Foreign policy analysis, globalisation and non-state actors: state-centric after all?

This paper is concerned with Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and non-state actors (NSAs). Globalisation has brought NSAs back on the agenda of International Relations (IR). As a result of globalisation, we witness at least some shift of authority from the state to NSAs (the extent of which remains debated). Although most of the empirical studies focus on ‘domestic’ issues, there are good reasons to assume that foreign policy is equally affected by this trend. Not only are NSAs autonomous actors in world politics, they are also increasingly involved in the making of states’ foreign policies. In this article, we ask to what extent FPA, IR's actor-centric sub-field, has taken into account this growing importance of NSAs. Given FPA's criticism of seeing the state as a unitary actor, one would expect FPA scholars to be among the first within IR to analyse decision making involving NSAs. However, a closer look reveals that FPA remains focused mainly on state actors, while ignoring private, transnational and international ones. Thus, FPA remains in a way state-centric. We close with an outline of possible directions for further FPA research.


Introduction
The globalisation debate of the past two decades has brought non-state actors (NSAs) back into view. Already in the 1970s, the interdependence literature (Keohane and Nye 2001) had pointed to the importance of NSAs, but it was only in the 1990s, after a decade dominated by the 'neo-neo synthesis' (Waever 1996: 162f ), that the study of NSAs gained serious traction in International Relations (IR). Globalisation -'the extension of boundaries of social transactions beyond national borders' (Zangl and Zu¨rn 1999: 140) -brought up the question of the state's authority -the ability to 'successfully claim the right to perform regulatory functions like the formulation of rules and rule monitoring or enforcement' (Zu¨rn et al. 2012: 70)vis-a`-vis NSAs like multinational enterprises (MNEs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international organisations (IOs). The specifics of the debate need not concern us here; what matters is that after two decades of fierce discussion, today almost no one in IR would doubt that NSAs make a significant impact in world politics (Risse 2002: 262). If anything, scholars argue that NSAs have been here all along and that in fact the state (still) is the 'new kid on the block'. 1 Aside from the many general arguments about whether the state is basically a walking corpse (Ohmae 1995;Strange 1996) or (still) a giant among a bunch of pygmies (Waltz 1999;Gilpin 2000), the globalisation debate has triggered a rich body of empirical studies that examine the role of NSAs in various arrangements of -in the broadest sense -rule making, loosely termed 'governance' (as opposed to government, which used to be essentially states' business; inter alia Rosenau and Czempiel 1992;Cutler et al. 1999;Rhodes 2007). Taken together, these studies paint a complex and differentiated picture of how authority is exercised today. In a nutshell, the literature argues that in these governance arrangements, we witness a (complex, multidimensional and not at all unidirectional) transfer of authority from the state to NSAs of various kinds (for an overview, see Sørensen 2004;Leibfried and Zu¨rn 2005).
However, despite their broad variety, these studies have mainly focused on issue areas traditionally seen as belonging to the 'domestic' realm, while largely neglecting 'foreign' policy (Aran 2011: 708). 2 Nevertheless, there is increasing evidence (which we will discuss below in detail) that NSAs also exert authority in foreign policy, which we understand with Carlsnaes (2002: 335) as those actions which, expressed in the form of explicitly stated goals, commitments and/or directives, and pursued by governmental representatives acting on behalf of their sovereign communities, are directed toward objectives, conditions and actors -both governmental and non-governmental -which they want to affect and which lie beyond their territory.
First, as the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center radically demonstrate, NSAs are important autonomous actors that can have a serious impact on world politics. That is, they are 'rival' actors from the state's point of view (Chong 2002: 784). Consequently, it is only prudent to examine what drives their actions. Second, and closer to foreign policy studies' home turf, NSAs have a significant impact on states' foreign policymaking (which we call 'hybrid' foreign policymaking) -indeed so much so, that at least in some fields they seem to influence states' foreign policies even more than state officials themselves (Breslin 2004;Lee 2004). That means that even the analysis of states' foreign policies nowadays requires paying attention to NSAs.
This raises the question to what extent foreign policy studies have adapted to this ' "post-international" political challenge' (Chong 2002: 784). More specifically, we ask in this article to what extent one particular body of foreign policy research, namely Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) with its focus on decision making, has taken account of NSAs. This has mainly two reasons: First, FPA has from its outset in the 1950s emphasised the need to disaggregate the state and to look at the dynamics within it to explain foreign policy (see Snyder et al. 1954). Unlike the foreign policy studies inspired by the IR 'mainstream', which -like neorealism, institutionalism or Wendtian constructivismconceptualise states as unitary actors, FPA scholars are already well-positioned to explain today's more complex foreign policymaking, which involves networks of state officials, representatives of NGOs, business companies, IOs, and (if indirectly) terrorist and criminal networks. And indeed, at least some of FPA's proponents explicitly claim that it is well suited for the analysis also of NSAs' actions (for instance Hudson 2010). Thus, if anyone were to take up the challenge of NSAs, we would expect FPA scholars to do it. Second, with their focus on decision making, FPA scholars are, we would argue, conceptually close to the governance literature, which could facilitate scholarly exchange and theoretical integration between subfields of political science (see Hudson 2005).
We proceed as follows: Drawing on Zangl's (2008, 2011) work on globalisation, we begin with a systematisation of different actors in world politics. Following that, we present evidence from a number of largely unconnected studies that NSAs play an important role in foreign policy as autonomous ('rival') actors, as well as through their role in states' foreign policymaking (hybrid policymaking). Subsequently, we demonstrate in more detail why we think that FPA is suited for the explanation of today's more complex foreign policymaking. After having established that there are no inherent theoretical or methodological obstacles that would render NSAs an unsuitable object of study for FPA, we then examine to what extent foreign policy analysts have indeed taken account of NSAs. We base this assessment of the field on a general review of the literature combined with a more systematic analysis of articles published in the subfield's flagship journal, Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), 3 from 2005 until 2010. We find that while a relatively small number of foreign policy analysts have indeed started examining NSAs' role in foreign policy, the vast majority of studies continue to focus on the state and its representatives. Moreover, where NSAs do play a role, these are mostly 'old acquaintances' from within the state, such as the media or domestic interest groups. In that sense, paradoxically, FPA -as one of the fiercest critics of state-centrism -itself remains in a sense state-centric (see also Hill 2003: 30;Rosati and Miller 2010). We close with a summary of the findings and an outline of fruitful areas for future FPA research.

