continuously updated data effectively serve as early warning systems capable of identifying when political phenomena of interest are likely to occur. For example, Shellman and Stewart use machine coding to predict incidents of forced migration, which they applied with some success in Haiti (Shellman and Stewart 2007 ). This particular application of events data remains at the cutting edge of the FPA literature and will likely continue to be a productive avenue for future research.

Experiments and Simulation in Foreign Policy Analysis

Like all social science, foreign policy analysis struggles methodologically with the issues of control and causality. The quantitative and qualitative methods already discussed took hold in foreign policy analysis in part because the gold standard of the scientific method – experimental control – is typically off limits either for practical or for ethical reasons. However, with careful attention to design and feasibility, there are applications for experimental methods in the study of foreign policy, and where there are not, researchers have begun to turn their attention to simulation, which can achieve some of the same objectives. To take one recent example, Christensen and Redd ( 2004 ) examine how the context of foreign-policy decision making affects choice and assess this relationship in a controlled experiment conducted on undergraduates. They find that, at least in this context, the way in which information is presented directly affects the decision maker’s evaluation.

In recent years the nuts and bolts of experimental methods have drawn increasing attention. Along these lines, McDermott ( 2002 ) provides an interesting discussion of the origins and practice of experimental methods in political science, as well as the unique challenges this approach presents. One such challenge that should be considered carefully by those designing experiments meant to speak to foreign policy behavior is the trade-off between internal and external validity in experiments. Internal validity indicates that the proposed relationship between the independent and dependent variables is the true causal one. When such validity is high it means that extraneous variables and alternative explanations have been ruled out. While typically very difficult to achieve in the social sciences, high internal validity results from proper randomization in an experiment. External validity speaks to the degree to which a proposed relationship is generalizable to a broader set of cases or the world at large. Thus, experimental methods are powerful because they are high in internal validity; however, a leap occurs when we attempt to generalize experimentally derived results to actual political behavior.

This leap can be particularly worrisome when it is from an experimental finding generated from a non-elite individual – for example, an undergraduate student as was the case in the Christensen and Redd study – to a foreign policy decision maker. In such cases, the assumption of external validity may not be reasonable. Mintz, Redd, and Vedlitz ( 2006 ) explore this issue in detail, replicating an experiment on the subject of counterterrorism with a group of college student and a group of military officers. The authors find significant differences between these groups, suggesting that experimental subjects cannot be expected to play the role of foreign-policy decision makers without careful regard for their actual background. However, while these scholars argue that average individuals can tell us very little about the behavior of elites, they do find it more acceptable to use subjects like students as a sample of the public at large.

Simulation, a close relative of experimental methods, has its roots in the longstanding practices of war gaming and diplomatic analysis. However, recent efforts in this area draw extensively on advances in computing power and the internet. Research in this area builds on early work by the Inter-Nation Simulation (INS) project (Guetzkow et al. 1963 ), and slightly later efforts by Hermann ( 1969 ) and Alker and Brunner ( 1969 ).

The International Communication and Negotiation Simulations (ICONS) project is an ongoing extension of this early work that allows political practitioners and students to develop decision making and foreign policy skills through computer aided interactive simulation. Jonathan Wilkenfeld and Richard Brecht developed ICONS in the 1980s, building on Noël’s ( 1969 ) early POLIS simulations. As presently formulated, the ICONS project is more about training than research, but the technique presents an intriguing methodological opportunity for those interested in testing theories of foreign policy interactions in a controlled environment.

Survey Research in Foreign Policy Analysis

When it is focused at the elite level, as it often is, survey research in foreign policy analysis directly relates to the previously discussed interview methods. This stands in some contrast to the way in which survey research is conducted in other areas of political science. For example, in American politics there is a long tradition of survey research designed to pinpoint public opinion on a myriad of topics. In order to accomplish this, researchers are obliged to reach as representative a sample of the population as possible. In contrast, FPA’s focus on elite perception and behavior as a determinant of foreign policy leads to the wider usage of elite interviews.

While surveys lack the depth of an interview, they offer the corresponding advantage of breadth. First, by aggregating information from a more significant number of sources, a survey can minimize some of the idiosyncratic error that can plague interview methodology. Second, in a survey analysis it is easier to control for secondary variables that might influence the recollection or reporting of subjects. Finally, surveys can both contribute to qualitative analysis, and serve to generate high-quality data for aggregate analysis.

Holsti and Rosenau’s ( 1979 ; 1980 ) work on post-Vietnam attitudes is an excellent example of what can be accomplished in foreign policy analysis with elite surveys. Holsti and Rosenau were interested in the degree to which historical experience altered the perceptions and beliefs of opinion leaders and decision makers. Their expectation was that the Vietnam conflict significantly altered the perspective of those who drew their primary experience from that conflict rather than World War II. To answer this question they extensively surveyed groups that they believed to comprise the national leadership structure – military personnel, foreign service officers, business executives, labor leaders, clergy, media, etc. – and found significant differences between occupations and within generations.

Surveys can be particularly valuable when conducted repeatedly over several years, as this allows for longitudinal analysis – something that is crucial if one is interested in changes over time. Both the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press conduct quadrennial surveys of government, academic, military, religious, and scientific “influentials” in order to measure the content of and changes in elite opinion. These surveys, and others that could be conducted along similar lines, are an underutilized resource for foreign policy analysis. Presser et al. ( 2004 ) and Rea and Parker ( 2005 ) are useful resources for those seeking additional detail on the mechanics of survey research and questionnaire design.

Network Analysis

FPA scholars can also benefit from the recent explosion of interest among political scientists in network analysis. Social network analysis, which is simply the mapping and measuring of relationships among entities in a complex system, is a useful tool for modeling foreign policy relationships because it incorporates both bilateral connections and wider connections among the larger group. Because of this, the technique analysis allows FPA scholars to understand relational data – the contacts, ties, connections, and transfers between decision makers that cannot be cleanly reduced to properties of the leaders themselves (Scott 1991 ). Furthermore, a network theoretic framework consistently captures the role of third parties in foreign policy interactions, which prove to be crucial to understanding outcomes.

Relational approaches have long been an underlying element in the study of foreign policy. For example, Anne-Marie Slaughter ( 2004 ) writes on the relationship between elite networks and international conflict. However, quantitative social network analysis first began to make significant inroads into political science in the 1990s primarily through the study of “policy networks” (Marin and Mayntz 1992 ; Marsh and Rhodes 1992 ), though there are earlier, pioneering examples (e.g., Eulau and Siegel 1981 ; Tichy et al. 1979 ). These studies, as well as later work in international relations (e.g., (Hammarström and Birger 2002 ; Wilkinson 2002 ; Montgomery 2005 ; Heffner-Burton and Montgomery 2006 ; Maoz 2006 ; Ward 2006 ), provide models for future work with foreign policy networks. In short, relational thinking and social network analysis have already contributed to the clarification of a number of puzzles in political science and present a potentially powerful way of approaching foreign policy analysis.

Prediction Markets

Prediction markets are information exchanges built to generate forecasts using a price mechanism. Futures generated from predictions of upcoming events are traded, such that their value is tied to a particular outcome. The result of this arrangement is that the market prices of these futures can be interpreted as the predicted probability of that outcome. There is a significant body of research that establishes the ability of markets to reduce error in predictions. By aggregating the bets of many individuals, these markets effectively use the price setting mechanism to uncover the consensus about a future foreign policy event in much the same way that the stock market predicts the economic performance of a company or oil futures respond to the expected scarcity of that resource. Pennock et al. ( 2001 ) demonstrate that in many cases prediction markets systematically outperform the estimates of even the best individual analysts. There are only a few examples of longstanding prediction markets that handle political futures. These include Intrade, which floats, among many other things, a diverse group of political contracts, and the longer running Iowa Electronic Market, which is an academically oriented project designed for evaluating the probability of election outcomes.

Prediction markets have been applied sparingly in international relations and foreign policy analysis, but have tremendous potential for future application because they offer an interactive mechanism with which individual foreign policy experts can aggregate their knowledge and opinions. Interestingly, given the methodological diversity that characterizes FPA as a sub-discipline, the method by which each expert who trades futures on a prediction market reaches his or her own conclusion is irrelevant. Thus, a prediction market can provide an alternative way to combine and generalize both deep qualitative knowledge and quantitative findings. Furthermore, this approach presents a novel way of dealing with error and uncertainty.

