Deconstruction of Engagements with Public Opinion in Foreign Policy Analysis: A Critical Essay from the Perspective of Vernacular Approach

Abstract

This research pursues the footprints of methodological limitations in the Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) literature, concerning how the literature engages with public opinion. It primarily hypothesizes that the FPA approaches the public through “someone else’s scripts” and “methodological elitism”, consequently poorly capturing “how ordinary individuals narrate” foreign policy issues and ignoring their genuine “voice and agency”. Accordingly, employing Vernacular Security Studies (VSS) empowered with Derrida’s deconstruction, this paper evaluates its hypothesis by examining empirical papers on public opinion in FPA. Ultimately, it propounds that certain FPA papers exhibit methodological deficiency, resulting from their approach to the public, conceptualization, and data collection process. By doing so, this paper expects to trigger a growing interest in developing more diverse, inclusive, and grassroots-oriented approaches in this domain. Such an approach might draw attention to diverse publics’ different voices and experiences and point out a new research agenda called “Vernacular Foreign Policy”.