Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods

The disintegration and questioning of global governance structures and a re-orientation toward national politics combined with the spread of technological innovations such as big data, social media, and phenomena like fake news, populism, or questions of global health policies make it necessary for the introduction of new methods of inquiry and the adaptation of established methods in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). This accessible handbook offers concise chapters from expert international contributors covering a diverse range of new and established FPA methods. Embracing methodological pluralism and a belief in the value of an open discussion about methods’ assumptions and diverging positions, it provides new, state-of-the-art research approaches, as well as introductions to a range of established methods. Each chapter follows the same approach, introducing the method and its development, discussing strengths, requirements, limitations, and potential pitfalls while illustrating the method’s application using examples from empirical research. Embracing methodological pluralism and problem-oriented research that engages with real-world questions, the authors examine quantitative and qualitative traditions, rationalist and interpretivist perspectives, as well as different substantive backgrounds. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students in global politics, foreign policy, and methods-related classes across the social sciences.

Chapters 4, 25 and 32 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Patrick A. Mello is Assistant Professor of International Security at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His most recent book is Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application (Georgetown University Press, 2021) and he has published, among other journals, in the European Journal of International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, and the European Political Science Review.

Falk Ostermann is Lecturer at Kiel University. He studies the domestic contestation of foreign policy with a focus on military interventions. He is the author of Security, Defense Discourse and Identity in NATO and Europe. How France Changed Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2019) and of Die NATO (UVK/UTB, 2020). He has published, among others, in the European Political Science Review, Foreign Policy Analysis, or West European Politics.