ABSTRACT
This chapter shifts the focus from the making of foreign policy to its implementation: the mechanisms through which and the instruments with which decisions are translated into action and outcomes. The chapter starts by making some essential distinctions between decision making and action, and between the capacity to act and the capacity to get results. It then moves on to consider four components of foreign policy implementation: first, assumptions about the nature of the implementation process (rational, political and psychological); second, assumptions about the actors in foreign policy implementation; third, the nature of instruments in foreign policy implementation; and finally, the evaluation of outcomes from foreign policy implementation. The final part of the chapter considers the ways in which these aspects of implementation are affected by the transformed world in which implementation has to take place.
