ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of pertinent elements of the Australian political process. It looks at the management of foreign policy in Australia and examines the emergence of pressures within Australia for a ban on anti-personnel mines, and at some of the venues in which the case was argued. The chapter traces the evolution of government policy towards anti-personnel mines, and identifies key moments at which the direction of debate shifted. Australian foreign policy in practice is less a rational statement of coherent objectives, priorities, and means for their realisation than the outcome of a complex process of interaction between different actors and agencies. The chapter presents some conclusions, of which the central is that Australia’s signature was the product of a creative coalition of forces whose efforts flourished in part because of the specific nature of the issue in point.
