Domestic Role Contestation, Foreign Policy, and International Relations

Despite the increase in the number of studies in International Relations using concepts from a role theory perspective, scholarship continues to assume that a state’s own expectations of what role it should play on the world stage is shared among domestic political actors.

Cristian Cantir and Juliet Kaarbo have gathered a leading team of internationally distinguished international relations scholars to draw on decades of research in Foreign Policy Analysis to explore points of internal contestation of NRCs and the effects and outcomes of contestation between domestic political actors. Nine detailed comparative case studies have been selected for the purpose of theoretical exploration, with an eye to illustrating the relevance of role contestation in a diversity of settings, including variation in period, geographic area, unit of analysis, and aspects of the domestic political process.

A pioneering insight on how domestic political processes can have a crucial effect on how a country behaves at the global level.

Cristian Cantir is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Oakland University in Michigan, USA. Some of his research interests include the domestic determinants of foreign policy behaviour, the diplomatic activities of sub-state governments, role theory, and historical approaches to IR. He has published in journals like theReview of International Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, Cooperation and Conflict, and theJournal of International Relations and Development.

Juliet Kaarbo is Professor of International Relations with a Chair in Foreign Policy at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is co-director of Edinburgh’s Centre for Security Research. She previously held posts at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on political psychology, leadership and decision making, group dynamics, foreign policy analysis and theory, parliamentary political systems, and national roles and has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, International Perspectives, Political Psychology, Cooperation and Conflict, International Interactions, Foreign Policy Analysis, Journal of International Relations and Development, and Leadership Quarterly. She is Associate Editor ofForeign Policy Analysis since 2013.