Multiple Actors in World Politics: An Attempt at Systematisation
The following provides a typology of actors in world politics. We understand an actor to be an entity with 'the ability or capacity [y] to act consciously and, in so doing, to attempt to realise his or her intentions' (Hay 2002: 94). Following Zangl (2008, 2011), we can distinguish different actors along two analytical dimensions: the public/private divide and the domestic/ international divide. We can thus discriminate between four types of actors (see the 2 Â 2 matrix in Table 1), namely state actors as well as international, private and transnational actors.

State actors
By state actors we mean entities under public law (or their representatives) whose legal authority is limited to a specific national territory. State actors occupy the upper left box in the 2 Â 2 matrix. Examples include secretaries and bureaucrats (acting singly as well as in groups); whole bureaucratic agencies and ministries; (members of ) local, state and federal law enforcement agencies; and the armed forces.

International actors
Located in the upper right corner of the 2 Â 2 matrix (public/beyond the state), international actors are entities with a public legal form that exercise transboundary authority Zangl 2008: 435, 2011: 514f ). This includes IOs -that is, formal entities with states as members and certain forms of institutionalisation, such as headquarters, staff and/or a permanent secretariat (Pevehouse et al. 2004: 103). Examples include the Bretton Source: Genschel and Zangl (2011: 515). NSAs are marked with a grey shade.
Woods institutions, the European Union (EU) and other intergovernmental networks.
While the categorisation of IOs as international actors is uncontroversial, a few words are in order about intergovernmental networks. We can further distinguish here between intergovernmental and interbureaucratic networks. We define the former narrowly as networks made up of high government officials from different states, such as heads of state/government, ministers, national security advisors, heads of the intelligence services, etc., who coordinate their activities, share information with each other and engage in informal forms of decision making. The latter refers to networks of lower-level government officials not involved in the core decision-making process, for instance bureaucrats or police officers (see Krotz 2010: 152). 4 For the purpose of this study, we treat both kinds of networks as international actors. They are constituted by state actors from different countries and are thus international in the same sense as IOs, whose members are states. And while they are not hierarchically composed actors in the traditional sense, their members often make decisions in forums like the G20 or the G8. Hence, what we witness is, in FPA terms, a change in the composition of the 'authoritative decision unit' (Hermann 2001: 48), which shifts to the international level. Consequently, intergovernmental or interbureaucratic networks sometimes pursue policies that deviate from the official stance of their members' home governments (Risse-Kappen 1995: 4).

Private actors
Private actors are non-state entities with a private legal form whose authority is limited to the territory of a single nation-state Zangl 2008: 435, 2011: 514). In the 2 Â 2 matrix they occupy the lower left box (private/ domestic). Examples include business companies like private telecommunications companies and postal services, ethnic interest groups lobbying their home government or the national media.

Transnational actors
Transnational actors are entities under private law that exert authority across borders Zangl 2008: 435, 2011: 514). They are located in the lower right corner of the 2 Â 2 matrix. Examples include transnational networks of NGOs, the International Standards Organisation or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, but also the Catholic Church or the Red Cross.
Before we continue, it is important to add a note of caution. In reality, the distinctions between public, private, domestic and international are neither as clear cut nor as unproblematic as this systematisation might suggest (see for instance Walker 1993;Agnew 1994;Bulkeley and Schroeder 2011). Consequently, in practice some actors (for instance the media) prove difficult to categorise. The utility of the taxonomy specified above will thus depend on the empirical case under investigation. In any case, its application requires the careful exercise of judgement on the researcher's part. However, despite these practical difficulties, we do think that the categories specified above can be useful as heuristic devices, while (a) acknowledging that reality is much more complex and (b) being aware of the exercise of power that underlies the (re-) production of these dichotomies.

NSAs, 'Rival Actorness' and Hybrid Foreign Policymaking
As briefly mentioned above, foreign policy analysts have two reasons to focus on NSAs: first, their ability to act autonomously -what Chong (2002: 784) has called 'rival actorness' -and, second, their influence on states' foreign policymaking ('hybrid' foreign policymaking).

'Rival actorness'
States may still be the most important actors in world politics, but international, private and transnational actors increasingly affect many aspects of people's lives. Moreover, since NSAs' activities often take place in regions of potential interest to (their own or other) national governments, they are likely to at least indirectly influence states' foreign policies -if only by unintentionally hampering (or facilitating) them. For instance, firms' activities can obstruct development (Agbonifo 2011) and fuel war economies in protracted conflicts (Heupel 2006), but they can also be crucial allies in governments' efforts to foster development or end armed violence (Wolf et al. 2007). Moreover, a corporation's home state and its host state do not necessarily have shared interests. Even if all actors can agree on the same goals, their different activities in the field can nevertheless be counterproductive to each other, thus giving rise to difficult coordination challenges, as for instance the literature on civil-military relations in complex peace-building operations can attest (Olsen 2011). Moreover, if policy coordination among the different national ministries and agencies can already be difficult (Bensahel 2007;Jacobs 2012), coordinating with NSAs and IOs is a much greater challenge (Stengel and Weller 2010). At least in part to tackle these problems, governments have started involving NSAs in the policy-making process, including in their decision making.

