The Constructivist Turn Major Questions And Rethinking Social Science And International Relations

The Constructivist Turn: Major Questions and Rethinking Social Science and International Relations

Rethinking Foreign Policy

This edited volume is a tribute to, and a debate with, the scholarship of Walter Carlsnaes and his contribution to the study of foreign policy in both its conceptualization and application. This book probes the theoretical boundaries of Foreign policy analysis, and questions orthodox understandings of the field. It examines the Agency-Structure debate, the question of how human decision-making affects the norms and institutions of international interactions (and vice versa), and analyses how the study of Foreign Policy can be applied to the European Union as a supranational entity devoid of traditional statehood. Contributors offer an in-depth discussion on the intricacies of studying foreign policy, and provide new perspectives on the standing of the EU as a foreign policy entity. Rethinking Foreign Policywill be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Foreign Policy, Global Governance, EU studies, and the work of Walter Carlsnaes.

Rethinking the World

Stunning shifts in the worldviews of states mark the modern history of international affairs: how do societies think about—and rethink—international order and security? Japan's "opening," German conquest, American internationalism, Maoist independence, and Gorbachev's "new thinking" molded international conflict and cooperation in their eras. How do we explain such momentous changes in foreign policy—and in other cases their equally surprising absence? The nature of strategic ideas, Jeffrey W. Legro argues, played a critical and overlooked role in these transformations. Big changes in foreign policies are rare because it is difficult for individuals to overcome the inertia of entrenched national mentalities. Doing so depends on a particular nexus of policy expectations, national experience, and ready replacement ideas. In a sweeping comparative history, Legro explores the sources of strategy in the United States and Germany before and after the world wars, in Tokugawa Japan, and in the Soviet Union. He charts the likely future of American primacy and a rising China in the coming century. Rethinking the World tells us when and why we can expect changes in the way states think about the world, why some ideas win out over others, and why some leaders succeed while others fail in redirecting grand strategy.