This chapter examines how actors and structures make foreign policy an extremely complicated field of study and how, in view of this complexity, these actors and structures have been treated in the literature on foreign policy analysis. It first provides a historical background on the field of foreign policy before discussing the role of actors and structures in ‘process’ and ‘policy’ approaches to foreign policy. In particular, it describes approaches to foreign policy based on a structural perspective, namely: realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and social constructivism. It then considers evaluates approaches from an actor-based perspective: cognitive and psychological approaches, bureaucratic politics approach, new liberalism, and interpretative actor perspective. The chapter also looks at the agency–structure problem and asks whether an integrated framework is feasible before concluding with a recommendation of how to resolve the former in terms of a constructive answer to the latter.
Chapter
6. Actors, structures, and foreign policy analysis
Walter Carlsnaes
Book
Klaus Brummer and Kai Oppermann
Foreign Policy Analysis provides a guide to core foreign policy approaches, drawing insights from international relations and non-Western perspectives. Chapters put theoretical approaches front and centre without neglecting the right connection with international relations theories. This book challenges Western-centric perspectives on foreign policy analysis and reflects the rise of non-Western scholarship in the field. After an introduction to the topic, the first part of the book looks at various international relations theories such as realism, liberalism, constructivism, and critical theories. The second part moves on to cover domestic politics approaches and discusses two-level games, organisational behaviour, and bureaucratic politics. The third and final part looks at psychological and cognitive approaches, including examinations of prospect theory, operational code, leadership trait analysis, poliheuristic theory, analogies and metaphors, and the groupthink model. It ends with some perspectives.