Revival of Foreign Policy Analysis: a multi variable analysis

As one of the important subfields of International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) has attracted less attention than other IR subfields, particularly in Iran. Yet in the 1950’s until the 1970’s this subfield was developing fast and it was supposed to be flourishing conceptually and theoretically. Together with the questions raised against behaviorism and positivism in IR, FPA theoretical achievements were challenged and it experienced a degree of decline. However, it has become more popular amongst IR scholars since the 1990’s. This article seeks to explain FPA revival on the basis of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of academic articles dealing with foreign policy published before and after the 1990’s. It suggests that the end of the Cold War and its aftermaths which could not be satisfactorily explained by IR systemic theories, the emergence of new analytical and theoretical frameworks in IR that could in principle deal with domestic as well as international phenomena, and new analytical facilities that could be used within the existing quantitative approaches in the FPA contributed to the re-emergence of FPA.