ABSTRACT
Research on the effect of Chilean foreign policy on politics within the executive branch has traditionally concentrated on two types of independent variables—variables at the level of the national system and the role of models and economic policies—at the macro-level of analysis. This chapter examines the political and bureaucratic aspects of the generation of foreign policies. It analyses the presidential role and the characteristics of presidents and addresses the study of the bureaucracy. A presidential actor shows ideological tendencies to the extent that, in order to orient and communicate his own behavior and that of these followers, he customarily relies on concepts and propositions of a normative nature about political action. The role of Patricio Aylwin in foreign policymaking marks him as a pragmatic president of the referee type. The bureaucracy of the foreign sector is constituted of foreign service officials, ambassadors, and other appointees who are not political actors.
