The section discusses original and innovative theory-guided works in the field of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) which reflect and further develop the discipline’s state of the art. The hallmarks of FPA are its penchant for actor-specific, middle-range theorising and for interdisciplinary and multidimensional approaches. Analyses of foreign policy refuse to bracket decision-makers, attend to the processes of decision-making and seek to account for the outcomes of these processes. The theoretical approaches in the field can be differentiated along several dimensions, such as levels of analysis, whether they are structural or agent-orientated, or whether they are constructivist, rationalist or cognitive/psychological. At the same time, FPA has a rich tradition of efforts at theoretical integration, which indeed have been singled out by Hudson (2007) as the “true promise” of FPA. However, FPA is still largely an ‘American social science’. In American IR, FPA is a well established sub-discipline: it is one of the largest sections of the International Studies Association and it has its own journal, aptly named ‘Foreign Policy Analysis’. In European IR, in contrast, FPA tends to be somewhat at the margins. The section, therefore, is meant to strengthen the profile of FPA in European IR and to foster the exchange between scholars in Europe and beyond who are engaged in it. In particular, the section seeks to explore the contributions which ‘European’ FPA can make to the discipline and possible ways of strengthening the links to ‘American’ FPA. To this purpose, we invite panels that elaborate on different theoretical perspectives in FPA, address the challenge of theoretical integration in the field or apply theories of FPA to specific empirical puzzles. As regards methods, the section espouses a pluralist perspective and welcomes panels and papers of any methodological orientation.
