TO THE ISSUE OF ASSESSING STATES’ FOREIGN POLICY POTENTIAL IN FORECASTING STUDIES

The article introduces an approach to identifying a state’s foreign policy potential and its components. It aims to assess the dynamics of the foreign policy potential and analyze foreign policy in the context of forecasting logic of states’ foreign policy behavior. The authors offer their own interpretation of a state’s foreign policy potential as a multidimensional and historically entrenched set of foreign policy resources, which interact with one another in varying degrees, as assets, means, possibility and capacity of a state to efficient use of its tangible and intangible advantages and project its strength externally. They evaluate the prospects and limitations of quantitative factor analysis in assessing foreign policy potential of states and specific foreign policy resources. Using contemporary United Kingdom and Spain as examples, the authors identify key (systemic) factors playing the role in their foreign policy potential transformation. Identifying such factors and detection of long-term political trends and risks of country development provide opportunities of predictive estimates not only for the foreign-policy analysis of specific states, but in a broader context of regional and international political processes.