Critical and Interpretivist Foreign Policy Analysis: Reflecting on Three Challenges Ahead

Abstract

Abstract This text concludes the Special Issue on “New Directions for Foreign Policy Analysis” that aims at exploring some recent research avenues in the critical and interpretivist tradition in International Relations. Rather than summarising the contributions to the Special Issue, it reflects on a series of challenges ahead, focusing on three: the theoretical challenges in identity-focused or practice-theory inspired FPA, the international division of knowledge production in the context of a semi-peripheral academic community like Brazil, and the challenges for developing a truly critical FPA that does not take its Western-established categories for granted. Doing so, it issues an invitation to explore these challenges together.

Keywords

• Foreign Policy Analysis
• Critical IR
• interpretivism