This paper provides theoretical background to the workshop as a whole. The workshop proposes to investigate the analytical possibilities offered to the study of foreign policy by the interpretive approach to political science. This interpretive approach is widespread in the study of governance and domestic policy, but as yet its utility for studying foreign policy has been little examined. This paper thus describes the theory and content of the interpretive approach generally. It suggests that the interpretive approach is distinctive in its overt commitment to both humanism and historicism. The humanism of the approach means that it concentrates on the beliefs of various policy actors, the meanings of their actions, and their ability to remake these beliefs, meanings, and actions. The historicism of the approach then means, crucially, that it explains actors’ beliefs by locating them in historical traditions that actors change in response to dilemmas. It highlights the diversity, contingency, and contestability of the beliefs, narratives, and expertise informing foreign policy. The paper then goes on to provide a more detailed analysis of the relevant concepts of belief, tradition, and dilemma as a way of considering the relationship of the interpretive approach to other forms of constructivism in the study of international relations.