Hybrid foreign policymaking
By hybrid (foreign) policymaking we mean a process by which decision makers (aim to) formulate policy goals and translate them into outcomes and that involves state actors as well as NSAs. 5 In the following, we use the policy cycle heuristic as an analytical tool to organise the empirical examples and to tease out NSAs' involvement in the process of states' foreign policymaking. To be clear, this is not intended as a portrayal of how foreign policy decision making actually works; it merely serves here as an analytical device (Stone 2008) ( Figure 1).

Problem representation and agenda setting
Any public policy is designed to tackle a particular policy problem. However, as a number of scholars of public policy/administration and foreign policy have pointed out, policy problems are socially constructed (Hajer 2005). Issues become policy problems only when they are framed as such, that is, when actors voice concern and articulate the need for action. Here, NSAs can (and do) play an important role. Decision makers have to tackle a great number of problems at the same time, so the time they can devote to each single issue is fairly limited. Consequently, they rely to a large extent on preliminary work (information gathering, formulation of policy options, etc.) done by others. Most obviously, this includes the bureaucratic staff in government ministries and agencies (Hill 2003: 77), who coordinate their activities with their peers abroad in interbureaucratic networks (Slaughter 2004). As a consequence, at least some of the preliminary work done for, say, French decision makers is done by bureaucrats from other countries -the United Kingdom, the US, Denmarkas well as representatives of IOs like NATO, the EU or the UN (for instance Herschinger et al. 2011). Since the perception of an issue as a problem (as well as its urgency) will be different from country to country, problem representation and agenda setting will differ between a national government and an intergovernmental or interbureaucratic network. In addition to that, decision makers rely on external experts from various organisations (see Howorth 2004;Milne 2010). For instance, Stoddard's (2006) study of NGOs' influence on US conflict prevention policy shows that decisions to intervene in conflicts have often been entirely based on information provided by NGOs. Thus, NSAs influence governmental decision making at a very early stage. 6 Moreover, private and transnational actors such as ethnic interest groups (Haney and Vanderbush 1999;Paul and Paul 2009), transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998) and the media (Wood and Peake 1998) exert significant influence on governmental agenda setting. NGOs and activists can also be helpful allies (or powerful enemies) of governments. They raise audience gains (or costs) and weaken (or strengthen) veto players (Oppermann and Ro¨ttsches 2010), even in defence policy (Joachim and Dembinski 2011).

Decision making
The actors involved in the decision-making process have also changed. First, as argued above, decision makers from different countries increasingly work in intergovernmental networks. Second, states delegate responsibilities, for instance to international actors. Often, IOs are in the best position to develop coherent and efficient approaches to transnational problems like environmental pollution or terrorism, and to coordinate the implementation of policy, even in core fields of statehood like security policy (Abbott and Snidal 1998;Herschinger et al. 2011). The most obvious example is the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Despite its formally intergovernmental nature, the CFSP is significantly shaped by a number of committees, most notably the Political and Security Committee (PSC). As Sjursen (2011Sjursen ( : 1083 points out, 'it is here [in the PSC] that common positions are identified and the methods to realize them are developed'. Moreover, there are trends towards the integration of national capabilities, resource pooling, etc. (Mayer 2011).
Third, and most interestingly, states also engage in joint decision making with business companies and NGOs. This is most obvious for public-private partnerships or global public policy networks (No¨lke 2003;Stone 2008), which are often focused on areas that traditionally fell in the domestic arena but could not be handled by national governments on their own, such as climate change. Aside from this networked decision making in different international arenas, states also increasingly involve NSAs in their national decision-making structures. In many regions, NSAs might be in a stronger position than national governments (Debiel and Sticht 2005), with NGOs as well as corporations often already being on-site when a food crisis or an armed conflict is about to erupt (Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict 1997: 113). Cooperating with them is often the only way to achieve anything, in particular since in conflict or post-conflict regions, foreign powers often run the risk of being seen as occupiers. Thus, a growing number of governments are opening up to NSAs and coordinate their efforts with them (Porteous 2005;Stengel and Weller 2010). For instance, in what Stavridis and Farkas (2012: 8f ) have called a ' "whole of society" approach to security', US government agencies -in particular the Department of Defense -increasingly work with NSAs to increase effectiveness. Similarly, the British National Security Strategy emphasises the role of the private sector (Soria 2012: 33). Other examples of research on NSAs' involvement are Lee's (2004) and Breslin's (2004) studies of how firms influence British diplomacy or Kundnani's (2011) recent analysis of business interests' influence on German foreign policy.
Overall, as one European expert aptly put it, NSAs increasingly 'act as policy generators and are directly involved in decision-making and implementation of policy' (quoted in EUISS 2010: 40).

Implementation
Implementation -the process during which decisions are put into action (Brighi and Hill 2008: 117) -is the phase in which NSAs arguably exert the greatest influence on foreign policy. First of all, it is in the implementation phase that state actors will unavoidably confront other actors, given that foreign policy is directed towards what lies beyond a given state's territory. Second, states increasingly delegate foreign policy implementation to private and transnational actors like private military firms (PMFs) (see Singer 2001Singer / 2002Leander 2005;Olsson 2007;Dickinson 2011) or development and conflictresolution NGOs (Cooley and Ron 2002). However, this has consequences for governments' control over outcomes, as the vagueness of many political decisions gives implementing actors significant leeway that they can use for better or worse (Schroeder and Friesendorf 2009). In any case, it opens up space for implementation decisions taken outside governmental decision-making structures. Furthermore, the availability of PMFs, for instance, can change governments' cost-benefit calculations and give policymakers the 'political breathing room' to support unpopular military operations (Cohen and Ku¨pc¸u2 005: 42), while shifting the balance between executive and legislature in favour of the former (Avant 2004;Cohn 2011).