Prospective researchers in this area should note that some early applications of this approach have not gone smoothly. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently abandoned a promising plan to use a futures market to forecast the probability of important foreign policy events such as regime change and terrorist attacks when the media picked up on the program and it became controversial. Despite a robust literature on the efficacy of such markets, politicians and segments of the public seized upon the effort as being unethical or even nonsensical (Looney 2003 ). The unwanted attention led DARPA, which usually operates well beneath the public radar, to cancel the project almost immediately. It remains an open question whether this approach will become more politically feasible – seemingly a necessity because these markets generally require a significant initial investment, presumably by a government or university. However, private markets such as Intrade, which is a for-profit enterprise, seem to be a plausible alternative. Foreign policy futures, such as the probability of an Israeli attack on Iran, are traded regularly on Intrade and provide useful information about expectations. Moreover, futures on the outcome of the last presidential election vied with polling data for public and media attention in the lead up to the 2008 US presidential election suggesting that familiarity with these markets may be rising.

Remaining Methodological Challenges

Methods of foreign policy analysis have developed markedly over the past few decades, but challenges remain. An unavoidable tension persists between the accuracy needed for policy relevance and the scope needed for generalizability. As the grand theories of foreign policy interaction motivated those who launched the FPA enterprise proved elusive, the discipline increasingly turned to the nuanced examinations of cases. However, if taken too far this trend is a threat to the unique identity of FPA because it blurs the distinction with longstanding traditions of historical analysis. This survey of available methods suggests that a partial solution to this dilemma lies in bringing quantitative analysis and underutilized “third generation” methods back into the FPA fold by reintegrating them into the well-developed qualitative tradition. The goal should be to develop a healthy mix of methods that applies each approach to the questions which each is best equipped to address.

Additional attention should also be given to determining the degree to which current methods of foreign policy analysis allow predictive or prescriptive conclusions. In recent years, enthusiasm for FPA has been fueled in part by the failure of most international relations scholarship to accurately foresee key events in the international system – specifically the decline of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The argument is made that Cold War politics, because they were in some sense stable or at equilibrium, were better suited to elegant and parsimonious models of the systemic behavior of state actors. In contrast, the more chaotic world we presently inhabit is characterized by fluidity driven by human agents and therefore is best understood using the methods of foreign policy analysis (Hudson and Vore 1995 ). This is a reasonable hypothesis; however, prediction is a difficult game in the social sciences and it remains unclear whether FPA is indeed superior in this arena. In short, with a few notable exceptions such as the KEDS project, methods of foreign policy analysis lack predictive capacity and, when they are able to predict, are often unable to clearly state the degree of certainty surrounding these forecasts. More can and should be done to improve this capacity.

Foreign policy analysts should also give deeper consideration to the issues that accompany the choice of the unit of analysis in their models. FPA derives much of its explanatory power from its ability to speak to the individual’s role in the foreign policy process, but the dependent variables that these efforts attempt to explain are often the interactions between states. The result is a gap in our understanding of the process of aggregation by which the behavior of leaders results in the actions and reactions of states. This aggregation problem is widely noted, but additional work is required to complete our understanding of this element of the foreign policy process. Improvements in this linkage between theory and test, as well as a consistent unit of analysis (individual or foreign policy event) are particularly crucial for robust quantitative analysis, as it is in part the inability of the subfield to resolve this basic issue that stifled earlier research on events data.

Finally, more must be done to reengage foreign policy analysis with the core of international relations research. FPA scholars typically claim the first and second image as their domain, but fail to engage with those in mainline international relations who also work in this area. In the lead essay of the first issue of Foreign Policy Analysis , Valerie Hudson ( 2005 ) convincingly makes the case that FPA has the potential to reshape the entire discipline of international relations by focusing attention on the workings of the fundamental unit of analysis – the political decision maker. However, despite the call to arms, more often than not FPA scholars labor in relative isolation. Some of these divisions emerge from methodological issues and can therefore be resolved.

In sum, the future of foreign policy analysis appears to be bright. There is reason to believe that longstanding methodological battles that characterized it are drawing to a close with the recognition that multiple methods have their place in the study of foreign policy. In addition, new methods and questions are emerging that are likely to contribute to our understanding of the foreign policy process.

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Links to Digital Materials

International Crisis Behavior Project. At www.cidcm.umd.edu/icb/ , accessed July 2009. The ICB project provides quantitative and qualitative data on international crises. The core systemic dataset currently contains 452 incidents from the end of World War I through 2006. The link above provides access to ICB data, codebooks, citations, and a variety of other useful materials.

Correlates of War Project. At www.correlatesofwar.org/ , accessed July 2009. The COW project website provides widely used events data on militarized interstate disputes as well as several other datasets that may be appropriate for FPA scholars. Data, documentation, and codebooks are available through the link.

EUGene Software. At www.eugenesoftware.org/ , accessed July 2009. The link provides access to the EUGene software package, as well as manuals and documentation (all free of charge). EUGene allows for relatively easy transition between commonly used units of analysis – country–year, dyad–year, and directed dyad–year. In addition, the software enables the researcher to combine many of the events datasets discussed in this essay with basic demographic and geopolitical data including data uploaded by the user.

Kansas Event Data System. At http:/web.ku.edu/keds/ , accessed July 2009. KEDS provides a computer program that enables users to specify and create personalized events datasets. Detailed descriptions of machine coding methods, as well as several datasets and codebooks, are available on the KEDS web page.

The Consortium on Qualitative Research Methods. At www.maxwell.syr.edu/moynihan/programs/cqrm/index.html , accessed July 2009. CQRM promotes qualitative research methods in the social sciences. They hold an annual training institute that may be useful for FPA scholars interested in expanding their knowledge of qualitative methods. In addition, they maintain a database of syllabae on qualitative methods.

Intrade. At www.intrade.com/ , accessed July 2009. Intrade is the leading prediction market for political futures. The site has prediction markets for a wide range of political and financial outcomes that may be of interest to FPA scholars.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Michael Glosny , Deborah Larson , Rachel Augustine Potter , and two anonymous reviewers. All errors are my own.

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Foreign Policy Analysis

A Comparative Introduction

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Dutch Foreign Policy: Staying the Course Amid a Changing World

Do We Need 195 Theories of Foreign Policy?

• decision-making
• foreign policy

Table of contents (7 chapters)

Front matter, why study foreign policy comparatively, do leaders shape foreign policy, how leaders make sense of the world, leaders are not alone: the role of advisors and bureaucracies, leaders in context i: domestic constraints on foreign policy making, leaders in context ii: international constraints on foreign policy making, who or what determines foreign policy, back matter.

"Well-known scholar and journal editor Marijke Breuning provides a welcome new text to the field of foreign policy analysis. Aiming the book at those with no prior study of international relations, she uses both U.S. and other country examples to introduce students to the comparative study of foreign policy decision making.By posing interesting questions and puzzles, she conveys both concepts and theories in an accessible way.Our field s curricular literature has just been enriched, and those wanting to teach an undergraduate foreign policy analysis course owe it to themselves and their students to check out this volume."

- Ralph G. Carter, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Texas Christian University

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Book Title : Foreign Policy Analysis

Book Subtitle : A Comparative Introduction

Authors : Marijke Breuning

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609242

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan New York

eBook Packages : Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies Collection , Political Science and International Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2007

Hardcover ISBN : 978-0-312-29619-3 Published: 15 November 2007

Softcover ISBN : 978-0-312-29620-9 Published: 15 November 2007

eBook ISBN : 978-0-230-60924-2 Published: 26 November 2007

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : X, 207

Topics : International Relations , Political Science , Diplomacy , Comparative Politics , Foreign Policy

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American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays

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Foreign Policy and Politics Essay

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Introduction

Foreign policy is as a result of the enforcement of international relations. Over the years, the concept of foreign policy has evolved and different models have even come up in order to conform it to current issues.

The kind of foreign policy adopted by different countries depends on the kind of relationship that exists among the countries in question. Foreign policy provides a common ground on which countries interact with each other. The decision-making process of foreign policy can be viewed as being very complicated when various factors come into play.

One thing is very pronounced though: the leaders or executives of a country do not make these decisions on their own. They have enlisted the help of specialists, who in this paper will be referred to as bureaucrats or actors or agents. These specialists and the organisations for which they work for are the contributing factors.

This paper will look at the brief background of foreign policy and how it is closely related to international relations. The Bureaucratic Politics Model (BPM) will also be discussed in order to give a background on bureaucratic politics and illustrations with the use of two case studies both involving foreign policy of the US will be used to argue the distortions brought about by bureaucratic politics.

It will be shown from the model and the case studies that bureaucratic politics does indeed introduce distortions and though it has positive aspects to it, the distortions far outweigh the positives when it comes to decision making on foreign policy.

