ABSTRACT
Policy and decision making are crucial to understanding governance and government in the Western world, yet they are such commonplace notions that the question of when a policy-as it is understood today-was first designed is hardly ever raised. We should distinguish between international or foreign and domestic policy. Foreign policy has been conducted throughout the ages with one objective in mind: to protect and, if possible, to expand the integrity and the interests of a sovereignty. In this sense, foreign policy is international politics. For millennia, the ruler's domestic concerns were solely the maintenance of public order and safety and the ways and means to raise revenue.
