Premises, Promises, and Problems of Comparative Foreign Policy

Abstract

What is comparative foreign policy? This article outlines the background for the advent of comparative foreign policy as a subfield within the field of international relations. It describes the main approaches represented. In particular, the problems relating to the development of frameworks for empirical research and the application of comparative method to the study of foreign policy are discussed. It is claimed that of the three levels: theory, method, and research technique, theory is weak and methods not sufficiently considered. It is further argued that there is a need for closer interaction between theoretical and empirical work and for the development of an explicit comparative methodology to serve as the link between theory and the application of research techniques to empirical data.