The disadvantages associated with the BPM will be shown from the above two case studies and general disadvantages will also be listed. A suitable way forward in dealing with the BPM will finally be highlighted.

Foreign policy as defined by Hill is “the sum of external relations conducted by an independent actor (usually a state) in international relations” (2002, p. 3). It is necessitated by the fact that different states all have to converge and put their differences aside in order to relate with one another. With such diversity it is evidently hard to have a common ‘theory’ that is able to define the different behaviours of different nations.

As Newmann (n.d. p.1) put it, these theories are then able to explain the foreign policy and international relations phenomenon. Different authors have come up with different theories; one thing they agree on is that there are distinct “levels of analysis” and that “theories of state behaviour” (Newmann, n.d. p.1). The two are discussed below.

The levels of analysis include:

• the system level – in which a particular state is almost defined by the international system, for instance, when the US and USSR were the most powerful states, other state behaviours were defined by them and currently the US is considered as the lone superpower and by default it intervenes in the affairs of other states;
• the state level – where a state determines its own behaviour considering its past, culture, its economy, religion or its geography;
• the organizational level – the organizations within a state have a major input in foreign policy making, for instance the US-Iraq example, the organizations that may have had some significant input are the department of defence of the central intelligence agency;
• lastly the individual level – where the state leaders are considered to have a heavy influence in policy making (Newmann, n.d., p.1).

The theories that are covered in various ways by different authors include:

• Classic realism -where obtaining power is the focus of most states; neo-realism- which tries to explain that states seek power because there is no “world government”;
• neo-classical realism -which combines the previous theories; liberalism- which promotes cooperation and tries to “enforce international law”;
• neo-liberalism – emphasises on the creation of international constitution; cognitive theories- which incorporate some of the already listed theories;
• and finally constructivism – which dwells on the nature of a state (Newmann, n.d., p.1).

However, there are those who do not see the importance of the above theories as being useful in policy making (Walt, 2000, p.1). Walt (2000, p.1) differed with this opinion by stating the importance of theories. Consequently, other literatures have formulated models, which are in part almost like theories, in order to describe what influences decision making (Chapter4, n.d., p.1).

Some are discussed by Damerow (2010): the rational actor decision making model, the bureaucratic decision making model and history-making individuals model.

Walt (2000) also emphasized on the “complexities of the contemporary world politics” (Walt, 2000, p.1) and stated that no one model is complete on its own, but that all of them bring necessary competition so that better policies are made. One thing is very clear though, these models and theories are put in place with the aim of enhancing the decision making process but they fall short in various ways thus creating distortions.

Foreign Policy

Foreign policy is a concept that “involves goals, strategies, measures, methods, guidelines, directives, understandings etc” (Jackson & Sorensen, 2007, p. 223). Foreign policy making can be noted to have evolved from what it was in the previous times especially after the end of the “Cold War” (Walt, 2000, p. 2).

The influence bureaucratic politics has on this dynamic issue has been neglected since it can go to the extent of “distorting the formation of state preferences and lead to suboptimal international behaviour” (Walt, 2000, p. 4).

To understand how the foreign policy works, Graseck (1993, p. 1) outlined a number of themes that are worth considering in depth (though her work was directed for the US students, it can be applied by anyone who wishes to study this subject): Having an in depth comprehension of the international systems which constitute:

• “state sovereignty, alliances and balances of power, diplomacy” etc;
• “Responses to international conflict”;
• “Non-State and Transnational Actors”;

A historical view of foreign policies in order to appreciate the current ones; “Linking foreign and domestic politics”; “Success in the international system”. (Walt, 2000, p. 4)

Other than the above themes, there are certain factors that generously influence foreign policy making: “environmental factors, psychological factors, international factors and domestic influences” (DeRouen & Mintz, 2010, p. 2).

As earlier mentioned, there are different models and theories that many have formulated, however, the rational actor model and the BPM seemed to have gained more popularity. The two are almost similar in their approaches. With that in mind, the rational actor model will be discussed in brief in the next section before the BPM model is tackled. Both of these models, however, factor in the above mentioned factors in their approach.

The Rational Actor Model

This model views the decision makers as being able to make decisions with the belief that their choices “will lead to the best feasible outcomes for them as defined by their personal values or preferences” (Mesquita, n.d. p. 2). These values may be in favour of the national interest or otherwise (Mesquita, n.d. p. 2).

What seems to be a positive side to this model is that the actors often put in consideration the obstacles that can hinder them from achieving their purpose and will adapt themselves accordingly (Mesquita, n.d. p.2); this- as will be shown later, has similarities to the Poliheuristic theory.

Damerow (2010, p.1) lists the limitations to this model as:

“bounded rationality”- actors are not always right; “cognitive dissonance”- actors settle for familiar beliefs; “overloaded policy agendas”; “making satisficing decisions rather than optimising ones”; “prospect theory”- being unwilling to have losses; “two level games”- inclusion of domestic politics in the whole decision making process. (Damerow, 2010, p. 1)

Others consider this model to be superior compared to other models, except for the limitations of course, and have used it from time to time. The BPM does not differ much from this model and will be discussed in the next section.

Bureaucratic Politics

Every state has its own form of bureaucratic organizations that will help implement the foreign policies (Donovan, 1993, p.195). Bureaucratic politics can be seen as currently holding all the power that a specific state needs in order to make some very fundamental decisions.

Bureaucratic organizations are often recognized because of their “formalized rules and regulations, systematic record-keeping” among others (Carpenter, 2010, p.1). They also explain how some decisions were arrived upon by the bureaucrats and how they seek to “promote their own agency’s special interests as a major motivating factor in shaping the timing and the content of government decisions” (Johnson, 2005, p.1).

Those implored with this task are always in competition with each other since different sections of government will seek advice from different bureaus (Johnson, 2005, p.1). This then raises the question, the bureaucrats that are supposed to effectively fulfil their duties, are they then compromising the decision making process? Or are they helping?

DeRouen and Mintz (2010, p.6), stated that “the executive relies on bureaucrats to provide information for the decision process” (DeRouen and Mintz, 2010, p.6). If this is the case, what basis are the bureaucrats using to make such fundamental decisions that will affect policies not just in a particular state, but globally? Hill (2002, p.72) noted that bureaucracy has extended from just foreign affairs to local “governmental department”.

The Bureaucratic Politics Model, BPM

Graham Allison, Morton Halperin, Robert Gallucci are some of the names that are behind the formulation of the theory concerning bureaucratic politics (Hill, 2002, p.85).

The BPM can be summarised as: “Focusing on bargaining processes between the bureaucratic actors and the government, actors are driven by interests of their organizations and decisions result from interaction of the actors’ competing policy preferences” (Brummer, 2009, p.2). In an article by Brummer, three propositions characterize the BPM, and they are discussed in detail below.

The first proposition as presented by the BISA article is simply put as “where you stand depends on where you sit” (Brummer, 2009, p.2). What this simply implies is that the one, who has been entrusted with the responsibility of making weighty policy decisions, is heavily influenced by his “bureaucratic position” (Brummer, 2009, p.2).

This position will often come as a result of the person as a whole i.e. “their sensitivities to certain issues, commitment to various projects and personal standing with and debts to groups in society” (Brummer, 2009, p.3).

What this first proposition does is that it reveals to us that there is definitely an interaction between the “bureaucratic process and individual factors” (Brummer, 2009, p.3). This in itself proves to be a ground for distortion in making the foreign policy decision.

The second proposition on the other hand is that “the competing preferences of bureaucratic actors clash in political bargaining processes” (Brummer, 2009, p.3). Different actors representing different organizations will differ in their thoughts concerning the foreign policy that is being discussed since the actors all represent various interests.

What makes it worse is that all these actors are at different positional levels with others having more power; this power has an influence on the bargaining process by either acting as a “privilege or a discriminator” among the actors (Brummer, 2009, p.3). If this is the case, then it surely follow that the decision making is almost not ‘fair’ considering all the vast interests being represented.

The third proposition “concerns the nature of the outcomes of the bargaining processes among bureaucratic actors” (Brummer, 2009, p.4). What results therefore has been described as “unintended compromise solutions” which no one had initially anticipated and this is majorly due to the bargaining that took place that finally made the actors to settle on a result that is suitable for everyone (Brummer, 2009, p.4).

Bringing together different actors who represent various interests means that “the decisions of a government are not the result of rational decision-making process but of compromise, conflict and confusion” (Brummer, 2009, p.4). Such a ‘compromised’ outcome means that bureaucratic politics in a way reduce the standards of outcomes of foreign policy decisions that are made.

