RBB207_Course-outline.pdfRBB207_Course-outline.pdf

CREDITS 4 (LV) 6 (ECTS) - 64 Contact Hours

What is foreign policy and why study it? How are foreign policy decisions made and how are they implemented? To what extent are psychological influences important in foreign policy decision-making? Are states driven by values or interests? Do economic incentives work? Are negative economic sanctions effective? To what extent is foreign policy driven or at least constrained by mass media and public opinion? To what extent can states rely on cyber instruments in foreign policy? This course attempts to answer these important questions and to provide a systematic overview of theories dealing with foreign policy-making and implementation processes.

 Lectures introduce students to the main foreign policy theories and approaches. Levels of foreign policy analysis and the interplay between domestic and internal sources of foreign policy are also discussed. Seminars are mostly organized around case studies such as the Cuban missile crisis, Yom Kippur War, Bay of Pigs, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula, Western economic sanctions on Russia, Sweden’s feminist foreign policy etc. Some case studies are explicitly related to theories of foreign policy decision making and implementation, while some cases are discussed in their own right. The aim of the seminar classes is to discuss foreign policy cases combining empirical and theoretical aspects of case studies.