Introduction

Scholars who investigate the connections between social forces and foreign policy contend that an adequate understanding of the processes of policy-making is essential for understanding the foreign policies of any nation. They have argued for decades that it is necessary to reconstruct decision-makers' "definition of the situation"—how decision-makers see the world and the advantages and drawbacks of various courses of action—in order to make sense of foreign policy. Aside from their value in explaining or predicting the actions of governments, studies of the foreign policy decision process are valuable for an even more important reason: they provide a basis for diagnosing the sources of apparent policy failures and for formulating prescriptions for reform. Many foreign policy studies serve a dual purpose: they shed light on the workings of one or two nations' foreign policy machinery, and they also provide insights into the desirable or undesirable features of various policy initiatives.