Two American Case Studies

Two case studies as elaborated by different authors will be discussed in detail to show the case of bureaucratic politics and how they compromise and heavily influence the decision making process. The first to be considered is the “US Arm sales to Taiwan” (Qingmin, n.d. p.1). This case considered by Qingmin (n.d., p.3) largely involves the three US administrations of Carter, Reagan and G.H. Bush and the sale of “FX fighters to Taiwan”.

Statements made by different people considered this relation to be very secretive and one that needed no divulging of other information, makes it a bureaucratic process (Qingmin, n.d. p.2). As such it is considered as very hard to determine the ‘fairness’ that was used in order to make some of the decisions.

An interesting concept however is that before US and China had established any formal diplomatic relations, no one considered it as a problem for the US to sell the FX fighters to Taiwan especially in Carters regime (Qingmin, n.d., p.3). However, once the diplomatic relations were established, China requested the termination of these sales.

During the Reagan time, the US-Taiwan sell did not continue since it was noted to create tension between US and China. However, when G.H. Bush came to power, advanced fighters, “F-16s” were sold; which brought up questions concerning the decisions made about this delicate matter (Qingmin, n.d., p.4). how these decisions were reached upon will not be known since as earlier indicated, the US-Taiwan relations were very secretive.

Qingmin (n.d.) drew the following conclusion when addressing the three regimes and the different factors that were factored in during the decision as to whether to sell the fighters or not:

using the “where you stand depends on where you sit” analogy, different departments were in conflict about the whole issue, others feared the estrangement of the US-China relations while others were seeing it as a “US global strategy” (p.20)- this is the first case of distortion associated with the process;

the policy making process was also affected on the basis that in Reagan’s time, the conflicts were serious and during Bush’s time, the conflicts could not even be perceived (p.22)- with such a parity in the two regimes, it is evident that bureaucratic politics had some influence;

finally, there was also notable “influence on presidential leadership and decision-making capacity on bureaucratic conflict” (Qingmin, n.d., p.23)- since the president is mostly charged with the task of policy-making, his personality or even his policy making style will determine whether there is bureaucratic conflict or not (p.23).

Qingmin concluded by saying harmony should characterize the different departments in charge of policy making to ensure good future relations (n.d. p.25). Since if this is not the case, and conflicts are more pronounced, decision making will be interfered with.

A second case study still involving the US is one touching on the Palestine state (Rubenberg, n.d. p.1). Rubenberg (n.d.) summarized the US policy from a “global and historical perspective” (Rubenberg, n.d. p.1) i.e. she showed that although times had changed and the ideology of policies seemed to be evolving, the Palestinians still seemed to be under the US’s bondage.

The regimes had changed, the bureaucrats involved in the policy decision making had also changed but what seemed constant is that whatever policies that were proposed seemed to be against the freedom of Palestine; this raises the question concerning the bureaucratic process and politics- why is it that even with changing times, the end result of the policy making seems to be the same?

Three reasons for the above question are highlighted by Rubenberg. First of all, the US system is structured in such a way to oppose all movements and especially the one from Palestine.

This is the case because since the US is considered as a world power, then “the markets and resources required for its economic supremacy and military superiority” (Rubenberg, n.d. p.1) are found in third world countries such as Palestine and hence the US will do all it can to ensure the political stability of Palestine (Rubenberg, n.d. p.1).

This type of structure will stand the test of time and all those involved in the policy making decisions will have this specific goal in mind. This for sure highlights the biasness of bureaucratic politics.

Secondly, almost similar to the first, the US policy makers have their allegiance to their country only and do not care much that the people in Palestine are being estranged (Rubenberg, n.d., p.1).

As such, the US has even gone to the extent of creating other alliances with the neighboring states, for example, Saudi Arabia, so that they have local support (Rubenberg, n.d., p.1). Thirdly, the US-Israel relations were purely based on “institutionalization of beliefs about Israel’s strategic utility to American interests” (Rubenberg, n.d., p.1).

The above two case studies were used for purposes of illustration of how bureaucratic politics in some ways distort the whole process of decision making on foreign policy. In the next section, the negative aspects of bureaucratic politics will be highlighted.

Negative aspects of bureaucratic politics

Two consequences are mentioned by Hill (2002, p.86) which come about as a result of bureaucratic politics i.e. it shields the domestic politics approach from “scepticism of realism, neo-realism and some form of historicism” (Hill, 2002, p.86) and it also presents “foul-ups” in decision-making instead of “rationality or inevitability” (Hill, 2002, p.86).

Meaning that, the domestic politics almost have no other choice other than to be involved with the international matters (Hill, 2002, p.86).

There is some form of compromise when it comes to decision making especially since not at all times do the bureaucrats act in “intelligently or in the public interest” (Newell, n.d., p.12).

Another concern as illustrated by Johnson (2005, p.1) which emphasized on this compromise was that; “the policies and policy recommendations…are often the by-product of bureaucratic turf-battles and expedient compromises between bureaucratic chieftains rather that the product of reasoned analysis of how most effectively and efficiently to carry out the policy commitment…” Johnson, 2005, p.1).

Another challenge posed can be the “principal-agent” problems (Waterman, Rouse and Wright, 2004, p.32). The principal in this case is either the executive authority or the president who is delegating the decision making process. The problem is narrowed down to knowledge and monitoring (Caughey, Chatfield & Cohon, 2009, p.4).

The actors who are often known as the specialists, as earlier mentioned, hence the actors may seemingly have an upper-hand when it comes to the policy decisions since they are considered more knowledgeable (PSC, 2009, p.2).

The other issue is the monitoring of the actors by the ‘principals’ (PSC, 2009, p.2). The principal may not always have the time and foreknowledge to ensure that the actors are working in line with the principal’s preference (PSC, 2009, p.2).

The structures that confine bureaucratic policies also present the following “dysfunctions”: one is that very limited alternatives make their way to the top most executive (Renshon and Renshon, 2008, p.10) – and this is for the simple fact that the actors involved will so often debate among themselves and the ones with more influence will proceed to share their opinions with the executive.

This in itself shows that there is a flaw since the executive will not be consulted with the other alternatives that were presented. Secondly; the biasness of the actors may portray itself in their search for information (Renshon et al ., 2008, p.10).

Their search will be confined to their preferences and preferred solution (Renshon et al ., 2008, p.10). This definitely creates a flaw in the whole decision making process since there could be a vital piece of information that was not considered yet it is necessary for the policy.

Hataley (n.d. p.8) brought to light various aspect of the negativity of bureaucratic politics: he stated that the BPM validity is questionable when applying it to Canada- which also begs the question; where else will this model have a problem?

The secrecy associated with bureaucratic politics means that the public do not have a say and cannot contribute to whatever debates that go on (Hataley, n.d., p.8). If the public was able to vet the process then transparency would be achieved and this might on the other hand bring other complexities if larger groups of people are involved (Kegley, 2008, p.66).

Positive aspects of Bureaucratic Politics

The negativity may seem to outdo the positive elements, but as a matter of fact, despite all the negative media bureaucratic politics has been given, it has to some extent worked and accomplished its goals.

The following are resources which seem to favour bureaucracy:

• “information and expertise”- in as much as opposition is made about the bureaucrats, it is their knowledge that has placed them in that position hence, it cannot be overemphasized that they are intelligent;
• “power of decision”- those who are charged with bureaucratic duties are not under the same rules as “legislatures” hence their independence works to their advantage and are able to efficiently deliver their duties;
• thirdly, the bureaucratic organizations have massive “supporters”- i.e. the ones who have placed them there and those who hope to benefit from it;
• fourthly, the bureaucrats are “divorced from partisan politics”- hence they do not have to pledge their allegiance to any “constituents” especially when decision-making is involved;
• fifthly, “agency ideology” is developed- which in fact means that there are some “operational objectives” that are set up of which act as guidelines; lastly, “permanence and stability” the bureaucrats are able to perform their duties with a long term focus (Hataley, 2009, pp.5-6).

Raman with reference to the South Asian community has indicated that the expertise from local area are good but those who can even be better are the “non-state expertise” (Raman, n.d., p.1). Similar to the above example, the non-state expertise “do not have to be politically correct and acceptable” (Raman, n.d., p.1), their duties are executed on a very professional basis.

Another advantage associated with this group is the fact that they are able to criticize each other constructively without any “inhibitions or mental blocks” (Raman, n.d., p.1). This may lead the particular government to enlist help from outside if it is proving to be beneficial.

