Foreign Policy Analysis beyond North America Boulder by Klaus Brummer and Valerie M. Hudson,eds.

Reviewed by: Edelgard Mahant, Glendon College, York University

Foreign policy analysis (FPA) is still largely dominated by scholars based in the US, although there have been some significant contributions by Western European experts. A book that deals with the field as it exists in most of the rest of the world is, therefore, a very welcome addition to the literature. This edited volume includes chapters on China, Japan, India, Africa, the Arab world, Latin America, and finally, North America and Europe, which are lumped together in one last chapter.

The editors were faced with the problem that FPA in the American sense does not exist in much of the rest of the world, and the contributors dealt with this dilemma with varying degrees of success. Those focusing on countries or areas where there is a growing body of literature in the FPA tradition had the easiest time. Huiyun Feng’s excellent chapter on China demonstrates how Chinese scholars have related their analyses of the foreign policy of various countries to traditional Chinese philosophies. Chinese scholars have also written about identity building in new countries, a core concept of constructivism. Rita Giacalone, writing about Latin America, successfully analyzes a rich literature that not only applies theories developed elsewhere (realism, historical institutionalism, Marxism) but also develops new theoretical concepts such as peripheral neo-realism and peripheral neo-idealism.

Amelia Hadfield and Valerie Hudson, writing about North America and Europe, had the largest corpus of literature to read and draw on. Their chapter makes a useful distinction between Foreign Policy Analysis (American) and Analysis of Foreign Policy (AFP) (European). They identify several characteristics of AFP: a tendency to draw on international relations, rather than political science, theory; a tendency to analyze the foreign policy of European states in terms of their role in the EU; and the American effort to predict in contrast to the European search for understanding. The chapter, however, has its weaknesses. The writers are fond of esoteric terms (nomothetic, hybridity, mesoscopic) that will drive most readers to their online dictionaries. Worse, I did not notice a single reference to any work by Central and East European or Russian scholars, here or elsewhere in the book.

Sumit Ganguly and Manjeet Pardesi, writing about India, had a difficult time. There appears to be no Indian academic literature in the FPA tradition. Much of what is written attempts to be policy relevant and is based on realism, often without the writer consciously realizing that this is what s/he is doing. Ganguly and Pardesi point out that Jawaharlal Nehru’s foreign policy had an ideational component, but this does not tell us much about foreign policy scholarship in India. And unlike their Chinese counterparts, Indian scholars have made little or no attempt to draw on traditional Indian thinkers and apply their ideas to contemporary FPA.

Raymond Hinnebusch, writing about the Arab world, begins with a promising analysis of Bahgat Korany’s work on the role of leadership in the foreign policy of some Arab states, but soon falls into a discussion of the foreign policy of Arab states, rather than FPA as practised there (or not). He also neglects to mention that Korany is a Canadian of Egyptian origin and thus not truly a scholar who works within the Arab world. Foreign policies of the Arab states provide a rich field for the study of identity politics, an opportunity to which Hinnebusch devotes only one paragraph (86).

Sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, includes many states with large universities where scholarship flourishes (notably Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa). However, in his chapter on Africa, Korwa Adar makes little attempt to draw on that scholarship. He writes about regional organizations in Africa and the role they play in the making of African foreign policies. Likewise, Yukiko Miyagi writes about decision-making in Japanese foreign policy and does not discuss FPA until she reaches the conclusion of her chapter.

Most of Brummer’s conclusion summarizes what is in the book, and he turns to recommendations for future research only in the last two-and-a-half pages. Here, he begins by pointing out how American scholars can benefit from learning what happens in the rest of the world of foreign policy scholarship. ¹ He continues by setting up the North American model as one the rest of the world should follow, beginning with the use of the English language, a truly alarming suggestion. He also focuses on the International Studies Association as a means for achieving better interchange among scholars, to the exclusion of many other organizations that are active in this field.

Lastly, the entire book focuses on some aspects of FPA, notably the major theories of international relations, decision-making in foreign policy, and the psychology of leaders, and, to a limited extent, also on political culture. Political culture constitutes one part of the much wider field of comparative politics, and what this and most other American studies of FPA do not do is draw on insights from comparative politics. Indeed, FPA differs from other subfields of international relations in that it can draw on the vast and rich field of comparative politics. Interestingly, few articles in the journal Foreign Policy Analysis relate foreign policy to comparative politics whereas the December 2014 issue of the International Studies Quarterly included three articles on democracy and foreign policy. This is an area that could improve the scope and depth of FPA and will help Americans to reach out to scholars in other countries, where such studies are already being done.