431. The Foreign Policy Decision Making Approaches and Their Applications Case Study: Bush, Obama and Trump’s Decision Making towards Afghanistan and the Region
- Author:
- Sharifullah Dorani
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Rest: Journal of Politics and Development
- Institution:
- Centre for Strategic Research and Analysis (CESRAN)
- Abstract:
- Students of International Relations (IR) and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) have been confused as to what factors influence foreign policy. FPA focuses mostly on human decision-makers. However, generally speaking, IR theories, realism in particular, instead have focused mostly on the nation-state as the level of analysis to explain foreign policy or foreign policy behaviour. Both fields have found shortcomings within each other. The author of this article, however, applied a number of decision-making approaches from FPA to inform his study of George W. Bush, Barrack Obama and Donald Trump Administrations’ decision-making towards Afghanistan and the broader region and found the discipline of FPA to be extremely helpful. Based on the personal experience of the author, this article attempts to provide a comprehensive introduction to FPA with the aim that students of IR and FPA learn answers to the following questions: What is FPA? How is FPA different from IR? How can decision- making approaches from FPA be employed to inform a foreign policy choice? What (and how) methods can be used to access primary and secondary sources? What are the weaknesses of FPA and is it applicable as an analytical framework outside of the United States (US) or the West (in a country like Afghanistan)? The main objective is to make it easier for students to learn how to apply approaches from FPA as analytical frameworks to analyse a foreign policy decision.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Military Strategy, Leadership, and Bureaucracy
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Middle East, North America, and United States of America