CIAO DATE: 11/03

The State of International Relations Research and Perspectives in Germany

Gunther Hellmann, editor
August 2003

Theory-Oriented Foreign Policy Analysis in an Era of Change by Sebastian Harnisch

Abstract

The article advances the argument that theory development in the study of foreign policy can be better understood in generational terms rather than in paradigmatic terms where one paradigm supplants a competing one. The generational metaphor suggests that the demise of the Cold War and the interpretive turn in the social sciences have shaped a „new generation” of foreign policy analysis while leaving traditional theoretical families (more or less) intact. As constructivists and other post-positivist foreign policy analysts both mix with and supplement rationalistic approaches the polarized debates of the past were transformed into a multifaceted theoretical discourse in the 1990s that undermines earlier notions of a cohesive subdiscipline of foreign policy analysis. In conclusion, the article holds that this diversity of approaches is useful because it reinvigorates debate between students of foreign policy and explores alleys to reintegrate the field into political science at large.