Comparative Foreign Policy Analysis

Comparative Foreign Policy (CFP) analysis explains the foreign-policy behavior of states by opening the 'black box' of decision making and comparing how foreign policy is produced across countries, leaders, and contexts. Part of the broader Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) tradition that Valerie Hudson (2005) characterizes as actor-specific theory, it draws on factors at multiple levels — individual leaders, small groups and bureaucracies, domestic society, and the international system — to account for why different states (or the same state at different times) behave as they do. Its hallmark is the systematic comparison of decision processes and outputs.