The Interaction of Foreign Policy Decision Making and Implementation in the UK's 'Comprehensive Approach' to the Helmand War.

Abstract

This thesis uses a sociological communities of practice approach and the concept of imaginaries to analyse the interaction of foreign policy decision and implementation during the UK’s ‘Comprehensive Approach to the Helmand War. My objective is to address a lacuna in the foreign policy analysis literature on implementation and to explain the UK’s involvement in Helmand systematically, not just as a faulty decision or an inadequate implementation, but via the interaction of both.
I argue that ‘stagist’ conceptions of decision and implementation in foreign policy analysis have served only to obscure implementation and that analysis of the two needs to embrace a sociological view of the individuals and groups involved to appreciate the duality and constant interaction of the two. I show that understanding of this interaction is greatly aided by embracing a third concept; design which mediates decision and implementation and is qualitatively different to them. I also argue that the Helmand case study allows us to identify critical ‘stress factors’ between the social ecology of intervenor’s organisations and the
problem being dealt with which could prove useful in explaining the path of other foreign policy interventions.
I show that the UK’s ‘Comprehensive Approach’ to the Helmand War was anything but. A practice of valuing consensus at the strategic decision level above all else and a process of socially constructing the Helmand decision between the prime minister and the military obscured deep ontological disagreements whilst entirely different epistemologies undermined comprehensiveness at the design level. As a result the implementation level was deeply fragmented and incapable of significant learning on the topic of how to practice stabilisation in Helmand.

Date of Award	23 Jan 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Timothy P Edmunds (Supervisor) & Michelle Cini (Supervisor)