Monitoring and evaluation
In foreign policy, monitoring and evaluation is often done 'in-house', that is, by government bureaucracies as well as parliaments and their (sub-) committees. However, governments increasingly establish independent committees to evaluate policies, even in security and defence. For instance, in 2010 the German government established a commission (not the first one) to evaluate the necessity and possibilities for the reform of its armed forces, the so-called 'Weise Commission' (see Dyson 2011), which consisted of government officials as well as representatives of the private sector. Similarly, the British government has relied on external expertise to evaluate for instance its so-called Conflict Prevention Pools, the main instrument to facilitate inter-agency coordination in conflict prevention (see Austin et al. 2004). Not only do NSAs undertake commissioned evaluations, but governments increasingly involve them in advisory boards, such as the German government's advisory board for conflict prevention (Stengel and Weller 2010: 97) or the US State Department's International Security Advisory Board. 7 Similar boards exist in the UK, where independent researchers are even involved in the formulation of National Security Strategies (Gearson and Gow 2010: 412f ).
Overall, evidence from studies conducted so far suggests that states' foreign policy processes are changing due to the proliferation of new (non-state) foreign policy actors. Even if this does not mean that states transfer their decision making to NSAs in toto, we can definitely find examples for shared decision-making authority.

Non-state Actors and the FPA 'Toolkit'
While differing in their conceptual approaches, foreign policy analysts insist that since '[a]ll state behavior is the product of human decisions' (Welch 2005: 22), an analysis of foreign policy needs to focus on processes of decision making inside states. As a result, proponents of FPA have given up on general theory and instead advocate middle-range theories that pay attention to the particularities of the actors under investigation and integrate factors from different levels of analysis and academic (sub-)disciplines (Breuning 2007: 11-13;Hudson 2007: 6). In the following, we will try to substantiate the claim that FPA is well suited for the analysis of foreign policymaking involving NSAs. To do so, we will give several examples of how FPA scholarship could be applied to the study of decision making in NSAs as well as in mixed-actor constellations.

How individuals decide
Most IR scholars would agree that individuals matter in world politics (Greenstein 1967;Byman and Pollack 2001), and FPA scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to individual-level factors. One problem is the 'fundamental decision dilemma' (Renshon and Renshon 2008: 512, italics removed). In many cases, foreign policymakers have to make decisions in an environment characterised by high cognitive demands (time pressure, lack of information, stress, risk, etc., see Renshon and Renshon 2008: 512-16;Mintz and DeRouen 2010: 25-31). Thus, in order to be able even to make a decision (especially a timely one), leaders need to simplify reality, and for that they rely on cognitive shortcuts, beliefs, worldviews, etc. (Jervis 2006: 650). These can make the decision process more efficient, but they can also lead to misperception.
Cognitive shortcuts, for instance, are examined in the poliheuristic theory programme (see Mintz 2004Mintz : 4, 2003, which conceptualises decision making as a two-stage process comprised of a first, cognitive, stage at which people eliminate those options that 'fail to satisfy on a key, noncompensatory dimension' (Brule´2008: 268) and a second, rational stage, at which they then consider the potential implications for each remaining policy option (ibid.: 269). In a similar way, beliefs -assumptions about causes and effects (Jervis 2006: 642) -influence people's perceptions. People 'tend to see what they expect to see' (ibid.: 650), and they are more likely to accept propositions that fit their beliefs than those that contradict them, which makes it very difficult to refute the latter. This poses a constant challenge for decision making (ibid.: 650-52). Research on beliefs for instance is conducted in the operational code programme (see Schafer and Walker 2006b). In principle, there is no reason to assume that research on cognitive shortcuts and beliefs can be applied only to national governments but not to transgovernmental networks, publicprivate partnerships, IOs, MNEs or even criminal enterprises (leaving aside the problem of access).
Aside from (mis-)perception, decisions are sometimes affected by motivated bias, understood as 'a systematic distortion of information acquisition or appraisal caused by the decision makers' psychological investment in a certain view or understanding regardless of the facts' (Renshon and Renshon 2008: 512), based on a decision maker's beliefs or his/her personality. Thus, decision makers may deliberately choose to ignore information because it does not fit with their beliefs. Furthermore, researchers have examined the effect of a broad number of personality traits on decision making, including the need for power, distrust, self-confidence, the need for affiliation and risk orientation (Crichlow 2005: 188-9; see also Post 2005). For instance, it is assumed that leaders with a high need for power will be more likely to favour conflictual policies and that high levels of distrust will hamper an individual's willingness to cooperate (Crichlow 2005: 189). More recently, FPA scholars have turned to cognitive neuroscience and behavioural geneticism to tease out how the functioning of the human brain and genetic predispositions influence foreign policy decisions (McDermott 2009;Hatemi and McDermott 2012). Importantly, these individual-level factors apply not only to state leaders but in principle also to, for instance, the CEO of a large business company. At least a few FPA scholars have started applying FPA concepts to terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden (Brule´2008: 279-80; see also Post 2010). Other NSAs are also worth examining. For instance, one could argue that a WikiLeaks leader less tolerant to risk than Julian Assange might have objected to revealing government secrets. Nor do individual factors only matter in settings characterised by a dominant leader but also in group settings; insofar as beliefs are shared among members of a government, they can exert significant influence (Schafer and Walker 2006a: 567). Similarly, leadership styles play an important role in group decisions, for instance in consensus building and conflict management (for instance Kaarbo and Hermann 1998;Hermann et al. 2001b).

