After a short abstract, authors put a short introduction on the topic to be described in the paper. Next, authors described in larger details the workshop that was organized by Cameron Thies – one of the authors of the article – and mentioned about the importance and scientific novelty of application role theory in studying international relations. Following this, authors dwelled on history of the notion of role theory analysis in studying foreign affairs. This is divided into two sections – 1) First wave of role theory analysis and 2) Second wave of role theory analysis. Lastly, the article ends with the short conclusion of the workshop`s role in the future of these approaches and contain hope that scientific searches won`t stop in this area and, sooner or later, scholars will come to consensus on the impact of role theory in understanding foreign policy analysis and international relations theory.
Throughout the paper, authors used a wide variety of examples from the history of research of foreign policy starting from 1970s. They compared how scholars applied the concept of roles in understanding foreign policy issues both in the USA and Europe. Basically, their different understanding of the subject resulted into their division on a geographical basis. Throughout the article, authors frequently use references on other scholars of international relations theory, including James Rosenau, Kenneth Waltz, Stephen Walker and others. Overall, Thies and Breuning provided a list of over three dozen references in a works cited list. Most of these outside sources are scholar articles, including those written by Thies and Breuning. There were also several books used for writing this article, but not single Website or newspaper. From these sources, I always wanted to study more thoroughly Kenneth Waltz`s book Theory of International Politics. Of exceptional interest for me would be Hanns Maull`s article “Germany and Japan: The New Civilian Powers”. In particular – because Japan is within my professional interests.
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The title of the article I was analyzing is “Integrating Foreign Policy Analysis and International Relations through Role Theory” by Cameron G. Thies and Marijke Breuning that was published in Foreign Policy Analysis journal in 2012. The APA citation of this article would look like:
Thies G. Cameron and Marijke Breuning. (2012). Integrating Foreign Policy Analysis and International Relations through Role Theory. Foreign Policy Analysis, 8, 1–4.
The overall topic of the article is application of role theory in examining integrating foreign policy analysis and international relations. The research question may be formulated as: “Is it possible to apply role theory equally effective both for foreign policy analysis and international relations theory? And is there a way to synthesize these two theories in studying international relations through role theory?” The main argument of the article is the notice that the discussion of whether role theory can be applied both for FPA and IR is still in progress. Not so much time has passed since the emergence of this theory, so that there are still more workshops and discussions to happen before anything new can be decided. To support this, the authors used examples from the history of development of the role theory. As it was mentioned earlier, the authors used three dozen references – to be certain 33. All sources – are printed: books and scholar articles.
Works Cited
Thies G. Cameron and Marijke Breuning. “Integrating Foreign Policy Analysis and International Relations through Role Theory”. Foreign Policy Analysis, 2012, 8, 1–4. Print.
