Description
This roundtable explores avenues to advance theorising in FPA. While the international and domestic environments of foreign policy have changed radically over recent years, we have only seen relatively modest innovations in FPA’s theoretical toolkit. It seems timely, therefore, to develop and critically assess possible new directions in FPA theorising. To this purpose, the roundtable will explore, for example, the implications of the increasing politicisation of foreign policy and how this can be theorised. Particular emphasis in this regard will be placed on the rise of populism on the one hand and the rise of feminist concerns/feminist foreign policy on the other hand. The participants will also ask whether our (Western) understanding of the state and statehood is an appropriate point of departure for theorising foreign policy making, as well as the extent to which processes of regional integration might urge us to change our understanding of typically state-focused foreign policy making. A related issue is how Western-centred FPA theories can be advanced by insights from the global south. A final question is whether, and how, the recent wave of leader-oriented IR scholarship can be brought into conversation with the extant FPA literatures on leaders in foreign policy.
