ABSTRACT
If you want to learn how a programme works, there is no substitute for seeing it in action. Studying laws, organization charts, budgets, and quantitative indicators of output are necessary but not sufficient. Within national politics, policymakers take for granted the desirability of talking to officials elsewhere about programmes of common interest. To understand how a foreign programme works, it is likewise necessary to talk to the foreigners who run the programme, for they not only write the documents that describe it but also know what those documents leave out. Investigating a programme on the ground shows how it looks from the inside. While a television feature may stimulate interest in foreign achievements, it is an inadequate basis for making policy. It is also far cheaper to send a government official abroad for a week than to send a television team abroad to produce a ten-minute segment for a public affairs programme.