Group decisions and dynamics
Aside from individual-level factors, foreign policy analysts have extensively researched the effect of group dynamics on foreign policy. These insights can be highly useful to the analysis of more complex foreign policymaking. Consider for instance Allison's organisational process and bureaucratic/ governmental politics models (Allison and Zelikow 1999), which conceptualise governmental policies as an outcome of the interplay among different bureaucracies. These models could provide a useful starting point for the analysis of decision making in IOs, intergovernmental networks and global public policy networks. As Slaughter pointed out about these networks: Start thinking about a world of governments, with all the different institutions that perform the basic functions of governments -legislation, adjudication, implementation -interacting both with each other domestically and also with their foreign and supranational counterparts. States still exist in this world; indeed, they are crucial actors. But they are 'disaggregated.' They relate to each other not only through the Foreign Office, but also through regulatory, judicial, and legislative channels. (Slaughter 2004: 5) If this sounds familiar, it is because it is basic FPA, just involving more than one state. And while the different actors in intergovernmental networks come from different states, there is no reason to assume that their negotiations will not be characterised by the 'pulling and hauling' that Allison identified (Allison and Halperin 1972: 43). Quite to the contrary, the people involved will be influenced by their role as a representative not only of their particular organisation, but also of their national government. In a similar way, FPA could add to our understanding of how regulation comes into being within public policy networks (see Reinicke and Deng 2000;Rhodes 2007) -or how conflict prevents it (Hermann et al. 2001a). Just recently, Brummer (2013) has demonstrated the continuous heuristic value of Allison's stand-sit proposition -the argument that a player's standpoint depends on his position within the state's complex network of bureaucracies -by combining it with poliheuristic theory. FPA approaches to the study of small-group dynamics (Janis 1972), belief systems (Jervis 2006) and cognitive shortcuts may provide useful insights also on defective decision making within NSAs, such as the BP leadership's handling of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill or TEPCO's role during the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Arguably, FPA can also be related to constructivist approaches (Houghton 2007) and thus speak to critical studies of globalisation. FPA scholars could add to our understanding of the construction of globalisation as an almost mechanical result of exogenous problem pressures outside of political actors' control (see Watson and Hay 2003). Insights from FPA -problem representation (Sylvan 1998), framing (Mintz and Redd 2003), belief systems and studies of small-group dynamics -could help us better to understand which role national governments and other actors play in the construction of the 'crude "business school" ' version of globalisation that still dominates (Western) governmental discourse (Watson and Hay 2003: 289).
These are of course just a few examples, but it seems clear that conceptually, FPA is quite well prepared for the analysis of complex foreign policymaking. Moreover, FPA speaks to other subfields of political science such as public policy/administration and comparative politics (as well as other disciplines; see Hudson 2005: 3-4) that -as opposed to IR more generally -see the state as an 'internally fragmented actor' relying on NSAs to establish regulation (No¨lke 2003: 276). Since there do not seem to be theoretical reasons for not taking on NSAs, the question then is: are there inherent methodological problems that stand in the way of analysing NSAs from an FPA perspective?
The Methods of FPA -Suited for NSAs?
Not surprisingly, proponents of FPA have utilised a broad range of methods. Like other political scientists, many foreign policy analysts have done case study analysis, relying on qualitative content analysis, archival research, interviews and focus groups; more psychologically oriented analyses have employed experiments and simulations as well as quantitative content analysis (partly combined with machine coding) to assess leaders' beliefs and personality traits at a distance; and FPA scholars have used survey methods and network analysis (for an overview, see Potter 2010). And although FPA scholars have mainly relied on approaches that are well established within political science, ethnographic methods such as participant observation could also be utilised within a decision-making approach. 8 Consequently, the question is not whether foreign policy analysts can study NSAs but rather whether they can be studied at all, and indeed at least some of them do pose a challenge for data gathering. For while democratic governments are at least accountable to their constituents, many NSAs are not. Important government documents are made available to the public, and even sensitive data are declassified after a certain period of time, thus allowing for scholarly analysis even after some delay. Moreover, heads of state, cabinet members, ambassadors and members of parliament regularly give press statements and speeches, which scholars can use as data. Admittedly, things are not as simple with NSAs, at least not all of them. Some NSAs may not be more problematic to study than state actors. Intergovernmental networks, for instance, consist of national members of government and can thus be accessed with as much ease (or difficulty) as state actors, via interviews and press statements. Distinguishing between 'traditional' foreign policy and intergovernmental policy is a matter of interview question content rather than of access. Likewise, officials of IOs are in principle as (in-)accessible as heads of state and/or government, and the UN, WTO, World Bank, EU, etc. all have websites with extensive document archives that can be used for research. Even terrorist leaders depend on supporters, and consequently they maintain websites and publish propaganda videos (Payne 2009).
However, there are indeed NSAs that are harder to come by than IOs. Most notably, criminal organisations and terrorist networks are not only unaccountable to the general public; their very functioning depends on secrecy. Even legal enterprises -multinational corporations, NGOs -are not required to be as transparent as (democratic) state actors. Nevertheless, it is not impossible to conduct interviews even with high-ranking business executives (as has been done for instance in research on business ethics; see Fassin and Van Rossem 2009;Vaiman et al. 2011), and there is no reason to assume that the CEO of Siemens or General Motors is busier than the US Secretary of State. Furthermore, journalists like Bergen (2001) have in fact interviewed even terrorist leaders like bin Laden, during his lifetime arguably one of the people most difficult to find on the planet.
Furthermore, in particular the top management of MNEs regularly give press conferences and interviews, as do leaders of IOs and large NGOs. Thus, in principle, it should be possible to obtain the necessary data to infer the operational code or leadership style of, say, former Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, or WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by drawing on speeches and interviews (see Crichlow 2005;Hermann 2005;Schafer and Walker 2006a). Moreover, not all state actors are accountable to their public. States with authoritarian regimes like China, Iran or North Korea, for instance, only to a very limited extent bother with transparency issues, but that has not kept scholars from analysing their foreign policies (James and Zhang 2005;Taremi 2005).
Admittedly, sometimes the hurdles are a little higher when researching NSAs, but that does not mean that it cannot be done or even that it requires an unreasonable amount of additional work, and given NSAs' importance in world politics, they are worth the additional effort. The question thus is: do FPA scholars use this advantage? As we will argue in the next section, unfortunately, they have yet to seize this opportunity.

