ABSTRACT
The authors of this book have recognized the dramatic changes that emerged in the international system during the 2010s. This chapter will focus on the capacity of the US and the EU to deal with those changes. My argument is that, because of the dysfunction in their domestic decision-making processes, the two largest democratic powers and blocs had difficulties in dealing with the challenges of an unprecedented transformation of the international system. I will base my argument on a theoretical perspective which is different from the mainly IR perspective used by the authors of this book. This perspective is called foreign policy analysis (FPA) and it stresses the importance of domestic politics in order to understand the international behaviour of democratic actors such as the US and the EU. The interaction between unprecedented global changes and decision-making paralysis at the domestic level has weakened or impaired (although in different degrees) the capability of the US and the EU to significantly affect the solution of international conflicts.