Way Forward

With all the negativities surrounding the bureaucratic politics, the question is how can it be changed so that it becomes a suitable alternative to both the bureaucrats and all those to whom the policy will affect? In an article by Brummer (2009, p.6), there are two ‘solutions’ as to understanding the “influence of bureaucratic structures on actors” Brummer, 2009, p.6).

The first –simplification- stated that a lot of emphasis should be placed on agents/the actors since they are the ones who will finally make a decision. One setback with this, however, is that it downplays the importance of structures which should not be the case.

The second ‘solution’ aims to seek a connection between bureaucratic structures and the agent (Brummer, 2009, p.7). It focuses on strengthening the “persons and personality” such that all the other factors that contribute to a person’s well being are factored in (Brummer, 2009, p.7).

The Poliheuristic theory has been suggested to be incorporated with the BPM in order to address some of its shortcomings (Brummer, 2009, p.7). This theory is summarized as a two-step process that combines “cognitive and rational factors” (Brummer, 2009, p.8).

The first stage involves “rejecting alternatives that are unacceptable to the policy maker on a critical dimension or dimension” (Mintz, 2004, pp.4-5) and the second one involves “selecting an alternative from the subset of remaining alternatives while maximizing benefits and minimizing risks” (Mintz, 2004, pp.4-5).

This theory seems effective in trying to eliminate the personal factors of the bureaucrats or the leaders by insisting that the decisions be done very analytically (Smith & Dunne, 2008, p.18).

Another way of ensuring that the decision making process becomes fast and efficient, devoid of politics, is to have “Standard Operating Procedures, SOPs” (Mansbach & Rafferty, 2007, p.362). This will also help in times of crisis and when decisions need to be made fast.

They will also avoid putting pressure on the actors and hence making SOPs very lucrative. In the article by Renshon et al ., “multiple advocacy and the devil’s advocate” have been proposed as amicable solutions in quest for better judgment (2008, p.18).

Multiple advocacies have their focus on reducing conflict arising in the decision making process as depicted by the BPM and use it to “improve the quality of the whole process” (Renshon et al ., 2008, p.18).

Devil’s advocate on the other hand, helps to air the view of the opposing side of the presented arguments concerning a policy (Renshon et al ., 2008, p.19). In the US for instance, the bureaucratic organizations are accountable to the president, congress and to the judiciary, a concept that can be adapted by various states (PSCI, n.d. pp21-3).

The concept of foreign policy is very broad and as such it draws various sentiments from different authors. What has been established so far is that US is the leading state with various bureaucratic organizations that govern its policy making.

Bureaucratic policy on first viewing can seem very efficient but on scrutiny brings about a lot of criticism. It has advantages and disadvantages that are associated with it and as such one can argue for or against it.

Brummer, K. (2009) The Bureaucratic Politics Model and Poliheuristic Theory . University of Erlangen: Germany.

Carpenter, D. (2010) Bureaucratic Politics: Military, Government, Economic and Social Organizations. Web.

Caughey, D., Chatfield, S. & Cohon, A. (2009) Defining, Mapping and Measuring Bureaucratic Autonomy . Web.

Chapter4. Foreign Policy . Web.

Damerow, H. (2010) Foreign Policy Decision Making Models . Web.

DeRouen, J. and Mintz, A. (2010) Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making . Web.

Donovan, J. C. (1993) People, Power and Politics: An Introduction to Political Science. Lanham Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Graseck, S. (1993) Teaching Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era . Web.

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Mesquita, B. B. Foreign Policy Analysis and Rational Choice Models . Web.

Mintz, A. (2004) How Do Leaders Make Decisions? Journal of Conflict Resolution Vol. 48, No. 1. Web.

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Policy Briefs

What this handout is about.

This handout will offer tips for writing effective policy briefs. Be sure to check with your instructor about their specific expectations for your assignment.

What are policy briefs?

Imagine that you’re an elected official serving on a committee that sets the standards cars must meet to pass a state inspection. You know that this is a complex issue, and you’d like to learn more about existing policies, the effects of emissions on the environment and on public health, the economic consequences of different possible approaches, and more–you want to make an informed decision. But you don’t have time to research all of these issues! You need a policy brief.

A policy brief presents a concise summary of information that can help readers understand, and likely make decisions about, government policies. Policy briefs may give objective summaries of relevant research, suggest possible policy options, or go even further and argue for particular courses of action.

How do policy briefs differ from other kinds of writing assignments?

You may encounter policy brief assignments in many different academic disciplines, from public health and environmental science to education and social work. If you’re reading this handout because you’re having your first encounter with such an assignment, don’t worry–many of your existing skills and strategies, like using evidence , being concise , and organizing your information effectively , will help you succeed at this form of writing. However, policy briefs are distinctive in several ways.

In some of your college writing, you’ve addressed your peers, your professors, or other members of your academic field. Policy briefs are usually created for a more general reader or policy maker who has a stake in the issue that you’re discussing.

Tone and terminology

Many academic disciplines discourage using unnecessary jargon, but clear language is especially important in policy briefs. If you find yourself using jargon, try to replace it with more direct language that a non-specialist reader would be more likely to understand. When specialized terminology is necessary, explain it quickly and clearly to ensure that your reader doesn’t get confused.

Policy briefs are distinctive in their focus on communicating the practical implications of research to a specific audience. Suppose that you and your roommate both write research-based papers about global warming. Your roommate is writing a research paper for an environmental science course, and you are writing a policy brief for a course on public policy. You might both use the exact same sources in writing your papers. So, how might those papers differ?

Your roommate’s research paper is likely to present the findings of previous studies and synthesize them in order to present an argument about what we know. It might also discuss the methods and processes used in the research.

Your policy brief might synthesize the same scientific findings, but it will deploy them for a very specific purpose: to help readers decide what they should do. It will relate the findings to current policy debates, with an emphasis on applying the research outcomes rather than assessing the research procedures. A research paper might also suggest practical actions, but a policy brief is likely to emphasize them more strongly and develop them more fully.

To support these changes in audience, tone, and purpose, policy briefs have a distinctive format. You should consult your assignment prompt and/or your professor for instructions about the specific requirements of your assignment, but most policy briefs have several features in common. They tend to use lots of headings and have relatively short sections. This structure differs from many short papers in the humanities that may have a title but no further headings, and from reports in the sciences that may follow the “IMRAD” structure of introduction, methods, results, and discussion. Your brief might include graphs, charts, or other visual aids that make it easier to digest the most important information within sections.  Policy briefs often include some of these sections:

• Title: A good title quickly communicates the contents of the brief in a memorable way.
• Executive Summary: This section is often one to two paragraphs long; it includes an overview of the problem and the proposed policy action.
• Context or Scope of Problem: This section communicates the importance of the problem and aims to convince the reader of the necessity of policy action.
• Policy Alternatives: This section discusses the current policy approach and explains proposed options. It should be fair and accurate while convincing the reader why the policy action proposed in the brief is the most desirable.
• Policy Recommendations: This section contains the most detailed explanation of the concrete steps to be taken to address the policy issue.
• Appendices: If some readers might need further support in order to accept your argument but doing so in the brief itself might derail the conversation for other readers, you might include the extra information in an appendix.
• Consulted or Recommended Sources: These should be reliable sources that you have used throughout your brief to guide your policy discussion and recommendations.

Depending on your specific topic and assignment, you might combine sections or break them down into several more specific ones.

How do I identify a problem for my policy brief?

An effective policy brief must propose a solution to a well-defined problem that can be addressed at the level of policy. This may sound easy, but it can take a lot of work to think of a problem in a way that is open to policy action.

For example, “bad spending habits in young adults” might be a problem that you feel strongly about, but you can’t simply implement a policy to “make better financial decisions.” In order to make it the subject of a policy brief, you’ll need to look for research on the topic and narrow it down. Is the problem a lack of financial education, predatory lending practices, dishonest advertising, or something else? Narrowing to one of these (and perhaps further) would allow you to write a brief that can propose concrete policy action.

For another example, let’s say that you wanted to address children’s health. This is a big issue, and too broad to serve as the focus of a policy brief, but it could serve as a starting point for research. As you begin to research studies on children’s health, you might decide to zoom in on the more specific issue of childhood obesity. You’ll need to consult the research further to decide what factors contribute to it in order to propose policy changes. Is it lack of exercise, nutritional deficiencies, a combination of these, or something else? Choosing one or another of these issues, your brief would zoom in even further to specific proposals that might include exercise initiatives, nutritional guidelines, or school lunch programs.

The key is that you define the problem and its contributing factors as specifically as possible so that some sort of concrete policy action (at the local, state, or national level) is feasible.