NSAs and FPA Research: Centre Stage or on the Fringes?
Our argument is based on a review of recent FPA literature combined with a systematic analysis of journal content. Recent FPA research has examined a wide range of actors affecting foreign policy decision making. Empirical studies have examined the influence of different ministries and agencies (Allison and Zelikow 1999), legislative bodies (Howell and Pevehouse 2005), coalition parties (Kaarbo and Beasley 2008), advisors (Redd 2005), small group dynamics (Janis 1972;Garrison 2010), and individuals (Hermann et al. 2001b). However, despite the broad applicability of FPA's theoretical and conceptual toolkit, foreign policy analysts have mainly concentrated on decision-making processes within national governments. A notable exception here is the research on 'European foreign policy' (see Smith 2010). Furthermore, while a growing number of studies examine decision making in, for instance, European (Larsen 2009) or Middle Eastern (Hudson et al. 2008) countries, or make use of large datasets (e.g. Kaarbo and Beasley 2008), the bulk of FPA research still focuses on the United States.
This state-centric focus of FPA research is also demonstrated in the results of a classification of FPA articles retrieved from the Social Science Citation Index (following Hellmann 2009a: 263), for the time from 2000 until 2010, shown in Table 2. Of 62 articles overall, 53 focused on state actors, while only eight took into account NSAs. Of these eight, two featured the EU, one the voter, one ethnic interest groups, one civil society actors and another conflict parties in intra-state conflict, one organised crime and one the media.
To be fair, foreign policy analysts have not ignored NSAs altogether. Indeed, since their earliest days, they have emphasised the influence of interest groups, for instance Cuban immigrants' influence in the US (Haney and Vanderbush 1999), and the media, most notably the (controversially debated) 'CNN effect' (Robinson 2011) and domestic media (Whitten-Woodring 2009). However, while taking domestic private actors into account, FPA scholars have (aside from international media) failed to acknowledge the influence of Actors were considered as state actors when they were official representatives of states (e.g. foreign secretaries, prime ministers, bureaucrats etc.). c Actors were considered NSAs when they were not official representatives of one single state, that is, either private actors on the national or international stage, or representatives of (public) international organizations or members of an intergovernmental network (see Table 1). d Differences between the overall number of articles and the sum of both types of articles are due to the fact that one article did not feature any actors.
transnational and international actors in foreign policymaking. As Foyle and Van Belle (2010) point out with respect to domestic groups, the literature is still largely limited to (a) ethnic interest groups (instead of, for instance, the influence of business interests, human rights advocates or environmental groups) and (b) US foreign policy. Moreover, only very recently have some FPA scholars started examining NSAs' decision-making processes, though they have focused only on terrorist groups (Mintz et al. 2006). This overall state-centric orientation is also reflected in recent surveys of, and introductions to, the field, which mainly (if not exclusively) focus on governmental decision making (see Hudson and Vore 1995;Breuning 2007;Hudson 2007;Renshon and Renshon 2008;Goldgeier 2010;exceptions being Hill 2010;Mintz and DeRouen 2010).
A systematic content analysis of articles published in FPA between 2005 and 2010 (a sample of 111 articles) lends further support to this claim. Judging the state of a field of research based on an analysis of journal content is a common practice in IR and political science more generally. Journal articles arguably provide us with the most accurate measurement of current debates in a (sub-) discipline (Waever 1998: 697). Most of these survey articles use journal articles published in a number of mostly high-ranked journals as a proxy to measure developments in a field or subfield (Breuning et al. 2005), such as theoretical or methodological developments (Bennett et al. 2003;Maliniak et al. 2011), authorship in the field (Breuning and Sanders 2007;Munck and Snyder 2007) or the attention paid to particular issues (Reiter 2006;Cardenas 2009). Focusing on a single journal to make inferences about a larger field, as we do here, is admittedly less common. Nevertheless, if particularly influential, scholars have also used single journals as an indicator for developments in the field (for instance Mead 2010).
We proceed in a similar way here, because FPA in our view presents the closest approximation to the subfield. While foreign policy analysts publish in a wide range of journals, FPA is the only high-quality peer-reviewed journal explicitly devoted to this field. Not only does the journal carry the name of the field as its title, but it was founded with the explicit goal of providing better publication opportunities for FPA research within the International Studies Association. Furthermore, it opened its first issue with a programmatic piece on FPA (Hudson 2005), and it has established itself in the last 5 years as the 'undisputably leading' journal in the subfield (Hellmann 2009b: 251). The editorial by the current editorial team (Drury et al. 2010) reiterates the journal's commitment to serve as an outlet for actor-based and decisionoriented research on foreign policy.
