Abstract
Earlier chapters have concentrated on the new context in which British external policy is now made. Clearly, the context of policy will have an intimate effect on the content and the making of it. But we must be careful to distinguish the context of policy from influences upon it. For the ‘context’ is something within which Britain exists according to the view of the beholder. Governments may or may not agree with the observer’s particular characterisation of the context, and to a large extent, the context of policy is whatever governments perceive it to be. They may, of course, be wildly inaccurate and will pay the price of misperception, but they have nothing but their honest opinions on which to rely.
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Notes
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See, for example, Colina MacDougall, ‘Something Will Have to Give’, The Financial Times, 18 May 1989.
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Interestingly, Peter Wright, in Spycatcher (New York: Dell Publishing, 1987), maintains that CND was regarded ‘as largely irrelevant pieces of the jigsaw’ (p. 454), but he also claims that there were never less than a staggering 2 million personal files in MI5s Registry, a number that ‘began to rise dramatically’ in the late 1960s and 1970s’ (p.49).
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See the summary in John Baylis, British Defence Policy (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 19–29.
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See an excellent summary by Neill Nugent, ‘The European Community and British Independence’, Talking Politics 2(1) (1988), p. 31.
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See Bruce George (ed.), Jane’s NATO Handbook 1990–91 (Coulsdon: Jane’s Information Group, 1990), pp. 195–218.
On the general issue of environmental policy-making see, David Newsome, ‘The New Diplomatic Agenda: Are Governments Ready?’, International Affairs, 65(1) (1988–89), pp. 29–41;
Norman Myers, ‘Environment and Security’, Foreign Policy, 74 (1989), pp. 23–41.
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© 1992 Royal Institute of International Affairs
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Clarke, M. (1992). Institutional Influences on External Policy-making. In: British External Policy-making in the 1990s. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22122-6_5
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