Methods of foreign policy analysis: Charting ground, engaging traditions, and opening up boundaries

Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) has become a major subfield of International Relations (IR). Contemporary FPA applies a broad range of approaches, drawing on IR’s meta-theories as well as domestic-level, psychological, and cognitive theories of foreign policy decision-making. This gives testament to a considerable diversity as FPA has established a panoply of relations to other disciplines and sciences that enrich its analytical capabilities. Despite the achieved level of sophistication though, debates about methods and approaches have remained at the margins of FPA. Based on a review of current trends in the discipline and the necessity to engage with ever-increasing complexity of foreign policies and politics, puzzles, and data, this introductory chapter charts the structure of a pluralist, encompassing compendium of FPA methods. In doing so, the handbook that this chapter is part of lays the foundations for a discussion of methods in their concrete application on foreign policy while providing methodical nuts and bolts for prospective users.