Kai Oppermann
Biographic Data
| ID | 1233290 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kai Oppermann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kai |
| FAMILY NAME | Oppermann |
| SIGNATURE | OPPERMANN K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chemnitz University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5336-5930 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 56 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 355 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Conceptualising transnational politicisation in international affairs: The Turkish diaspora in Germany and the politicisation of German–Turkish relations
This article contributes to IR scholarship on the domestic politicisation of international affairs, focusing on transnational actors and mechanisms through which international issues can become politicised domestically. It conceptualises transnational politicisation as cross-boundary processes that draw international issues into the realm of domestic political choice and contestation. The analysis zooms in on diaspora groups as an exemplary case …
Great power competition for global leadership in artificial intelligence (AI): Reconstructing AI narratives of the United States, China, and the European Union
The article examines artificial intelligence (AI) narratives of the three most important powers in the emerging global AI order – the US, China, and the EU. It argues that these narratives are central to constructing the meanings ascribed to AI in international politics and therefore to understanding the global competition for AI leadership. Specifically, the article uses a method of narrative analysis to reconstruct the AI narratives of the thre…
(Re-)Setting the World Stage: Role Theory and Transitional Orders
This article offers a role theoretical perspective on transitional orders, the liminal space between one order and the next. Role theory understands international order as an evolving role system, in which states seek and reject roles for themselves and others. We argue that established international orders can be destabilized by widespread role change dynamics, giving rise to transitional orders that are marked by deep uncertainty about availabl…
Dynamics of politicisation and de-politicisation in foreign policy: The case of German military support for Ukraine
Foreign Policy Analysis
Foreign Policy Analysis provides a guide to core foreign policy approaches, drawing insights from international relations and non-Western perspectives. Chapters put theoretical approaches front and centre without neglecting the right connection with international relations theories. This book challenges Western-centric perspectives on foreign policy analysis and reflects the rise of non-Western scholarship in the field. After an introduction to t…
Unpacking Altercasting in Role Theory: The Biden Administration's Policy of Altercasting Germany into a Faithful Ally Role in Relations with China
The article contributes to scholarship on symbolic interactionist role theory in Foreign Policy Analysis, focusing on the concept of altercasting. Altercasting refers to verbal and non-verbal state behaviors in a role relationship to cast another state into roles that are complementary to its own roles. The article suggests putting more attention on the agency of the actor “doing” the altercasting to gain a better understanding of how altercastin…
Laughing at Failure or Failing to Laugh: Humour as a Strategy for Dealing With Foreign Policy Failure
The paper considers the role of humour in dealing with failure in foreign policy and brings insights together from the studies of policy failure, humour studies, customer service management and crisis communication. It investigates how research in customer service management and crisis communication points to the use of humour as an additional strategy for dealing with foreign policy failure. This research has provided valuable insights into the …
German Foreign Policy Under the Merkel IV Government: The Role of Party Political Contestation Within the ‘Grand Coalition
The article takes stock of German foreign policy under the Merkel IV government and adopts an analytical perspective that zooms in on the role of coalition politics. Specifically, it explores the impact of party-political contestation inside the ‘grand coalition’ both between (inter-party contestation) and within (intra-party contestation) the coalition partners on the foreign policy record of the Merkel IV government. In the empirical analysis, …
What if? Counterfactual Trump and the western response to the war in Ukraine
Because of his personality, had Donald Trump won the 2020 election the remarkable and unexpected united response by NATO allies to the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened. Relying on leader personality research in foreign policy, we demonstrate this by using the counterfactual method of analysis. Specifying key differences between Biden's and Trump's personalities in terms of their experiences, traits and beliefs, we…
Drivers of Consensus: Responses to Brexit in Germany, France, Ireland and Poland
Brexit was potentially a highly divisive issue for the EU27 with states having different relationships with the UK. And yet in the period from the UK’s referendum in 2016 until the exit of the UK in 2020, the EU27 maintained a remarkable degree of unity. This article examines relative EU27 unity in the face of the Brexit process. The article is based on interviews and other research on four selected EU member states: Germany, France, Poland and I…
Visualising state biographical narratives: A rhetorical analysis of Chinese and North Korean propaganda photographs
Biographical narratives generate a continuous sense of political community across the state's past, present and future, and provide the state with ontological security. Building on growing International Relations scholarship that highlights the power of visuals in shaping global politics, our article proposes visual rhetorical analysis as a tool to interrogate how governments employ images to tell their biographical narratives. The rhetorical app…
Narrative Analysis
The chapter outlines the possibilities, merits, and limits of narrative analysis as a method in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). It argues that narratives play an essential role in the construction of politics in general and foreign policy in particular. Narratives are central in situations in which behavior and decisions need to be explained and justified in front of an audience. The chapter gives an overview of the existing literature on narrativ…
Photographs as Instruments of Public Diplomacy: China’s Visual Storytelling during the Covid-19 Pandemic
This article explores the effectiveness of photographs as instruments of public diplomacy through an analysis of China’s visual storytelling during the Covid-19 outbreak. Beijing considered the pandemic an existential threat to its image and responded with a communications offensive that was designed to highlight the regime’s success in containing the Coronavirus — both at home and abroad — and to safeguard the wider ‘China story’ of a ‘peace-lov…
Propaganda photographs as a tool of North Korean public diplomacy: An experimental analysis of the Kim Jong-un effect
A growing body of research shows that the pariah regime of North Korea—as other countries too—cares about how it is perceived internationally. However, so far, we know very little about how effective North Korea’s strategic efforts are in improving its image among foreign audiences. As a first step toward addressing this gap, we employ a rigorous survey experiment among a representative sample of US adults (N = 800) to demonstrate that propaganda…
Narratives of digital sovereignty in German political discourse
Digital sovereignty has become a prominent concept in European digital policy, and Germany stands out as its leading advocate in Europe. How digital sovereignty is being understood in German politics is therefore highly relevant for broader policy debates on the European level. This motivates the main objective of the article to map out the different meanings that are attributed to digital sovereignty in German political discourse. Specifically, …
Poliheuristic Theory and Germany’s (Non-)Participation in Multinational Military Interventions. The Non-compensatory Principle, Coalition Politics and Political Survival
This article employs the poliheuristic theory of decision-making (PHT) to analyse German decisions to participate in, or abstain from, multinational military operations. PHT represents one of the leading theoretical efforts at bridging the cognitive-rationalist divide in foreign policy analysis. The theory posits a two-stage model of foreign policy-making: in the first stage, actors rely on a non-compensatory strategy as a cognitive shortcut to e…
Mapping party support for EU referendums after Brexit: Results from an expert survey
The article maps party support for national EU-related referendums across the EU after Brexit. It is motivated by conflicting expectations about the trajectory of EU referendum politics in the post-Brexit environment which foreground either possible contagion or deterrent effects of the Brexit referendum. Against this background, the article explores the scope of party support for EU referendums in EU member states, which types of political parti…
Role Theory, Foreign Policy, and the Social Construction of Sovereignty: Brexit Stage Right
The international roles states play in world politics are bound up with the ways in which sovereignty is constructed within the international system. While scholarship on sovereignty has recognized its social construction, and role research emphasizes social interactions as shaping roles and role behaviors, little work has explored the relationship between sovereignty and roles. Linking roles and sovereignty offers a distinct perspective on the s…
British foreign policy after Brexit: Losing Europe and finding a role
British foreign policy stands at a turning point following the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum. Drawing on role theory, we trace the United Kingdom’s efforts to establish new foreign policy roles as it interacts with the concerned international actors. We find that the pro-Brexit desire to ‘take back control’ has not yet translated into a cogent foreign policy direction. In its efforts to avoid adopting the role of isolate, the United Kingdom has projec…
Who Gets What in Foreign Affairs? Explaining the Allocation of Foreign Ministries in Coalition Governments
In coalition governments, political parties are concerned not only with how many but also with which departments they control. The foreign ministry is among the most highly considered prizes in coalition negotiations. This article develops hypotheses to explain under which conditions the foreign ministry is likely to be allocated to a ‘junior coalition partner’. The factors that are hypothesized to affect the allocation are: the relative size of …
The party politics of learning from failure: The German Greens and the lessons drawn from the 2013 general election
Exploring the party political learning of the German Greens, a powerful agent of environmental policy in European politics, we identify the strategic and programmatic lessons learned from their failure in the 2013 general elections and explain the party politics that facilitated these lessons. We advance research on learning from failures by understanding failures not as objective facts but as constructed in political discourse. Tracing the main …
Clashing Traditions: German Foreign Policy in a New Era
A series of crises over the last decade have put pressure on Europe's fundamental ordering principles. In response, German policymakers have scrambled to reinterpret Germany's foreign policy for a new era. To understand this process, the authors utilize an interpretivist approach, analyzing the discourse of German foreign policymakers through the lens of four traditions of thought informing debates: regionalism, pacifism, realism, and hegemonism.…
Introduction: Special issue on EU-induced policy change in Turkey’s environment and energy policy
In view of Turkey’s increasing distance from the European Union (EU), the continued partial alignment with EU standards is often attributed either to domestic factors, or to diffusion processes induced by external actors other than the EU. Against this background, in this special issue, we explore the extent to which reforms in Turkey’s environment and energy policy are (still) influenced by the EU. This introduction briefly reviews the Turkey re…
Narrative genres of Brexit: The Leave campaign and the success of romance
This article argues that the Leave narrative was successful in the 2016 referendum in part because it conformed to one of the well-established narrative genres of tragedy, comedy, satire and romance. These genres are story telling conventions that orientate audiences and guide the interpretation of the story being told. Specifically, the article shows that the Leave campaign constructed a largely consistent romantic narrative, while the Remain ca…
Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Navigating Domestic and International Expectations on German Foreign Policy
This article takes stock of German foreign policy during Angela Merkel's third term in office (2013–17). It argues that the longer-term significance of Germany's foreign policy during this period is twofold. First, the Merkel government was confronted with multiple European and international crises which worked as a magnifying glass for the growing international expectations on Germany to become more actively engaged on the international stage. S…
Telling stories of failure: Narrative Constructions of Foreign Policy Fiascos
The contribution introduces narrative analysis as a discourse analytical method for investigating the social construction of foreign policy fiascos. Based on insights from literary studies and narratology it shows that stories of failure include a number of key elements, including a particular setting which defines appropriate behaviour; the negative characterization of agents; as well as an emplotment of the ‘fiasco’ through the attribution of c…
Narratives of digital sovereignty in German political discourse
Digital sovereignty has become a prominent concept in European digital policy, and Germany stands out as its leading advocate in Europe. How digital sovereignty is being understood in German politics is therefore highly relevant for broader policy debates on the European level. This motivates the main objective of the article to map out the different meanings that are attributed to digital sovereignty in German political discourse. Specifically, …
The politics of discretionary government commitments to European integration referendums
The article develops a two-dimensional typology of political reasons for governments to pledge referendums on European integration when they are not obliged to do so: the first dimension is about the political level at which the strategic use of referendum pledges is targeted and it distinguishes between domestic and European reasons; the second dimension attends to the strategic mode of governments when pledging EU referendums which can either b…
Patterns of Junior Partner Influence on the Foreign Policy of Coalition Governments
Research Highlights and Abstract The main contribution of this article is that it: Introduces a distinction between different pathways for junior partner influence on the foreign policy of coalition governments; Provides nuanced insights into the effects of coalition government on foreign policy as well as on the causal mechanisms behind these effects; Contributes to the ‘unpacking’ of coalitions and the analysis of coalition governance more gene…
National Role Conceptions, Domestic Constraints and the New ‘Normalcy’ in German Foreign Policy: The Eurozone Crisis, Libya and Beyond
German foreign policy can fruitfully be analysed through the lens of a modified two-level framework which identifies three interdependent drivers behind government decision making: the expectations of Germany's international partners, domestic constraints and the national role conceptions of decision-makers. In recent years, the configuration of these three drivers has witnessed a two-fold change. First, there has been a nascent shift towards the…
Narrative genres of Brexit: The Leave campaign and the success of romance
This article argues that the Leave narrative was successful in the 2016 referendum in part because it conformed to one of the well-established narrative genres of tragedy, comedy, satire and romance. These genres are story telling conventions that orientate audiences and guide the interpretation of the story being told. Specifically, the article shows that the Leave campaign constructed a largely consistent romantic narrative, while the Remain ca…
Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Navigating Domestic and International Expectations on German Foreign Policy
This article takes stock of German foreign policy during Angela Merkel's third term in office (2013–17). It argues that the longer-term significance of Germany's foreign policy during this period is twofold. First, the Merkel government was confronted with multiple European and international crises which worked as a magnifying glass for the growing international expectations on Germany to become more actively engaged on the international stage. S…
The Public Salience of Foreign and Security Policy in Britain, Germany and France
The salience of foreign affairs to general publics is an important but often neglected parameter for the role of public opinion in foreign and security policy. This article explores the determinants of foreign affairs' public salience and probes into the respective patterns in Germany, Britain and France. Building on the theory of news values, the article proposes to distinguish between issue-specific and country-specific influences on the public…
Role Theory, Foreign Policy, and the Social Construction of Sovereignty: Brexit Stage Right
The international roles states play in world politics are bound up with the ways in which sovereignty is constructed within the international system. While scholarship on sovereignty has recognized its social construction, and role research emphasizes social interactions as shaping roles and role behaviors, little work has explored the relationship between sovereignty and roles. Linking roles and sovereignty offers a distinct perspective on the s…
Narrating success and failure: Congressional debates on the ‘Iran nuclear deal
This article applies a method of narrative analysis to investigate the discursive contestation over the ‘Iran nuclear deal’ in the US. Specifically, it explores the struggle in the US Congress between narratives constituting the deal as a US foreign policy success or failure. The article argues that foreign policy successes and failures are socially constructed through narratives and suggests how narrative analysis as a discourse-analytical metho…
Thinking Alike? Salience and Metaphor Analysis as Cognitive Approaches to Foreign Policy Analysis: Thinking Alike? Salience and Metaphor Analysis
The article brings together two cognitive approaches to the analysis of foreign policy: salience and metaphor analysis. Issue salience and metaphors relate to cognitive heuristics that speak to different aspects of the cognitive representation of foreign policy problems which complement each other: the concept of salience looks at the priming of issues in the foreign policymaking environment; metaphors relate to the framing of these issues. The a…
Who Gets What in Foreign Affairs? Explaining the Allocation of Foreign Ministries in Coalition Governments
In coalition governments, political parties are concerned not only with how many but also with which departments they control. The foreign ministry is among the most highly considered prizes in coalition negotiations. This article develops hypotheses to explain under which conditions the foreign ministry is likely to be allocated to a ‘junior coalition partner’. The factors that are hypothesized to affect the allocation are: the relative size of …
The Blair Government and Europe: The Policy of Containing the Salience of European Integration
Clashing Traditions: German Foreign Policy in a New Era
