United States Foreign Policy (USFP)

This section will consider the central issues raised by American foreign policy (AFP) in the post-Cold War and War on Terror era(s). The section aims to assemble papers from scholars working on AFP outside of the United States - though not exclusively (US-based scholars are also invited to submit proposals). American foreign policy scholarship outside North America, generally, and within Europe, especially, is relatively underdeveloped (there has been no ECPR section dedicated to AFP until now), despite much strong work in this area. The practical consequence of this is the body of research on American foreign policy too often obscured through a European normative prism. The distinctiveness - or exceptionalism - of the United States as a foreign policy actor is often dismissed rather than subjected to rigorous analysis. The section will assess why this is the case and how European scholarship on American foreign policy can be better integrated into research extant in the United States. We propose to hold five panels which address the central issues of American foreign policy in its analytical and normative contexts. As such, papers which pursue synthetic analytical and/or normative agendas (or both) will be welcomed. Panels will assess the current state of scholarship (especially within Europe and/or outside North America) dedicated to American foreign policy; differences in the conceptualisation of force use between the United States and Europe; the ongoing Iraq insurgency and the issues surrounding American foreign policy in the 'greater Middle East'; the interconnectedness of domestic politics and American foreign policy, particularly after the November 2004 elections; and the relevance of 'exceptionalism' and 'imperialism' as descriptors of and analytical tools used to understand American global power. The panels will fall broadly into the foregoing areas. Case studies and papers which elucidate the current state of international relations with reference to the centrality of AFP will be especially welcomed.