Afterword

Abstract

The study of foreign policy attracts theorists and policy analysts alike. Theorists approach foreign policy analysis as a mechanism for understanding the causal and contextual factors shaping national choice and, perhaps more importantly, as a means for empirically verifying a particular theoretical position. The efforts of analysts, on the other hand, are usually expended on advocating a particularly policy path or criticizing a path taken. Both theorists and policy analysts tend to concentrate on a single state’s foreign policy toward a region or particular policy issue-area or a specific dyad of states. Foreign policy analysis in the transatlantic context, for example, usually adopts either an American or European vantage point for understanding episodes of conflict and collaboration, while those focusing on intra-European relations often pay particular attention to the progress toward or regression from European integration. Foreign policy analyses placed in the service of a particular theoretical position are likely to suppress the empirically inconvenient, while those tailored to policy are unlikely to be encumbered by theory even though they are as likely as not to be unconsciously riding some theorist’s hobbyhorse.