ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters foreign policy has been analysed in terms of the goals which the actions composing it are intended to achieve, of the means which are or are thought to be available and most suitable for the attainment of these goals, and of the influences external and internal by which the selection of means and the determination of actions are constrained. Means, goals, and influences interact with and modify each other. There is a fourth variable which interacts with all the other three. This variable may be described as the processes by which decisions are reached and policy choices are made. Included in this variable ‘processes’ are the constitutional arrangements, written or unwritten, of the state in question, its institutional structure, the actual as opposed to the formal working of its political system, the procedures or lack of them by which decision-makers are selected or identified, and the ways in which decisions are evolved or emerge and are put into effect.
