Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in International Relations

This edited volume analyzes mistakes in different areas of international relations including the realms of security, foreign policy, finance, health, development, environmental policy and migration. By starting out from a broad concept of mistakes as “something [considered to have] gone wrong” the edited volume enables comparisons of various kinds of mistakes from a range of analytical perspectives, including objectivist and interpretivist approaches, in order to draw out answers to the following guiding questions:

• How does one identify and research a mistake?

• Why do mistakes happen?

• How are actors made responsible?

• When and how do actors learn from mistakes?

This book will be of great interest to scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as practitioners in International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, Security Studies, International Political Economy, and Diplomatic History.

Andreas Kruck is Assistant Professor of Global Governance at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany.

Kai Oppermann is Reader in Politics at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom.

Alexander Spencer is Professor for International Relations at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany.