Foreign Policy Decision-Making in International Relations

Foreign Policy Decision-Making in International Relations examines the factors that shape how actors develop and implement foreign policy in a comparative context. This course will discuss questions like: How do leaders respond to traditional threats like interstate war and non-traditional threats like climate change and migration flows? How do bureaucratic politics and interagency processes across different country contexts facilitate and constrain leaders' decisions? How do factors like relative military strength, regime type, alliances, internal unrest, and regional dynamics impact these decisions? How do small states develop and implement foreign policy compared to major powers? This course draws on scholarship from the political sciences, psychology, history, sociology, and economics to analyze how choices made by individuals, small groups, or coalitions representing nation-states result in policies or strategies with international outcomes. Students will learn how to leverage various social science theories and methodologies to explore and assess how leaders across the world weigh different policy options when responding to international problems. Enrollment is limited to students in the Master's in International Policy (MIP) program.