A series of crises over the last decade have put pressure on Europe's fundamental ordering principles. In response, German policymakers have scrambled to reinterpret Germany's foreign policy for a new era. To understand this process, the authors utilize an interpretivist approach, analyzing the discourse of German foreign policymakers through the lens of four traditions of thought informing debates: regionalism, pacifism, realism, and hegemonism.…
The ontological security of special relationships: The case of Germany’s relations with Israel
This article suggests studying special relationships in international politics from an ontological security perspective. It argues that conceptualising the partners to special relationships as ontological security seekers provides a promising theoretical angle to address gaps in our understanding of three important dimensions of such relations: their emergence and stability; the processes and practices of maintaining them; and the power relations…
Coalition Governance and Foreign Policy Decision-Making
This article explores processes of coalition governance in foreign policy. Specifically, it argues that such processes are shaped by two interrelated dimensions of coalition set-up: first, the allocation of the foreign ministry to the senior or a junior coalition partner and, second, the degree of policy discretion which is delegated to that ministry. Bringing these two dimensions together, the article distinguishes four types of coalition arrang…
Studying fiascos: Bringing Public and Foreign Policy Together
Video abstractRead the transcriptWatch the video on Vimeo Video abstractRead the transcriptWatch the video on Vimeo
Introduction: Coalition Politics and Foreign Policy
Multi-party coalitions are an increasingly common type of government across different political regimes and world regions. Since they are the locus of national foreign-policy-making, the dynamics of coalition government have significant implications for International Relations. Despite this growing significance, the foreign-policy-making of coalition governments is only partly understood. This symposium advances the study of coalition foreign pol…
Delineating the Scope Conditions of the Poliheuristic Theory of Foreign Policy Decision Making: The Noncompensatory Principle and the Domestic Salience of Foreign Policy
The poliheuristic theory of foreign policy decision making would benefit from being clearer in spelling out the conditions under which it holds more or less analytic promise. The article makes the case that the concept of issue salience can help the theory address its shortcomings in this respect. In particular, the explanatory power of poliheuristic theory's two-stage model largely depends on the noncompensatory principle of major domestic polit…
The Politics of Avoiding Referendums on the Treaty of Lisbon
After the defeat of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE) in the French and Dutch referendums, governments across Europe had little appetite for popular votes on the Lisbon Treaty. Indeed, nine of the ten countries which were committed to (or had held) referendums on the TCE got around such votes on Lisbon. The article investigates how it was possible for governments in these nine countries to avoid putting the treaty to the peo…
What if? Counterfactual Trump and the western response to the war in Ukraine
Because of his personality, had Donald Trump won the 2020 election the remarkable and unexpected united response by NATO allies to the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened. Relying on leader personality research in foreign policy, we demonstrate this by using the counterfactual method of analysis. Specifying key differences between Biden's and Trump's personalities in terms of their experiences, traits and beliefs, we…
The Salience of Foreign Affairs Issues in the German Bundestag
Journal Article The Salience of Foreign Affairs Issues in the German Bundestag Get access Thomas Jäger, Thomas Jäger Institute for Political Science and European AffairsUniversity of CologneCologne, [email protected] (T.J.)/[email protected] (A.H.)/[email protected] (H.V.) Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Kai Oppermann, Kai Oppermann Institute for Political Science and …
Salience and sanctions: A principal-agent analysis of domestic win-sets in two-level games—the case of British European policy under the Blair government
The two-level approach is often criticized for its failure to provide thorough theoretical guidance to the empirical task of establishing the boundaries of governmental win-sets. Addressing this deficit, the article builds upon principal-agent theory to deduce two determinants of win-sets: the salience of a foreign policy issue for a government's domestic principals and the credibility of these principals' threats to sanction their governmental a…
Laughing at Failure or Failing to Laugh: Humour as a Strategy for Dealing With Foreign Policy Failure
