Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi İşletme Fakültesi Dergisi, cilt.24, sa.1, ss.1-25, 2023 (Hakemli Dergi)
Assessments of the foreign policy of France after the April 2022 presidential election will guide the
scholars on the future of the internal and external policies of France and the European Union (EU). Within
this framework, the paper aims to identify the foreign policy approaches of the presidential candidates and
the political parties they have represented in France. The paper adopts a diverse approach from traditional
foreign policy approaches which take internal and external factors separately as units of analysis in foreign
policy-making processes. Contrary to the traditional perspective, the authors focused on the interaction of
internal and external factors, because it is argued in the paper that this interaction creates mutual impacts
on agents and shapes foreign policy-making procedures. Methodologically the paper elaborates on the
interaction through an analysis of the discourses of seven presidential candidates and the programs of the
political parties they have represented. It is concluded in the paper that the interaction of the factors in
French foreign policy has currently concentrated on the themes such as migration, security, economy,
climate change, Islam, NATO membership, and the future of the EU. The article tries to contribute to the
foreign policy analysis literature through a comprehensive analysis from a perspective of neoclassical
realism on the combination of internal and external factors and to illuminate the probable reflections of the
presidential election process in France.
Keywords: Foreign Policy Analysis, France, Presidential Election, European Union,
International Politics