The catalytic shock of the end of the Cold War and the apparent inability of international relations (IR) theory to predict this profound change have raised questions about how we should go about understanding the world of today. Our inherited tools and ways of describing the international arena seem not to work as well as they once did. To explain and predict the behavior of the human collectivities comprising nation-states, IR theory requires a theory of human political choice. Within the study of IR, foreign policy analysis (FPA) has begun to develop such a theoretical perspective. From its inception, FPA has involved the examination of how foreign policy decisions are made and has assumed that human beings, acting individually or in collectivities, are the source of much behavior and most change in international politics. This article reviews the field of foreign policy analysis, examining its research core and its evolution to date. The overview also looks forward, pointing to the future, not only of FPA itself, but to the implications that future developments in FPA may have for the study of international relations. Students coming of age in the post-Cold War era seem to grasp intuitively that the study of international relations (IR) is ultimately about human beings, and that the ways in which human beings engage in such relations are difficult to simplify. Contemporary students balk at the classic simplifying assumptions of mainstream IR theory more readily than did their counterparts during the Cold War years. John Lewis Gaddis (1992/93:55) articulates this reaction when he argues that international relations are conducted by: conscious entities capable of reacting to, and often modifying, the variables and conditions they encounter. They can at times see the future taking shape; they can devise, within limits, measures to hasten, retard, or even reverse trends. If molecules had minds of their own, chemists would be much less successful in predicting their behavior. It is no wonder that the effort to devise a "molecular" approach to the study of politics did not work out .... The simple persistence of values in politics ought to be another clue that one is dealing here with objects more complicated than billiard balls. The catalytic shock of the end of the Cold War and the apparent inability of IR theory to predict this profound change (Gaddis, 1992/93; Haftendorn and Tuschoff, 1993) have raised questions about how we should go about understanding today's world. Our inherited tools and ways of describing the international