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Role Theory in International Relations provides a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of recent theoretical scholarship on foreign policy roles and extensive empirical analysis of role behaviour of a variety of states in the current era of eroding American hegemony. Taking stock of the evolution of role theory within foreign policy analysis, international relations and social science theory, the authors probe role approaches in combination with IR concepts such as socialization, learning and communicative action. They draw upon comparative case studies of foreign policy roles of states (the United States, Japan, PR China, Germany, France, UK, Poland, Sweden, and Norway) and international institutions (NATO, EU) to assess NATO's transformation, the EU as a normative power as well as the impact of China's rise on U.S. hegemony under the Bush and Obama administrations. The chapters also offer compelling theoretical arguments about the nexus between foreign policy role change and the evolution of the international society. This important new volume advances current role theory scholarship, offering concrete theoretical suggestions of how foreign policy analysis and IR theory could benefit from a closer integration of role theory. It will be of great interest to all scholars and students of international relations, foreign policy and international politics.

Providing regional and global security governance is both increasingly common and controversial in Germany. The paper addresses the sources of current controversies in three areas: First, legal limits that emanate from the delegation of competences in regional and international institutions. Secondly, financial limits which have become even more prevalent since the inception of the Euro-Crisis. And thirdly, political limits which refer to the erosion of the cross-partisan consensus in German coalition governments that the country must play a prominent, if not a leadership role in European security governance and beyond.

The paper suggests a dialogue between role theory and foreign policy learning literature. I argue that role theory, when conceptualized in the interactionist tradition of George Herbert Mead, can contribute analytical clarity to the literature on policy learning. By specifying role theory to account for various modes of "role taking," the constitutive social effects of individual or organizational learning for a given community become apparent. Furthermore, an interactionist reading of role theory advances the concept of "role taking" by complementing it with "role making." While the former connects societal expectations and individual or collective self-expectations and behavior, the later conceives learning as the interaction between individual creativity and societal expectation in the process of "as-if role taking." The illustrative cases of role making and taking reveal the creative effects of role making while accounting for the constraining impact of institutions and communal expectations. I conclude that role theory and (foreign policy) learning are powerful explanatory tools, but only if they are integrated to bridge the gap between agent and structure. Adapted from the source document.