African American Foreign Policy Summary

810 Words2 Pages

Adnan provides a relatively simple and broad definition of foreign policy as “foreign policy comes out from the interaction of domestic and international systems. She provides more detail by dividing up the term, “To understand the words foreign policy, one needs to break them down into foreign and policy. Policy is a decision or a guide of choosing actions to achieve one’s goals. Foreign means anything beyond the state, to areas where state has no authority over territory and people. When combined these words, mean a guide of choosing actions outside the state boundary for achieving goals.” Jackson and Sorensen provide a more holistic definition of foreign policy as, “Foreign policies consist of aims and measures that are intended to guide …show more content…

They describe it being a system that focuses on an African state’s commitment to its interest, economic development and legitimacy in African conflicts as well as with the international community. In describing United States foreign policy in the Islamic world, Messari provides a connection between the research’s constructivist framework by adding how identities are constructed in the definition of foreign policy. He writes, “Foreign policy is then an identity-making tool that erects boundaries between the self and the other, defining in the process what are national interests.” The connection between constructivism and foreign policy analysis will be discussed in the following …show more content…

Mintz and DeRouen provide a detailed account of the different elements within FPDM, but provide a relative simple definition of, “Foreign policy decision making (FPDM) refers to the choices individuals, groups, and coalitions make that affect a nation’s actions on the international stage. Foreign policy decisions are typically characterized by high stakes, enormous uncertainty, and substantial risk.” Their analysis consists of examining how individuals actors engage in the crafting and engaging of the nation’s foreign policy. Thus to understand what a nation’s foreign policy is, there is the necessity to examine policy makers. This is different from foreign policy analysis which focuses less on individuals and more on the aggregate management of a state’s external relations. This research includes elements of all of these interpretations and establishes a broad and relatively vague definition of foreign policy as how state governments engage with foreign actors. This vagueness is designed to provide the necessary space for informants to be comfortable in describing how they perceive Rwanda’s engagement with the international community without producing contradicting definitions or subjects not included in a more specific

Open Document