Abstract
Earlier chapters have concentrated on the new context in which British external policy is now made. Clearly, the context of policy will have an intimate effect on the content and the making of it. But we must be careful to distinguish the context of policy from influences upon it. For the ‘context’ is something within which Britain exists according to the view of the beholder. Governments may or may not agree with the observer’s particular characterisation of the context, and to a large extent, the context of policy is whatever governments perceive it to be. They may, of course, be wildly inaccurate and will pay the price of misperception, but they have nothing but their honest opinions on which to rely.
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Tessa Blackstone and William Plowden, Inside the Think Tank (London: Heinemann, 1988), p. 174
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The D-Notice system is overseen by a joint Whitehall-Fleet Street committee. The system has been in operation since 1911. See, Hennessy, Whitehall, op. cit., p. 356. See also Maggie Brown, ‘Rough Seas for D-Notices’, The Independent, 9 December 1987, p.16.
See, for example, Colina MacDougall, ‘Something Will Have to Give’, The Financial Times, 18 May 1989.
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Interestingly, Peter Wright, in Spycatcher (New York: Dell Publishing, 1987), maintains that CND was regarded ‘as largely irrelevant pieces of the jigsaw’ (p. 454), but he also claims that there were never less than a staggering 2 million personal files in MI5s Registry, a number that ‘began to rise dramatically’ in the late 1960s and 1970s’ (p.49).
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Stephen George, Politics and Policy in the European Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p.71.
See, for example the conclusions of Simon Burgess, and Geoffrey Edwards, ‘The Six Plus One: British Foreign Policy and the Question of European Economic Integration, 1955’, International Affairs, 64(3) (1988), pp. 393–414.
Bill Robinson, ‘No Relief for the Borrowers’, The Independent, 19 October 1989, p. 29.
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See the summary in John Baylis, British Defence Policy (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 19–29.
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Nicholas Bayne, ‘Making Sense of Western Economic Policies: The Role of the OECD’, The World Today 43(2) (1987), p.28.
See, for example, Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear, (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983) pp. 128–55; Roger Tooze, ‘Security and Order: The Economic Dimension’, in M. Smith, et al., op. cit., pp. 140–5.
Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Frances Pinter 1988), p. 182.
See an excellent summary by Neill Nugent, ‘The European Community and British Independence’, Talking Politics 2(1) (1988), p. 31.
Hugo Young and Anne Sloman, No Minister: An Inquiry into the Civil Service (London: BBC, 1982) p.73
Michael Clarke, ‘Britain and European Political Co-operation in the CSCE’, in Kenneth Dyson (ed.), European Detente (London: Frances Pinter, 1986), p. 249.
See Bruce George (ed.), Jane’s NATO Handbook 1990–91 (Coulsdon: Jane’s Information Group, 1990), pp. 195–218.
On the general issue of environmental policy-making see, David Newsome, ‘The New Diplomatic Agenda: Are Governments Ready?’, International Affairs, 65(1) (1988–89), pp. 29–41;
Norman Myers, ‘Environment and Security’, Foreign Policy, 74 (1989), pp. 23–41.
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© 1992 Royal Institute of International Affairs
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Clarke, M. (1992). Institutional Influences on External Policy-making. In: British External Policy-making in the 1990s. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22122-6_5
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