ABSTRACT
Foreign policy decision-makers in the foreign policy machineries of regional powers are thus “situated agents” who draw on, and sometimes adapt, foreign policy traditions in response to dilemmas. African foreign policy needs, consistently and in a rounded way, to be able to foreground a recommitment to international institutions, the provision of international public goods, more inclusive global problem solving and the insistence on the legitimacy of multilateral diplomacy. African foreign policymaking increasingly has to do with capacitating agency. The proposition made is that culturally grounded foreign policy analysis falls outside the hegemonic norms established by mainstream foreign policy analysis. Ideology, leadership and strategy are domestic indicators of either weak or strong foreign policy choices. African foreign policy issues prompted by the transnational invites responses that are predictably mixed and complex. A material and normative basis for the promotion of social inter-state cohesion at a regional society level has its own foreign policy consequences.