Framing the issue

Once you’ve identified the problem for yourself, you need to decide how you will present it to your reader. Your own process of identifying the problem likely had some stops, starts, and dead-ends, but your goal in framing the issue for your reader is to provide the most direct path to understanding the problem and the proposed policy change. It can be helpful to think of some of the most pressing questions your audience will have and attempt to preemptively answer those questions. Here are some questions you might want to consider:

What is the problem?

Understanding what the problem is, in the clearest terms possible, will give your reader a reference point. Later, when you’re discussing complex information, your reader can refer back to the initial problem. This will help to ‘anchor’ them throughout the course of your argument. Every piece of information in the brief should be clearly and easily connected to the problem.

What is the scope of the problem?

Knowing the extent of the problem helps to frame the policy issue for your reader. Is the problem statewide, national, or international? How many people does this issue affect? Daily? Annually? This is a great place for any statistical information you may have gathered through your research.

Who are the stakeholders?

Who does this issue affect? Adult women? College-educated men? Children from bilingual homes? The primary group being affected is important, and knowing who this group is allows the reader to assign a face to the policy issue.

Policy issues can include a complex network of stakeholders. Double check whether you have inadvertently excluded any of them from your analysis. For example, a policy about children’s nutrition obviously involves the children, but it might also include food producers, distributors, parents, and nutritionists (and other experts). Some stakeholders might be reluctant to accept your policy change or even acknowledge the existence of the problem, which is why your brief must be convincing in its use of evidence and clear in its communication.

Effective policy-writing

This handout has emphasized that good policy briefs are clear, concise, and focused on applying credible research to policy problems. Let’s take a look at two versions of the introduction to a policy brief to see how someone might write and revise to achieve these qualities:

A “not-so-good” policy brief

Adolescents’ Dermatologic Health in Outlandia: A Call to Action

The Report on Adolescents’ Dermatologic Health in Outlandia (2010), issued by Secretary of Health Dr. Polly Galver, served as a platform to increase public awareness on the importance of dermatologic health for adolescents. Among the major themes of the report are that dermatologic health is essential to general health and well-being and that profound and consequential dermatologic health disparities exist in the state of Outlandia. Dr. Galver stated that what amounts to a silent epidemic of acne is affecting some population groups–restricting activities as schools, work, and home–and often significantly diminishing the quality of life. Dr. Galver issued the Report on Adolescents’ Dermatologic Health as a wake-up call to policymakers and health professionals on issues regarding the state’s dermatologic health. (“ Not so good policy brief ,” Reproduced with permission of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD.)

This paragraph introduces a relevant and credible source, but it fails to use that source to explain a problem and propose policy action. The reader is likely to be confused because the word “acne” does not appear until the middle of the paragraph, and the brief never states what action should be taken to address it. In addition to this lack of focus, the paragraph also includes unnecessary phrases like “among the major themes” that could be removed to make it more concise.

A better policy brief

Seeing Spots: Addressing the Silent Epidemic of Acne in Outlandia’s Youth

Acne is the most common chronic disease among adolescents in Outlandia (Outlandia Department of Health, 2010). Long considered a benign rite of passage, acne actually has far-reaching effects on the health and well being of adolescents, significantly affecting success in school, social relationships, and general quality of life. Yet large portions of the state’s population are unable to access treatment for acne. The Secretary of Health’s Report on Adolescents’ Dermatologic Health in Outlandia (2010) is a call to action for policymakers and health professionals to improve the health and wellbeing of Outlandia’s youth by increasing access to dermatologic care (“ A Better Policy Brief” , Reproduced with permission of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD.)

This paragraph is far more focused and concise than the first version. The opening sentence is straightforward; instead of focusing on the source, it makes a clear and memorable point that is supported by the source. Additionally, though the first version was titled “a call to action,” it did not actually say what that action might be. In this version, it is clear that the call is for increased access to dermatologic care.

Keep in mind that clarity, conciseness, and consistent focus are rarely easy to achieve in a first draft. Careful editing and revision are key parts of writing policy briefs.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Smith, Catherine F. 2016. Writing Public Policy , 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Young, Eoin, and Lisa Quinn. n.d. “The Policy Brief.” University of Delaware. Accessed June 24, 2019. https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blog.lrei.org/dist/c/104/wp-content/uploads/sites/346/2009/11/PolicyBrief-described.pdf .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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A Brief Introduction to Theories on International Relations and Foreign Policy

Related Papers

Herman Patrick

International relation is viewed differently by different scholars depending on their perspective about the subject of International Relations. According to Brown & Ainley (2005), International Relation is seen by some as the strategic diplomatic relations of states, whereby the focus on issues of International Relations is characterised by issues of war, conflict, peace and cooperation. International relation can also be viewed by others according to Brown & Ainley (2005) to involved all kinds of cross-border transactions such as social, economic and political, which may equally encompass the study of the operation of conventional peace talks non-state institutions like Amnesty International, the study of trade negotiations and how the United Nations (UN) works. Furthermore, Brown & Ainley said that the dynamism of the twenty-first century has seen some focusing on studying for instance, world transport, communications and financial systems; attention is also been shifted towards issues of globalisation, emergence of global society and global business institutions. The former perception is more likely to be associated with the Realists and institutionalists, who see state as the unitary actor in the issue of international relations. However, the later perception can be associated with the liberalists, who recognised other interests groups and individuals, whose interests and believe the state represents. Gold & McGlinchey, (2005) stated that International Relation is a “never-ending journey of change chronicling the accumulation of the accepted norms of the past and the emerging norms of the future.” International Relation is one of the complex area of discipline of which, there is not unified or acceptable definition of the subject. Over the years, different ideas have been developed to explain this concept of international relation, which are called theory or paradigm (by some scholars). In the discourse of international relations, a theory is a set of ideas that attempts to explain the working of the international system. Generally, a theory differs from an ideology as it is backed up at least in principle with concrete proof. According to Burchill & Linklater (2005), it is important to show interest in the history and theory of international relations because “all discussions of international politics proceed upon theoretical assumptions which we should acknowledge and investigate rather than ignore or leave unchallenged.” Gold & McGlinchey (2017) also stressed the need to be concerned about these theories as they claimed that “theories of International Relations allow us to understand and try to make sense of the world around us through various lenses, each of which represents a different theoretical perspective.” There are several theories of international relations, the mainstream ones are realism and liberalism; we also have institutionalism, constructivism, feminism, Neorealism, Neoliberalism, Complex interdependence, Post-liberalism, Marxism and Critical Theory, Green theory, Alternative approaches, English School, Functionalism, Post-structuralism, Post-modernism and Post-colonialism. All these theories according to Dunne, et al (2013) have history, which are “not always within the discipline of International Relations.” Dunne, et al (2013) equally stated that these theories emerged from diverse intellectual traditions, which means that comparing international relations theories is not an easy task. However, this paper will attempt to compare the realism, liberalism and institutionalism theories of international relations.

Selman Akarsu

Maria Maniati

Muideen O Mohammed

A review of Gideon Rose, Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy. World Politics.

Andhik Beni Saputra

Realism is widely regarded as the most influential theoritical tradition in international relations, even by its harshest critics. Its ancient philosophal heritage, its powerful ciritque of liberal institutionalism and its influence on the practice of international diplomacy have secured it an important and dominant position in the study of international politics. Whatever one’s conclusion of contemporary realism for the analysis of international politics, according to Robert O. Keohane, it is important to understand realism because of their widespread acceptance in contemporary scholarship and in policy circles. Political realism is deeply embedded in Western thought. Without understanding it, we can neither understand nor criticize our own tradition of thinking about international politics

Naomi Kariuki

Masoud Amin

Foreign policy analysis as a field of study is categorized by its actor-specific focus. It is the study of the procedure, outcomes, origins, or outputs of foreign policy decision-making in either a comparative or case-specific manner. Foreign Policy Analysis bestows an accessible opportunity of research publication which boosts communication through theoretical, methodological, geographical and disciplinary limits, exposing the divergent, comparative and multidisciplinary nature of the field. Indeed, one finds a synergy of foreign policy studies for historians increasingly interesting as international relations move towards its own discipline. The tools of decision-making analysis are readily adaptable to detailed cases, and opening up many state archives has made it impossible to avoid the evidence of such pathologies as bureaucratic politics or small group dynamics. For a country like Pakistan, foreign policy needs to demonstrate political will and military power to have friendly relations in order to keep a check, for example, on a hostile India, the former Soviet Union, and present day terrorist threats. It also needs to perfect democratic practice. This can be synchronized by a foreign policy with a prudent realism. To conclude, it can be argued that one country’s domestic problems can be another country’s solutions. Domestic politics is the reflection of a country’s foreign policy. Another country might be gaining a lot from a particular regime while the indigenous people governed under that regime may ultimately be suffering. This is particularly so where states are intensively connected, whether through security alliances or strategic partnerships. The institutional interaction between the US and Pakistan is the best example to quote here. The Pakistan Army was hard in domestic politics but was soft in its terms with the US, apart from those two periods, i.e., during the first half of 1960s and the post-Musharraf’s era of today.

