Research Guides: U.S. Foreign Policy: Home

Journal Articles & Best Bets to Start Your Research

SLUth - Search Plus This link opens in a new window
SLUth is a great place to start your research. It searches over 50 of the library's databases at once, allowing you to find articles, books and more from across a variety of disciplines in databases such as Political Affairs index, JSTOR, ABI/Inform, Academic Search Complete, America: History & Life, Web of Science & more!
CIAO: Columbia International Affairs Online This link opens in a new window
1991 - present. Excellent source for theory and research in international affairs. Includes scholarly journal articles, as well as policy briefs, conference proceedings, working papers from university research institutes and more.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new window
1975 - present. Indexes journal in political sciences and related fields including, international relations, public policy & administration, economic & environmental policy, politics and society and more.
Google Scholar @ SLU This link opens in a new window
Searches resources such as abstracts, journal articles, and reprints from many publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and other sources in a wide variety of disciplines. This is a great resource to use once you have your search terms figured out, and to find out if an article was cited by more recent articles.

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports are non-partisan policy reports written for the use of Congress. They are a great way to get background on both foreign and domestic policy issues.

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Includes full-text CRS reports from 2004-present. Use the Advanced search to limit your search to only CRS reports. Best place to get the most recent CRS Reports. ProQuest Congressional also includes congressional hearings and other congressional documents that may be related to foreign policy.

CRS Reports
The Congressional Research Service is a nonpartisan agency that produces research reports and briefs on major policy issues and any topic requested by a member of Congress. This official site is publicly available and includes recent reports. SLU database ProQuest Congressional includes historical reports going back to 1914.
EveryCRSReport
EveryCRSReport partners with one Republican and one Democrat in Congress to make available to the public each CRS report currently available on Congress's internal website. Reports usually won't show up here till a few weeks after release.

Country Informtion

Europa World Yearbook Online This link opens in a new window
Provides current, detailed country surveys containing the latest analytical, statistical and directory data available for over 250 countries and territories.

U.S. Bilateral Relations Fact Sheets
Covers all the countries of the world with which the United States has relations. Each report contains info on bilateral relations with the U.S., as well as useful links to additional sources such as the CIA World Factbook entry for each country. (Formerly called Background Notes.)
List of Foreign Government Web Sites
Northwestern University Library maintains one of the most comprehensive lists of foreign government websites. Links are to pages in English where available

Declassified Documents

National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is an organization created by journalists dedicated to a more open government. Among other resources, it includes the largest freely available, non-government library of declassified documents.
U.S. Department of State Virtual Reading Room
The State Department FOIA Reading Room includes search functionality, as well as browsing of document collections, and records released due to litigation.
CIA Freedom of Information Act Reading Room
Historically significant documents more than 25 years old are required to be automatically declassified per a 1996 Executive Order. This search includes indexing for all documents that fall into this category, as well as all electronically available declassified documents. Browse a time period or search by name of a person, event, etc. You may get lucky and find some scans, or you may have to submit a FOIA request of your own if you find a document that may be useful to your research.
Additional FOIA Reading Rooms
Every government department has a FOIA reading room, some have multiple reading rooms. This page lists FOIA contacts and websites for every department and agency.

Public Papers of the Presidents

The Public Papers of the Presidents have been published for every president since Herbert Hoover in 1929. The volumes contain a compilation of speeches, press conferences, public messages, etc. Executive orders and proclamations were not regularly included until 1977 (beginning with the Jimmy Carter administration), the sources below include an archive of these documents.

The American Presidency Project
Includes Presidential documents from 1789-present, including the Public Papers of the President and all proclamations and executive orders. Easy browse by date and full text searching.
LLMC Digital Public Papers of the Presidents
This database includes full-text digitized copies of each volume from 1929-2001. Browse by volume to use the table of contents and/or index or use the full text search function. PDFs of the volumes may be downloaded in chunks of up to 200 pages.

Foreign Relations of the United States - Sensitive Documents

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) contains important diplomatic and intelligence communications between U.S. officials and between the U.S. and other countries. It is considered the official record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions, but are generally published about 30-35 years after events because of the sensitive nature of the documents included. FRUS volumes currently cover 1861-1980.

Foreign Relations of the United States (Official)
Official volumes from the U.S. State Department, Office of the Historian. Search volumes back through the Truman administration and browse older volumes. See status of upcoming volumes.
Foreign Relations of the United States (Wisconsin)
Search or browse digitized volumes of FRUS from 1861-1960 (Eisenhower administration).

Important Search Engines

Google is great, but it includes EVERYTHING. Try the search engines below to search only for government information.

Search USA.gov
Search USA.gov searches .gov, .mil, .us and selected other domains that include official local, regional, state and federal government agencies as well as quasi governmental agencies such as the Smithsonian.
Intergovernmental Organization Search Engine
If you're looking for international information, this custom Google search engine searches across 100s of IGO websites. IGOs searched included in this search are: World Bank, United Nations, Arab Monetary Fund, African Development Bank Group, IMF, Organization of American States, World Trade Organization, European Union, World Tourism Organization and many more.