Our sample (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) consists of a total of 111 articles. We have coded them according to the actor classification set out in Table 1. Each type of actor (state, private, international, transnational) was conceptualised as a single variable that could be coded with '0' (absent) or '1' (present), to allow for the possibility of each article featuring more than one type of actor, so that in cases when state actors were clearly the most important actors, we could also code for NSAs that might also feature in the article. Importantly, in cases in which it was not clear whether to include certain NSAs, we have opted against our initial hunch that FPA does not sufficiently take these actors into account, and decided in favour of counting a particular NSA. Thus, if anything, a possible error on our side will not lead to a less favourable assessment of FPA scholars' appreciation of NSAs. Furthermore, we have explicitly not excluded collective actors, since our focus lies on the authors', instead of our own, definition. For instance, the variable state actor subsumes the state as a unitary actor (Tsygankov, 4/2009) 9 as well as individual (Shannon, 1/2007) and collective governmental actors (Brule´, 4/2008). Importantly, as we have explained above, we only code governmental actors from a single nation state as 'state actors', while intergovernmental networks are understood as 'international actors'. Table 3 presents the number of articles for each type of actor, Figure 2 the relative frequency. In the 111 articles published between 2005 and 2010, 91.9 per cent of all articles (102 articles) concentrate mainly or exclusively on (national) state actors. Roughly one-third (28.8 per cent) of papers published (32 articles) features NSAs of some sort. Within the group of NSAs, private actors form the largest sub-group, with 18 per cent (20 articles), followed by international actors with 9.9 per cent (11 articles). Transnational actors receive the least attention. They appear in only 4.5 per cent of the papers published in FPA (five articles).
Moreover, the diachronic development (Figures 3 and 4) shows no trend towards an increased focus on NSAs. Between 81.3 per cent (2007)      Furthermore, a closer look at the types of NSAs reveals a continued focus on the national arena: With 20 occurrences, private actors feature in more articles than international (11) and transnational actors (five) combined. The largest sub-categories of private actors in terms of the number of articles (as shown in Figure 5) are private business, non-state conflict parties and interest groups, with five occurrences each.
Overall, while most of the articles featuring private actors examine 'old acquaintances' like the media, private business or interest groups, there are notable exceptions that highlight promising new avenues for FPA research, such as the attempts to utilise FPA's toolkit to analyse NSAs' actions. Furthermore, this tells us something about FPA's stance towards the nation state. Private actors mainly try to influence the foreign policies of their home country's government. That is, while many foreign policy analysts consider private, as opposed to exclusively public, actors, they do so mainly within the container of the nation state. In that sense, they still remain (nation) statecentric. Let us now turn to the second group, international actors (see Figure 6).
The vast majority of FPA articles on international actors concentrate on IOs. Topics include analyses of (de-)Europeanisation (Hellmann, 1/2005), the EU's democracy promotion strategy (Burnell, 3/2005), IOs' (lack of) influence on foreign policies of applicant (Saideman, 3/2007), member (Deets, 1/2009) or third states (Davies, 3/2008), as well as UN peace operations (Brunk, 3/2008;Mukherjee, 4/2006). Articles have also examined IOs' influence on states' inclination to intervene in other countries (Lyon, 1/2007), and states' influence on formation of regional organisations (Haftel, 2/2010). What these articles have in common is that they treat international actors as unitary actors. Consequently, the internal dynamics -FPA's forte -remain hidden. Thus, many of the authors miss the chance to apply FPA's analytical concepts to explain decision making within IOs as well as in mixed-actor constellations.
However, there are a few promising exceptions. Krotz's (2/2010) study of regularised intergovernmentalism and Kreps's (3/2010) analysis of elite consensus and public opinion examine how decision making increasingly takes place not in the national context but in intergovernmental and interbureaucratic networks.
With only five articles, transnational actors are by far the least significant group of NSAs (see Figure 7). Two articles each focus on terrorist networks and NGOs. The articles dealing with terrorist networks (Ivanova, 4/2007;Parker, 3/2005) do not analyse their decision making. Among the articles focused on NGOs (Lyon, 1/2007), Brunk's (3/2008) analysis of the interpretation of the Rwandan genocide is worth pointing out. He examines how the Rwandan genocide was initially interpreted by the US government and the UN Security Council through the lens of Somalia as a civil war, in part reinforced by distorted media reports, and how -after a briefing by Human Rights Watch's Rwanda expert -this interpretation shifted towards genocide. This example nicely illustrates how transnational NGOs not only influence state leaders via lobbying, but are sometimes deliberately brought into the decisionmaking process. Miklian (4/2008) finally examines the international media's role in US's relations with Nepal.
Overall, the results from our analysis suggest that while foreign policy analysts advocate the disaggregation of the state, they still stick with the national container model. First, 102 articles (91.9 per cent) focus on national state actors. That is, the state, even if disaggregated, still is the most important focus of FPA, and NSAs are still largely neglected. Second, even among those articles that do examine NSAs, the national focus remains strong.