Steven Lobell

Research article

Huseyn Aliyev

This article aims at describing and analyzing the neo-realist theory with the focus on humanitarian aspects. In the first part of this article I will briefly present the theory of neo-realism in international relations and its major concepts and tenets. The second part of the paper will look into possible application of the given theory to humanitarian action. How humanitarianism could have been perceived in a neo-realist Cold War world and how it can be viewed in a rapidly changing post-Cold War world? What are the major implications of this theory for the humanitarian world? And how the neo-realist world influenced humanitarian action so far? The following questions will be addressed in the later parts of this article.

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Fp @ unga79, ai for healthy cities, her power @ unga79, fp tech forum @ unga79, is 2024 really the most important election in history, democracy—and the global system—might not be so easily dismantled..

• United States

This article appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

What exactly are the stakes of the 2024 U.S. presidential election?

President Joe Biden and his anointed successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, have sought to lay them out in stark, simple terms. The election, Harris said at her rollout event as a presidential candidate on July 23, is “about two different visions for our nation: one where we are focused on the future, the other focused on the past.” Biden, in a speech from the Oval Office a day later, sounded the same theme: “America is going to have to choose between moving forward or backward.”

These are, on the surface, fairly banal words, seemingly anodyne sentiments typical of presidential campaign rhetoric. Yet, in the present context, they are terrifyingly true. They are freighted with historic implications that could make this the most consequential election—for both the United States and the world—in U.S. history, historians and political experts say.

Why? Because the 2024 election is in large part about a candidate and the political party that he now controls—Donald Trump and the Republican Party—who want to move the country decidedly backward in time and who seek a return to an America and a world that no longer exist.

The imagined world of “Make America Great Again”—Trump’s enduring campaign theme—seeks to roll back a century’s worth of recognition and rights to the many Americans who are not white, male, heterosexual, and cisgender. It is a world that intends to curtail a half-century’s worth of reproductive rights granted to women. It is a movement that aims to undo the progressive era dating back to the New Deal—which raised the status of the working class—and return to a kind of gilded age for billionaires, with an economic policy based on corporate tax cuts and tariffs. Finally, in foreign policy, this pseudo-nostalgic vision welcomes a return to the quasi-isolationism embraced by the Founding Fathers and seeks a full retreat from America’s post-World War II role as globo-cop, or enforcer of last resort for global security.

All this is what the “Again” in Make America Great Again, or MAGA, really means, said Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian. For Trump’s huge MAGA political base, “the promised land lies somewhere in the first half of the twentieth century, when white male supremacy was still the presumed natural order,” Ellis wrote in an email. “That means before Brown v. Board of Education integrated public education; before Martin Luther King had his dream; before Roe v. Wade gave women control of their bodies; before the Voting Rights Act; and, most symbolically, before an African American occupied the White House.” When it comes to America’s role in the world, MAGA means “going back sometime before 1940,” when isolationism dominated U.S. policy, Ellis said.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that for Harris’s campaign, the rallying cry has become, “We’re not going back!”

For Trump and the Republicans, the way to achieve this broad retrograde vision—to undo nearly a century’s worth of progress—is by taking power in the White House and both houses of Congress. And the only way to do that, in turn, is through the massive disenfranchisement of broad swaths of the fastest-growing portions of the U.S. population, such as Black and Hispanic people and especially immigrants. Thus, in the end, the “existential threat to democracy” that Harris, Biden, and the Democrats are warning of is not hyperbole but rather what Trump and his supporters are actually pushing for, Ellis said. They seek to achieve this by all but halting immigration, curtailing voting rights for minorities, gerrymandering their shrinking white majority into a dominant position in as many legislative districts as they can, and asserting unlimited and unchecked power for the presidency.

The brutal fact, Ellis said in an interview, is that U.S. democracy is no longer working for the Republican Party as it’s currently constituted—and probably never will again given demographic trends. “By the year 2045 [white people] will become a statistical minority,” he said, citing U.S. Census Bureau projections. “The Trump believers actually want to see democracy end, because it has come to mean white male supremacy will end.”

Letters to the Next President

No matter who wins the White House, these nine thinkers from around the world would like a word. By Catherine Ashton , Jason Bordoff , Arancha González , Martin Kimani , Mark Malloch-Brown , Joseph S. Nye Jr. , Danny Quah , Nirupama Rao , Joseph E. Stiglitz

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Rachel Scott, the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Chicago on July 31. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Are things really that dire? Based on the evidence, such fears can’t be dismissed entirely.

Trump has long denied he is a racist, but it’s undeniable that his rise to national political prominence in the last decade—culminating in his 2016 election as president—has been fueled by dog whistling to white supremacists. In late July, after Trump suggested to a stunned audience at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Chicago that Harris, who is Black and South Asian, had “ turned Black ” for political purposes, commentators recalled similar attacks of his in the past. Indeed, Trump’s political career was effectively built on his false, racist “birther” claim that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. After repeating this baseless lie for a year, Trump went from nowhere in the polls to utter dominance of the Republican Party in 2016. Trump has also openly challenged the validity of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump’s supporters have been quite forthright about their back-to-the-future mindset. Trump has rhetorically disavowed the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 —a massive new Republican agenda—but it was designed by some key officials from his presidency. These include Russell Vought, the policy director for the Republican National Convention’s platform committee who is said to be in line to be Trump’s next chief of staff. Several of these operatives told me in interviews last year that they want to roll back a century of left-wing encroachment on Washington, decimating what they view as a federal bureaucracy dominated by Black people and other minorities. They aim to reverse what began as Woodrow Wilson’s creation of a federal administrative elite and later grew into a vast permanent bureaucracy—the “deep state” Trump sees as his primary enemy—under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. As Heritage President Kevin Roberts put it to me in an interview: “It’s like doing open-heart surgery on the administrative state. That’s the part that’s never been done before.”

And they want to give the president near-dictatorial powers to accomplish this, including personal control of the Justice Department so he can prosecute his political adversaries.

In an interview in September 2023, Vought told me that the key difference from the first Trump administration is that this time, they’re prepared. With a detailed action plan in place—and with heretics to his MAGA movement slated to be purged from government to an unprecedented degree—Trump may be able to achieve far more than in his first term, when he was stymied by his own cabinet and that obstructive deep state. “We are preparing to be ready on day one,” Vought said. “Whatever is necessary to seize control of the administrative state is really our task.”

In this, the Trumpers could be helped along by a conservative-dominated Supreme Court. In a monumental ruling in July, the court effectively gave the twice-impeached president near-total immunity for most criminal acts he might commit in office were he to return to power. Delivering a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that “the President is now a king above the law” and could be immune even from ordering the assassination of political rivals.

“What’s so strange about that Supreme Court decision is that it actually creates a space where the president doesn’t need to do anything anymore to justify his actions,” said Edward Watts, a historian at the University of California, San Diego. “For example, you don’t need to create a state of emergency to assassinate your rival.” In ancient Rome, Watts said, “even the most tyrannical emperors had to create justification for killing people.”

When it comes to America’s place in the world, these plans also mean withdrawing—at least to some degree—from the rules-based international system. And it’s important to note that for many Americans, some of these views have real appeal, especially the idea that the United States needs to shuffle off its globo-cop role, which has allowed European and Asia nations to free-ride under the U.S. defense umbrella.

Even many mainstream academics welcome his more realist approach to NATO and the Russia-Ukraine war, though they have little use for Trump himself. (Trump has promised to end the war quickly, and he has suggested that he will throw out previous Western promises to bring Ukraine into NATO.) Many experts are wary that Biden and Harris, who embody the postwar internationalist consensus, are now in danger of sucking the United States into wars on three major fronts, pledging all at once to defend Ukraine against Russia “no matter what,” in Biden’s words; Israel against Hamas and Iran; and Taiwan against China.

Trump officials like to note that his more inward-looking approach goes back to George Washington himself, who warned Americans in his farewell address as president “to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world” and to maintain their “detached and distant situation” behind protective oceans.

