Foreign Policy Analysis and Public Policy

Kurzfassung/Abstract

This chapter discusses what cross-fertilization between Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and Public Policy scholarship can look like based on two empirical phenomena that are of interest to both fields: policy change and policy failures. The chapter shows how the incorporation of insights from one field to the other can contribute to getting a firmer conceptual and empirical grasp of these phenomena, thereby advancing our understanding of both policy-making processes and outcomes. More specifically, it argues that, on the one hand, insights from FPA can lend nuance to theories of the policy process with respect to grasping the role of political leaders as agents of change or drivers of failure, and that, on the other hand, insights from Public Policy can contribute to FPA by providing a better conceptualization and operationalization of ‘change’ and ‘failure’ and by helping to systematize the political processes that lead to those outcomes in the first place.