Despite the increase in the number of studies in international relations using concepts from a role theory perspective, scholarship continues to assume that a state’s own expectations of what role it should play on the world stage is shared among domestic political actors.

Cristian Cantir and Juliet Kaarbo have gathered a leading team of internationally distinguished international relations scholars to draw on decades of research in foreign policy analysis to explore points of internal contestation of national role conceptions (NRCs) and the effects and outcomes of contestation between domestic political actors. Nine detailed comparative case studies have been selected for the purpose of theoretical exploration, with an eye to illustrating the relevance of role contestation in a diversity of settings, including variation in period, geographic area, unit of analysis, and aspects of the domestic political process.

This edited book includes a number of pioneering insights into how the domestic political process can have a crucial effect on how a country behaves at the global level.