Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines

Much of the criticism directed at post-positivist international relations has called for more detailed exploration of its implications for specific areas of investigation. At the same time, the study of foreign policy has been largely unaffected by the critical insights offered by post-positivism. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by examining three approaches to foreign policy analysis and the metatheoretical issues underlying each of them. It is suggested that an approach informed by post-positivist insights can provide a useful alternative to traditional ways of studying foreign policy and can facilitate a more critical interpretation of foreign policy practices. The first two approaches, the Cognitive Decisionmaking Approach and the Social Performance Approach, were chosen as a way of differentiating and highlighting the ontological and theoretical issues that are relevant to understanding and situating the Discursive Practices Approach. After examining the three approaches, I use the Discursive Practices Approach to analyze United States' counterinsurgency policy in the Philippines circa 1950.