Foreign Policy of Small States - Einzelansicht

The seminar aims at studying role, functions and behavior of small states in international politics. It is both analytical and theory-driven. It starts with a broad theoretical, conceptual and analytical introduction which includes main schools of thoughts at the intersection of Foreign Policy Analysis and International Relations. They include level-of-analysis debates, agent-structure debates as well as debates among competing angles of foreign policy decision making (rational, realist, bureaucratic/governmental, institutional, ideational, societal, cultural and psychological). The second part of the course is comparative in nature and offers case studies from Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Denmark, the Baltic States, the South Caucasus states, Israel and other small states.

Required readings: Ingebritsen, Christine, Iver Neumann, and Sieglinde Gstöhl. 2012. Small States in International Relations: University of Washington Press. Smith, Steve, Amelia Hadfield, and Tim Dunne, eds. 2016. Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases. 3. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.