FPA 2.0: Studying Complex Foreign Policymaking in a Globalised World
In this paper, we have substantiated three claims: (1) NSAs play an important role in foreign policy; (2) FPA is in principle well suited for the analysis of foreign policymaking involving multiple actors; and (3) nevertheless, foreign policy analysts have -aside from a few, but promising, exceptions -remained focused on the state or at the least on national actors.
So where do we go from here? Three broad directions for further research stand out. First, we need to get a better grasp on what exactly is changing (and what stays the same). That is, foreign policy analysts should examine how decisions are made across policy fields and arenas (IOs, different national governments, etc.) and to what extent and how exactly NSAs are involved (for instance, how important is their influence compared to government officials?). Even in settings where no private actors are involved, we need to get a clearer picture of which types of officials (ministers, bureaucrats, diplomats, etc.) are involved in decision making and whether there has been any change over time. Thus, we need to ask not only whether governance increasingly takes place in intergovernmental networks (the horizontal axis) but also to what extent more decisions are prepared or even made by lower-level officials (the vertical axis), as the distinction between intergovernmental and interbureaucratic networks Second, such studies should also help us tease out what factors influence NSAs' access to governments' (and, as far as private and transnational actors are concerned, international actors') decision making. Four groups of factors (and combinations of them) seem to be particularly relevant with respect to access: policy field and/or issue; political opportunity structures; stage of the policy process; and actor type and resources.
To begin with, the chances of NSAs to gain access to decision making is likely to differ from subfield to subfield (and even issue to issue). Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that, while foreign policy in general traditionally tends to be more guarded than 'soft' domestic policy fields, access will differ between different subfields, like foreign economic, development and security policy. This is due to functional demands of the policy field like technical expertise (or access to conflict zones) or secrecy (as in the case of security policy), or the degree of international institutionalisation (Risse-Kappen 1995: 25-33). It also depends on how the issue is framed or how the problem is represented. Furthermore, access will likely differ depending on the actor type, often in combination with the policy field. Thus, for instance, public international actors are, all other things considered equal, more likely to be involved in security issues than private and, probably to an even greater extent, transnational actors (which will have a greater shot at access in, say, environmental politics), if only because of (a lack of) security clearances. 10 Research on NSAs' access to IOs has shown (not surprisingly) that an NSA's material and immaterial resources (Rittberger et al. 2013: 108) as well as its position on a specific matter (like-minded or not) influence access opportunities (Tallberg 2010). 11 Moreover, the stage of the policy process will also be important. Thus, while private actors like PMFs are often involved in security policy, for instance in counterterrorism, they are more likely to be mandated in the implementation phase than in the earlier phases of the decision-making process. 12 In summary, although the literature on political opportunity structures (Kitschelt 1986;Risse-Kappen 1995) and NSAs' access to IOs (Tallberg 2010) has produced quite an extensive body of knowledge, additional comparative work across policy fields and involving different types of actors would be helpful.
Third, and to some extent building on the first point, foreign policy analysts should start analysing decision making in these different settings and probe to what extent their models are applicable, how they could be modified, etc.
Here, the evolving literature on 'European foreign policy' leads the way (Carlsnaes et al. 2004;Larsen 2009;Smith 2010). These studies try to figure out how foreign policy is made in between national governments and European institutions. For that purpose, these scholars distinguish between different types of foreign policy associated with specific modes of decision making involving different sets of actors. This body of research will very likely prove useful in developing explanatory frameworks for foreign policy decision making in intergovernmental networks (already prominent in the EU; see Hollis 2010), other IOs like the UN or NATO, but probably also in public policy networks. The (multi-level) governance literature (see Enderlein et al. 2010) will also likely prove to be a valuable source in the process of testing out FPA's toolkit and, where necessary, adapting it. More generally, a closer cooperation between FPA and the governance literature may help to demonstrate FPA's continued relevance. If Sil and Katzenstein (2010) are right about the advantages of analytical eclecticism, we can also expect much more compelling answers to today's questions from such scholarly exchange. Such cooperation might prove to be as much a chance at the 'reinvigoration' of FPA as the increased dialogue with constructivism that Houghton (2007) proposed.
Overall, the 'new' governance arrangements in foreign policy provide a great chance for FPA.
If international life has indeed become more colourful in the sense that states are not the only relevant actors, then there are a lot of new, exciting and challenging questions waiting for FPA. As Douglas Foyle (2003: 170) points out: 'Just as the real world of international politics is becoming increasingly globalised and interactive, scholarship in FPA needs to do the same'. Let's get started! 2002: 236). However, far from rendering foreign policy obsolete, globalisation makes an ever greater number of policy fields subject to influence from beyond national borders (by IOs, NGOs and other states' governments), thus leading to more trans-/international negotiations and coordination. Thus, as long as we do not have a world state (something that even Alex Wend [2003: 505], notable proponent of the inevitability of the emergence of a world state, admits, seems 'clearly some way off'), ever more, not less, issues become matters of foreign policy (Hill 2003: xviii). 3 In the following, FPA refers to the journal, FPA to the subfield. 4 Similar developments can be discerned in the legislative as well as the judicial branch (Slaughter 2004). Legislators and judges increasingly cooperate with their peers in other countries in what could be called inter-legislative and inter-judicial networks. 5 This of course is not intended to invoke the impression that goals cannot change during the policy-making process. 6 Another example is the role of the Financial Action Task Force in the 'problematisation' of money laundering (Hu¨lsse 2007). 7 Among its members are professors, think tank experts, former bureaucrats and advisors, and representatives of the private sector; see http://www.state.gov/t/avc/isab/c27632.htm (7/5/2012). 8 For an example of an ethnographic IR study, see Neumann (2012). We thank one of the reviewers for pointing us to the relevance of ethnography. 9 Throughout this article, we use a short citation for articles from our FPA sample ('first author, issue'). 10 Moreover, in focusing on access opportunities, it might be worth considering to further differentiate the actor taxonomy presented here to incorporate a for-profit/not-for-profit distinction. Thus, for instance, MNEs might be likely to be included in the making of foreign economic policy, whereas NGOs are more likely to participate in, say, conflict prevention policy. 11 This in turn might make a potential interesting FPA follow-up project on the potential for group think, if like-mindedness is a condition for access. 12 Again, it should be kept in mind that these phases are not as neatly separable in practice as in theory.