ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the narrative construction of foreign policy failures. It discusses a method of narrative analysis that can be used to study failure constructions in foreign policy. The chapter starts from the observation that foreign policy failures are not objective facts of life, but contested social constructions. Specifically, failure constructions involve discursive struggles between competing narratives that support or reject the constitution of foreign policy as a failure. If failure narratives prevail in this contest, foreign policy comes to be seen as a failure. From this ontological vantage point on foreign policy failures, the chapter develops a method of narrative analysis that foregrounds the narrative elements of setting, characterization and emplotment. For each of these narrative elements, it draws out the main discursive features of failure narratives in foreign policy. Finally, the chapter interrogates different explanations for success or failure in narrative struggles over failure constructions in foreign policy and demonstrates that such explanations can focus on the levels of the narrator, the story or the audience. The discussion concludes with pointers to future research about narrative learning from failure.
