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The past decade has witnessed the investment of considerable energy and ingenuity in the refinement of the categories of foreign policy determinants proposed in James Rosenau's famous essay, "Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy." A sizable literature on foreign policy behavior is now developing, based upon empirical tests of the explanatory power of such variables as size, wealth, degree of political accountability, decision-maker attributes, environmental stimuli, etc. Surprisingly little attention in the field of comparative foreignpolicy, however, has been directed at specifying more precisely and in operational form the concept ofissue area—an important component of Rosenau's "pre-theory" and an analytic concept that has received much attention in the public policy field. Moreover, among those scholars who do employ the concept there is little consensus as to the merits of a content based as opposed to a process oriented treatment of issue area or to the implications for empirical research of selecting one approach over the other. This essay seeks: 1) to review the foreign policy literature that attaches major importance to issue area; 2) to assess the merits of alternative treatments of the concept in terms of their contribution to the development of a theory of comparative foreign policy; and 3) to specify the conditions under which different issue area approaches can be used most profitably in comparative foreign policy research.

Six articles addressing the multiplicity of methodological perspectives currently used & available to foreign policy analysis are presented. In the Introduction, symposium editor Jean A. Garrison articulates the need for contemporary studies to establish novel concepts that will overcome current obstacles in foreign policy analysis. In Foreign Policy Analysis in the Twenty-First Century: Back to Comparison, Forward to Identity and Ideas, Juliet Kaarbo recommends that foreign policy analysis adopt methodological frameworks that are either comparative in nature or address the relationship between identity & ideas. In Foreign Policy Analysis and Globalization: Public Opinion, World Opinion, and the Individual, Douglas Foyle contends that foreign policy analysis must consider the influence that public & world opinion & the global community possess over states' foreign policies in order to better account for the movement of people, capital, & ideas across international boundaries. In Science, Empiricism, and Tolerance in the Study of Foreign Policymaking, Mark Schafer suggests that foreign policy analysts demonstrate greater tolerance for certain subfields & methodological perspectives & that scholarship utilize three empirical techniques -- computer-oriented textual evaluation, state-level psychology, & experimental perspectives. In Foreign Policymaking and Group Dynamics: Where We've Been and Where We're Going, Garrison reviews existing research on group decision making to determine future applications of foreign policy analysis & investigate how individual cognition becomes assimilated into the decision-making processes of groups. In Crisis Studies and Foreign Policy Analysis: Insights, Synergies, and Challenges, Eric K. Stern notes the contributions that international crisis theory approaches have made to foreign policy analysis & identifies future research topics, eg, determining the limitations of existing deterrence policies. 315 References. J. W. Parker

North American scholars typically do not hesitate to make pronouncements about foreign policy processes and outcomes in other countries. And despite ample evidence to the contrary, the perception that foreign policy analysis is still largely a North American scholarly enterprise persists. Foreign Policy Analysis Beyond North America challenges this perception, providing a rich overview of work by scholars in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and also highlighting theoretical and empirical insights that may catalyze new waves of progress in the field

Starting from the recurrent criticism that role theory is conceptually rich but methodologically poor, this article assesses the potential of interpretive narrative analysis for the methodological development of role theory within foreign policy analysis. It focuses on the methodological side of narratives from an interpretive perspective, so as to detect role conceptions and role change. The symbolic-interactionist role theory framework is already set up to incorporate the elements of doing interpretive narrative analysis from this perspective, because, as Mead (The philosophy of the present, Open Court, La Salle, IL, 1932) argued, agents constantly reinterpret their past as they face an emergent present. This is akin to Bevir and Rhodes' (Interpreting British Governance, Routledge, Abingdon, 2003) interpretive notions of 'traditions' and 'dilemmas'. The potential of narratives is demonstrated by focusing specifically on ruling narrations as advanced by the then President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (1999–2013), to conceive and cement a new role as a revolutionary state.