The paper considers the role of humour in dealing with failure in foreign policy and brings insights together from the studies of policy failure, humour studies, customer service management and crisis communication. It investigates how research in customer service management and crisis communication points to the use of humour as an additional strategy for dealing with foreign policy failure. This research has provided valuable insights into the …
Visualising state biographical narratives: A rhetorical analysis of Chinese and North Korean propaganda photographs
Biographical narratives generate a continuous sense of political community across the state's past, present and future, and provide the state with ontological security. Building on growing International Relations scholarship that highlights the power of visuals in shaping global politics, our article proposes visual rhetorical analysis as a tool to interrogate how governments employ images to tell their biographical narratives. The rhetorical app…
Transatlantische Beziehungen: Sicherheit - Wirtschaft - Offentlichkeit
Transatlantische Beziehungen: Sicherheit -- Wirtschaft -- Öffentlichkeit
Transatlantic conflict and cooperation: What role for public opinion
Prinzipale und Agenten in Zwei-Ebenen-Spielen
Die innenpolitischen Restriktionen außenpolitischer Entscheidungsprozesse sind ein wichtiger Erklärungsfaktor für das Handeln von Regierungen auf internationaler Ebene. Jedoch besteht in der Außenpolitikforschung gerade bei der Analyse des innerstaatlichen Handlungsspielraums von Regierungen in Zwei-Ebenen-Konstellationen ein erhebliches Theoriedefizit. Es ist das zentrale Anliegen des Bandes, dieses Theoriedefizit zu beheben. Dazu nutzt die Stud…
Prinzipale und Agenten in Zwei-Ebenen-Spielen: Die Innerstaatlichen Restriktionen der Europapolitik Großbritanniens Unter Tony Blair
Prinzipale und Agenten in Zwei-Ebenen-Spielen: Die Innerstaatlichen Restriktionen der Europapolitik Großbritanniens Unter Tony Blair
The Blair Government and Europe: The Policy of Containing the Salience of European Integration
Salience and sanctions: A principal-agent analysis of domestic win-sets in two-level games—the case of British European policy under the Blair government
The two-level approach is often criticized for its failure to provide thorough theoretical guidance to the empirical task of establishing the boundaries of governmental win-sets. Addressing this deficit, the article builds upon principal-agent theory to deduce two determinants of win-sets: the salience of a foreign policy issue for a government's domestic principals and the credibility of these principals' threats to sanction their governmental a…
The Public Salience of Foreign and Security Policy in Britain, Germany and France
The salience of foreign affairs to general publics is an important but often neglected parameter for the role of public opinion in foreign and security policy. This article explores the determinants of foreign affairs' public salience and probes into the respective patterns in Germany, Britain and France. Building on the theory of news values, the article proposes to distinguish between issue-specific and country-specific influences on the public…
The Salience of Foreign Affairs Issues in the German Bundestag
Journal Article The Salience of Foreign Affairs Issues in the German Bundestag Get access Thomas Jäger, Thomas Jäger Institute for Political Science and European AffairsUniversity of CologneCologne, [email protected] (T.J.)/[email protected] (A.H.)/[email protected] (H.V.) Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Kai Oppermann, Kai Oppermann Institute for Political Science and …
NGOs as catalysts for international arms control? The ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the United States
Thinking Alike? Salience and Metaphor Analysis as Cognitive Approaches to Foreign Policy Analysis: Thinking Alike? Salience and Metaphor Analysis
The article brings together two cognitive approaches to the analysis of foreign policy: salience and metaphor analysis. Issue salience and metaphors relate to cognitive heuristics that speak to different aspects of the cognitive representation of foreign policy problems which complement each other: the concept of salience looks at the priming of issues in the foreign policymaking environment; metaphors relate to the framing of these issues. The a…
The public images of Britain, Germany, and France in the United States
Delineating the Scope Conditions of the Poliheuristic Theory of Foreign Policy Decision Making: The Noncompensatory Principle and the Domestic Salience of Foreign Policy
The poliheuristic theory of foreign policy decision making would benefit from being clearer in spelling out the conditions under which it holds more or less analytic promise. The article makes the case that the concept of issue salience can help the theory address its shortcomings in this respect. In particular, the explanatory power of poliheuristic theory's two-stage model largely depends on the noncompensatory principle of major domestic polit…
The Politics of Avoiding Referendums on the Treaty of Lisbon
