Foreign policy as public policy?: Promises and pitfalls

This book examines how foreign policy analysis can be enriched by ‘domestic realm’ public policy approaches, concepts and theories. Starting out from the observation that foreign policy has in many ways become more similar to (and intertwined with) ‘domestic’ public policies, it bridges the divide that still persists between the two fields. The book includes chapters by leading experts in their fields on arguably the most important public policy approaches, including, for example, multiple streams, advocacy coalition, punctuated equilibrium and veto player approaches. The chapters explore how the approaches can be adapted and transferred to the study of foreign policy and point to the challenges this entails. By establishing a critical dialogue between approaches in public policy and research on foreign policy, the main contribution of the book is to broaden the available theoretical ‘toolkit’ in foreign policy analysis.
From the Back Cover
Foreign policy as public policy?explores how foreign policy analysis can be enriched by ‘domestic realm’ public policy approaches, concepts, and theories. In many ways foreign policy has become more similar to, and intertwined with, ‘domestic’ public policies: this book bridges the divide that still persists between the two fields.
The chapters within cover arguably the most important public policy approaches ― multiple streams, advocacy coalition, punctuated equilibrium, and veto player approaches ― to explore how they can contribute to the analysis of foreign policy. With dedicated chapters on each of the selected approaches by leading experts in their fields, they discuss how the approaches can be adapted and transferred to the study of foreign policy and illustrate the benefits this can bring in empirical case studies on a range of foreign policy puzzles.
The book also points to the main challenges in transferring public policy approaches to the analysis of foreign policy and examines the conditions under which the unique character of foreign policy makes this less promising. By establishing a critical dialogue between approaches in public policy and research on foreign policy, the main contribution of the book is to broaden the available theoretical ‘toolkit’ in foreign policy analysis and to encourage theoretical innovation in the discipline.
The book complements existing works on foreign policy theories and will be of interest to researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students in International Relations Foreign Policy Analysis and Comparative Politics.