Socialization, Recognition, and Foreign Policy

Abstract

This chapter reviews the current scholarly debate on the concepts of socialization and recognition in international relations (IR), focusing on how they can be analysed jointly and in dialogue with Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA)’s main subfields. We argue that socialization/recognition research could gain by applying FPA concepts and instruments in three different ways. First, using FPA focuses on the decision unit level and how specific state agents (diplomats, leaders, etc.) enact foreign policies to accelerate or block socialization/recognition schemes. Second, adopting FPA’s focus on social actors as active agents of foreign policy could help socialization and recognition studies sharpen their understanding of how these actors are decisive in socialization and recognition processes. Third, using FPA’s methodological plurality has the potential to move socialization and recognition research away from the excessively theoretical and small-n analyses that dominate both fields today to more comparative and large-n approach