Grasping “foreign policy” and “diplomacy” as distinct and historically contingent social practices is a quite popular focus in contemporary approaches to (the history of) foreign policy and international relations. This conception, however, is anything but unproblematic given the multiplicity and heterogeneity of practices associated with the phenomenon of foreign policy in a longer historical perspective. Thus, the challenge consists in developing a framework that allows for analytical sharpness at the same time as it enables scholars to reveal the historical contingency and variety of foreign policy practices.
In this contribution we intend to offer such a conceptual framework – a “conceptual cloud”- which aims at understanding and analyzing formations (and "trans"-formations) of foreign policy in a longer historical perspective. Our frame for analysis highlights three analytical dimensions of the phenomenon of foreign policy of which we conceive primarily in heuristic terms: (1) practices: the materialization of knowledge in and through doing; (2) narratives: specific forms of background knowledge about the world; (3) actors: the constitution of subjectivities. We argue that these three interrelated elements constitute a powerful tool kit for analysis, which is able to bring to the fore the uniqueness of constellations of foreign policy in terms of agents, doings and meanings that tell us how, why and by whom foreign policy is conducted in a certain period of time.
