Foreign policy and diplomacy have always seemed resistant to rational investigation and broad public understanding. Partly this is a function of the inherently secretive and executive nature of the activity; even the most public diplomacy tends to originate in the private calculations of foreign ministries. Partly it is a function of generally held perceptions about the nature of statecraft, which is considered to be a realm of complex gambits and intricate strategy. The origins of modern diplomacy, in Renaissance Italy, saw the development of the popular view of the diplomat as a highly cultured practitioner in an elaborate game of oratorical manoeuvre, cunning and deception. The diplomatic coups of Richelieu, Talleyrand, Metternich and Bismarck have been admired as feats of original genius, to be studied sui generis, defying attempts to understand them by investigating their mechanisms of policy-making or policy thinking. But once we penetrate under these popular conceptions, we reach the real difficulty confronting attempts to understand the nature of the process of foreign policy making: the sheer complexity and seeming anarchy of the activities commonly conceived of under its rubric.

This chapter is an attempt to construct an account of the nature of foreign policy making that is both understandable and accurate. It begins by surveying the declining field of foreign policy making studies, concluding with the contention that a new approach is needed in conceiving the nature of such policy-making.