New Perpectives in Foreign Policy Analysis: Germany and the Application of Role Theory

Abstract

Role theory has been one of the most fruitful subfields of Foreign Policy Analysis in the last decades. Based on the theoretical and practical underpinnings of sociology and psychology, role theory is founded on the notion that states play welldefined and relatively stable roles in the international system, the origins of which are ego and alter expectations. Our paper reviews the history and the basic concepts of role theory, and then goes on to apply the model to Germany, which has a well-known and accepted role in being a civilian power. The goal of our paper is to present the role theory approach to the Hungarian scholarly community in order to start to apply its methods to the Hungarian foreign policy as well.