Description
This paper looks to consider an interpretive narrative approach to foreign policy (FP) roles. Much attention has been given to interpretive approaches to foreign policy analysis (FPA), in particular the way that FP traditions can be used to explain the web of historical beliefs of FP actors. However, traditions struggle to explain FP dilemmas, which are unusual or new circumstance. Dilemmas require agents to reimagine traditions to facilitate such contexts. One way that the interaction between traditions and dilemmas are articulated is in the changes in the narration of FP roles by agents. This paper will elaborate on this process by considering role emergence as a theoretical construct for understanding the interaction between traditions and dilemmas. As such, it seeks to evaluate the conceptual alignment between role emergence and interpretive narrative methodologies in FPA by considering the conditions of both dilemmas and role emergence. It will do so by delimiting traditions and roles in the case of emergence of British FP roles in the context of Brexit and the Salisbury poisonings. Overall, this will aid integration of role theory within the wider interpretive narrative methodological approach to FPA.