Trump takes his place for the family photo at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

What would such a shift mean in practice? Based on the reporting I’ve done in recent months, a second Trump administration would probably not simply pull out of NATO, as the former president has repeatedly suggested he might do. As Robert O’Brien, a former Trump national security advisor, wrote in a recent Foreign Affairs cover article titled “The Return of Peace Through Strength,” a second Trump administration would still value alliances. “‘America first is not America alone’ is a mantra often repeated by Trump administration officials,” O’Brien wrote. But a second Trump administration would also make so many demands of Europe to take over the lion’s share of NATO defenses that a major—and perhaps permanent—rupture in the trans-Atlantic relationship is much more likely.

That would only continue a trend by which U.S. allies have come to realize that they can no longer rely on a superpower so unstable and internally polarized. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder told me, echoing many other policy experts, that contest would be the most important in U.S. history—at least since the Civil War. Trump’s reelection would be tantamount, Daalder said, to a formal divorce from Europe and the West.

That’s doubly true this time around, Daalder says now. “If 2020 was the most important election since 1860, 2024 is the most important since 2020,” Daalder said in an interview. “The fact that [Trump] picked J.D. Vance [as his running mate], whose foreign policy is more nationalist and isolationist even than Trump’s, speaks volumes to the fact that this will be an administration in which there won’t be anybody who adheres to the old framework that has guided American policy since 1941. You combine that with his anti-democratic tendencies—it’s clear this could be more dangerous than last time.”

Other foreign-policy experts agree. In fact, said Jonah Blank, a foreign affairs scholar who once worked on Biden’s Senate staff, “this is a more important election than 2020 because now we know more about what we’re getting. In his first term, the Trump-inspired insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was yet to happen; the Supreme Court hadn’t yet ruled on immunity.” Except for Jan. 6, Blank said, “just looking at what he’s said and done since then is more disturbing than anything he did in office.”

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Joseph S. Nye Jr., who is one of the most respected foreign affairs specialists in the United States (Read his letter to the next president in the Fall 2024 print issue here .), had a similar prediction when I interviewed him in 2020. If Trump continued to threaten to retake power, Nye said, then U.S. allies, especially in Europe, would eventually throw their hands up at the unpredictability of U.S. politics. He foresees grimmer tidings now.

“Selling out Ukraine will strengthen [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and weaken the credibility of NATO,” Nye wrote in an email. “Withdrawing troops in [South] Korea or Japan will have a destabilizing effect on East Asia. And withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord again will weaken international institutions, efforts to combat climate change, and hurt America’s soft power. Add to this high tariffs and a trade war with our partners and you have a mess that could be transformative. And we will not have the moderating influence of traditional Republican appointees as we did in the earlier term.”

One saving grace could be that Europeans—weakened economically vis-à-vis the United States and threatened more than at any other time in the postwar period by both Russia and China under President Xi Jinping—will have little choice in the end but to side with Washington, Trump or no Trump.

“It will damage their trust in us, but as long as Putin and Xi remain in power, Trump’s return will not destroy the alliances at their end,” Nye said.

Another possible source of relief is that Trump has repeatedly said he would avoid getting the United States into a war. Indeed, one of his chief complaints against Biden is that, as Trump said during their ill-fated June 27 debate, “he will drive us into World War III” because of his aggressive stance against Russia. Some national security experts agree that at a moment when the Biden administration has painted itself into a corner by fully backing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s quixotic aim of driving out the Russians altogether—thus effectively delegating U.S. strategy to Zelensky—Trump would at least bring a fresh approach. “One thing he’ll do is de-stigmatize the idea that there could be negotiations,” said Stephen Wertheim, a political scientist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of the 2020 book, Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy .

Even critics such as Ellis say that on this issue, Trump may have “a point that has an enormous amount of resonance in the American population right now. We can’t be the savior for the world.”

At the same time, however, a second President Trump would likely dramatically escalate tensions with China. While the Biden administration has pursued a policy of countering China without quite “containing” it—maintaining Trump’s tariff war while building new security structures, such the AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—a second Trump administration would more openly embrace the idea that the United States is engaged in a new cold war with China. “As China seeks to undermine American economic and military strength, Washington should return the favor—just as it did during the Cold War, when it worked to weaken the Soviet economy,” O’Brien wrote in his recent essay.

This would involve a dramatic escalation of the trade war and more than Biden’s “de-risking”—a full decoupling of the two economies. “Now is the time to press even further, with a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods, as Trump has advocated, and tougher export controls on any technology that might be of use to China,” added O’Brien, who also called for a crash military program to arm other nations, even Communist-led Vietnam, against China.

“The [Navy] should also move one of its aircraft carriers from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the Pentagon should consider deploying the entire Marine Corps to the Pacific, relieving it in particular of missions in the Middle East and North Africa,” he wrote. O’Brien contended that such moves would increase deterrence, preventing war, but a more forward-based U.S. posture could also increase the odds of a direct military conflict between Washington and Beijing.

A big problem in divining what Trump would do in a second term is that his view of America’s role in the world remains mostly incoherent, Wertheim said. “He’s saying, ‘On one hand, I want to dominate the world and when there’s crisis almost anywhere that reflects badly on the U.S., I personally will put a stop to it. But on the other hand, I could take or leave most American alliances.’”

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a rally in Milwaukee on Aug. 20. Dominic Gwinn/AFP via Getty Images

Is Harris the one to deliver coherence to U.S. policy—and to see that this grand unwinding of the world system doesn’t happen? In the weeks since Biden stepped aside, the former California prosecutor and senator has surged in the polls. Most experts see little or no daylight between Harris and Biden in policy in that both have sought to find a bridge between the post-World War II era of bold liberal internationalism and the new era of populist neoprotectionism and anti-interventionism. Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—who has almost no international experience—doesn’t seem to change that calculation much.

In her speeches as vice president—which have been little noted until now—Harris has repeatedly sounded one theme: Any form of U.S. isolationism “is dangerous, destabilizing, and indeed shortsighted,” as she said at the 2024 Munich Security Conference. “I firmly believe our commitment to build and sustain alliances has helped America become the most powerful and prosperous country in the world—alliances that have prevented wars, defended freedom, and maintained stability from Europe to the Indo-Pacific. To put all of that at risk would be foolish,” Harris said.

“If she beats Trump, she will already have had a successful presidency in a way,” Blank said. “It will be the first step toward averting a truly existential calamity. The stakes really are that large.”

Perhaps. Certainly that could prove to be the case for the Trumpist threat to U.S. democracy. And if U.S. democracy is destroyed or vitiated, that heightens the threat to democracies around the world.

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But it’s also worth noting that on some key issues related to America’s place in the world—trade, immigration, neoprotectionism, and the new “make it in America” embrace of industrial policy that has overtaken both political parties—the Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz tickets don’t differ as much as the harsh political rhetoric would sometimes indicate. It’s notable that Trump and Biden were equally eager to pull out of Afghanistan. During their June 27 debate, Trump attacked Biden for the disastrous way the United States left the country in 2021, but it was Trump who laid the groundwork by sidelining the Afghan government and negotiating directly with the Taliban. That all but ensured the ultimate disaster involving a rapid takeover by the Taliban after 20 years of U.S. occupation.

Moreover, whoever inherits the White House next January will be forced by the anti-interventionist mood in the country to avoid putting U.S. boots on the ground anywhere in the world. He or she will face the same titanic diplomatic challenges—both in Ukraine and in the Middle East—and will be leery of getting pulled into any further foreign crises. He or she will be equally forced to maintain U.S. deterrence in Europe and Asia—and to face down Putin and Xi, who have more or less joined together to try to eclipse U.S. hegemony.

Some senior officials who served in Trump’s first term and remain loyal say he won’t be as much of a threat to the international system as critics think. Among them is Kiron Skinner, the former head of policy planning under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who noted in an interview that in his first term, Trump “stayed within the United Nations, though we pulled back from some agencies. But there wasn’t a pull away from the broad-based liberal international order.” In his second term, Skinner said, Trump would mainly seek to “right-size America’s role in the world” by demanding that U.S. allies step up more on defense.

All of which suggests that the forces of inertia—or the status quo ante—may prove stronger than people think.

“Betting on inertia in U.S. foreign policy is a very good bet,” Wertheim said. “It’s really, really hard to change U.S. foreign policy in a big way.”

So, yes, the stakes of the 2024 election are big indeed. It’s just that we don’t know yet how big they will be.

This article appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Thanks for supporting our journalism.

This article appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Subscribe now to support our journalism.

Michael Hirsh is a columnist for Foreign Policy. He is the author of two books:  Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future Over to Wall Street  and  At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World . X:  @michaelphirsh

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