Making of British Foreign Policy, David Vital 1968

David Vital, 1a Ed 1968

De tremenda actualidad para entender el presente.

Sinopsis: ThE making of foreign policy in Britain is the business of the Executive and for almost all practical purposes the Executive is unfettered in its exercise of this function. In any attempt to understand the processes of foreign policy-making in Britain attention must therefore, in the first instance, be concentrated on those parts of the administrative machinery which are directly concerned with foreign affairs, whether as a major function or as an incidental or even occasional aspect of their duties, their primary sphere or activity lying elsewhere. No doubt the Executive is not impervious to domestic pressures originating outside itself. There are great occasions when, as in January 1968 for example, political calculation relating to its standing in its own party impels a Government to modify or even radically amend settled policy or policy in the making. But such occasions are rare even though recollection of the events of January 1968, because it is still fresh, might seem to suggest other- wise. The present paper will accordingly concentrate on what is taken to be the norm, namely, that in Britain foreign policy is made by and within the machinery of government.

The author is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sussex, formerly a member of the Israel Foreign Service and is about to become Associate Professor at Bar Ilan.