Professor

Stephanie Hofmann

 

Assistant:

Jovana Carapic

 

Description

This course is an introduction to ways of thinking critically about foreign policy analysis. With the help of historical as well as current examples, we will open up the “black box” of the State and question the statist approaches to foreign policy. We will decompose the State into a set of organisations and institutions and assess their weight in foreign policy formulation.

 

How is foreign policy made? And who makes foreign policy? Can foreign policy actors’ achievements best be described as rational responses to the constraints and opportunities existing in their external environment? Or do factors internal to collective entities – the mindsets and psychological predispositions of political leaders, public opinion, economic interest groups, political culture, political structure, and other factors – play a significant role? How do external and internal factors interact in the processes leading to foreign policy actions? Is the foreign policy-making process different in times of crisis than at other times?

These are the kinds of questions we will explore in this seminar on Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). We examine a variety of alternative theoretical models of how actors formulate and implement their foreign policies. Our orientation is more theoretical than substantive. In other words, in our discussions we focus on the sources of foreign policy rather than its content, on policy inputs and the decision-making process rather than on policy outputs. As the field of FPA is multifaceted, we follow a loose levels-of-analysis framework to organize our survey of the literature. In addition, we will systematically explore the feasibility and desirability of theoretical integration in FPA as well as between FPA and theories of International Relations (IR).

 

NOTE: All students must buy this book by teh first day of class, and read it as soon as possible!

Steve Coll. 2004. Ghost Wars. The secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin Books.

Throughout the semester, you might want to watch the following movies. Should there be enough interest, we could meet one evening in Rigot and watch one of the movies together.

• Fog of War
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
•  Karl Rove, The Architect, Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/architect/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid

(1) Active participation in the seminar discussions is required. Students are expected to attend every class having done the required readings in advance, and to participate actively in discussions.

(2) Once during the semester each student will be assigned the role of “authors’ defendant” and should be able to defend the merits of the week’s readings in seminar. The authors’ defendant will start of the class with a presentation of the major merits of each article.

(3) Each student will write two discussion papers in advance of our class. These papers should range between two and three double-spaced pages, and should be circulated to the entire class via email no later than one day before the class. They should not summarize the weekly readings, but develop an argument around a particular theme of the readings of the week as well as offer some discussion questions. In addition, they will apply the theoretical / analytical part of the readings to the case of U.S. actions in Afghanistan before 9/11 (most of the information can be drawn from Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars”).

(4) Take-home exam. There will be a final take-home exam due in the last week of the semester. The questions will be provided one week before the exam is due.

Assignments (2) and (3) must be completed on separate weeks; otherwise said, you cannot fulfill both requirements with the same readings.

For purposes of evaluation, the exam is worth 50%, seminar participation counts for 20%, and the short discussion papers and “author’s defendant” assignment are each worth 10%.