After the defeat of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE) in the French and Dutch referendums, governments across Europe had little appetite for popular votes on the Lisbon Treaty. Indeed, nine of the ten countries which were committed to (or had held) referendums on the TCE got around such votes on Lisbon. The article investigates how it was possible for governments in these nine countries to avoid putting the treaty to the peo…
National Role Conceptions, Domestic Constraints and the New ‘Normalcy’ in German Foreign Policy: The Eurozone Crisis, Libya and Beyond
German foreign policy can fruitfully be analysed through the lens of a modified two-level framework which identifies three interdependent drivers behind government decision making: the expectations of Germany's international partners, domestic constraints and the national role conceptions of decision-makers. In recent years, the configuration of these three drivers has witnessed a two-fold change. First, there has been a nascent shift towards the…
Patterns of Junior Partner Influence on the Foreign Policy of Coalition Governments
Research Highlights and Abstract The main contribution of this article is that it: Introduces a distinction between different pathways for junior partner influence on the foreign policy of coalition governments; Provides nuanced insights into the effects of coalition government on foreign policy as well as on the causal mechanisms behind these effects; Contributes to the ‘unpacking’ of coalitions and the analysis of coalition governance more gene…
The politics of discretionary government commitments to European integration referendums
The article develops a two-dimensional typology of political reasons for governments to pledge referendums on European integration when they are not obliged to do so: the first dimension is about the political level at which the strategic use of referendum pledges is targeted and it distinguishes between domestic and European reasons; the second dimension attends to the strategic mode of governments when pledging EU referendums which can either b…
Counterfactual Reasoning in Foreign Policy Analysis: The Case of German Nonparticipation in the Libya Intervention of 2011
The abstention of the conservative-liberal government under Chancellor Angela Merkel on UN Security Council resolution 1973 marked the first occasion in which the Federal Republic of Germany stood against all three of its main Western partners, the US, France and the UK, simultaneously on a major foreign policy issue. Many accounts of this decision invoke the influence of electoral incentives. What is problematic, however, is that the causal weig…
Germany’s Foreign Policy after the End of the Cold War: “Becoming Normal?”
Germany is increasingly expected to behave like a “normal” international actor, that is, one who assumes international responsibility in accordance with its international stature and whose involvement in international affairs is not—or to a lesser degree than during the Cold War—circumscribed by its past. Those changes in the expectations in particular from its transatlantic and European partners have strained Germany’s international self-concept…
Coalition Governance and Foreign Policy Decision-Making
This article explores processes of coalition governance in foreign policy. Specifically, it argues that such processes are shaped by two interrelated dimensions of coalition set-up: first, the allocation of the foreign ministry to the senior or a junior coalition partner and, second, the degree of policy discretion which is delegated to that ministry. Bringing these two dimensions together, the article distinguishes four types of coalition arrang…
Introduction: Coalition Politics and Foreign Policy
Multi-party coalitions are an increasingly common type of government across different political regimes and world regions. Since they are the locus of national foreign-policy-making, the dynamics of coalition government have significant implications for International Relations. Despite this growing significance, the foreign-policy-making of coalition governments is only partly understood. This symposium advances the study of coalition foreign pol…
Fiascos in Public Policy and Foreign Policy
Studying fiascos: Bringing Public and Foreign Policy Together
Video abstractRead the transcriptWatch the video on Vimeo Video abstractRead the transcriptWatch the video on Vimeo
Telling stories of failure: Narrative Constructions of Foreign Policy Fiascos
The contribution introduces narrative analysis as a discourse analytical method for investigating the social construction of foreign policy fiascos. Based on insights from literary studies and narratology it shows that stories of failure include a number of key elements, including a particular setting which defines appropriate behaviour; the negative characterization of agents; as well as an emplotment of the ‘fiasco’ through the attribution of c…
Political science (42 works) · Law (36 works) · Politics (36 works) · Law (31 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (24 works) · Foreign policy (23 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Political economy (21 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (20 works) · Economics (19 works)