ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to trace the development of social construction as an approach within International Relations (IR) theory. I start from the premise t hat a priori, social constructivism should be particularly relevant to foreign policy analysis (FPA), precisely because social construction starts from the assumption that actors make their worlds, and this assumption lies behind most of the foreign policy analysis literature. Foreign policy is what states make of it, to paraphrase Alexander Wendt. Thus, in contrast to those international relations approaches that focused on the structure of the international system as a cause of state behavior, foreign policy analysis starts from the perspective of the state-as-actor, and then looks inside that particular black box. In Singer’s terminology, foreign policy analysis is a state-level account of world politics as distinct from a systems-level account. Indeed, as Singer noted in his celebrated discussion of this issue, one of the complications of the state-as-level-of-analysis was that it raised the question of how to treat the perceptions and intentions of those officials who made state policy (Singer 1961, 85–90). Regardless of how one interprets the phenomenological issues that lie at the heart of that particular question, it is nonetheless clear that foreign policy is a realm of (albeit limited) choice: actors interpret, decide, pronounce, and implement. Even if they do so through powerful belief systems or operational codes, or as a result of small group dynamics or groupthink, or as a response to their bureaucratic political setting, they nonetheless act. Foreign policy analysis is at the very least an arena of individual action, even if that action has structural or social drivers. Foreign policy is at least in part an act of construction; it is what the actors decide it will be. Social construction and foreign policy analysis look made for one another.
