ABSTRACT
The field of International Relations (IR) split in the 1950s into two parts: Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and the study of International Politics (IP) as seen from a systemic point of view. 1 At the core of this split was the opening up of the state, previously regarded in IR as a black box whose contents were of interest only to Political Scientists. Foreign policy analysts opened up the box in order to explain state behavior. In a nutshell, FPA directs attention to the attributes of states as units in order to reach conclusions about their relations. In contrast, IP focuses its attention on the relations of states, as a system, in order to learn about the system’s attributes. One proceeds from the parts to the whole, the other from the whole to the parts. Once FPA had “moved inside the bo.”(Figure 1.1), scholars on each side saw little need for each other, and the two subfields began to grow apart.
