Introduction

Abstract

The study of foreign policy is a boundary problem in at least two respects. To the policy-maker, the political commentator and the student alike, foreign policy is that area of politics which bridges the all-important boundary between the nation-state and its international environment — the boundary which defines the nation-state, within the limits of which national governments claim supreme authority. To the student the study of foreign policy also straddles the boundary between two academic disciplines: the study of domestic government and politics, commonly called Political Science, and the largely separate study of international politics and diplomacy, commonly called International Relations. Both of these aspects of the problem have given a certain distinctiveness, and a certain peculiar difficulty, to the study (as well as to the practice) of foreign policy.