The short but complicated way leading to foreign policy decisions

To understand the nature of behaviour which shapes the foreign decision making in modern, transformed state system Charles W. Kegley Jr. suggests that we have to some extent compare it with drama act stage. The actors (States, NGO's) perform the roles assigned to them and as usually top actors take the center stage and supporting players move along the periphery. Seems like the lower class actors can not influence much of decision making, but I shall disagree. Every single person (An individual with some sort of opinion and ability to vote in this case) can influence outcomes of a local policy making which as a small wave rolls through the variety of cabinets within any government (Democratic, off course) and the same way it affects the local policy making it does with the foreign policies.

Foreign policy choices are affected by a variety of factors, such as geographic location, military might, economy etc. As Kegley points out there are three major sources of states foreign policy decision making. Firstly there are global influences, which after absorbing usually have to be affected by internal state influences and finally after passing the grinding of previous two stages foreign policies are affected by a individual influences, such as various ruling regimes (democratic or autocratic), leadership and levels of interstate cooperation/communication quality. Only then these ideas reach the policy making process and some of them might become a Foreign Policy Decisions.

I believe that foreign policy making becomes more and more complicated even with assistance of all the pleasures of globalisation , as there are more and more common issues for states to tackle. With the assistance of globalisation towards quicker and more knowledgeable decision making rises the amount of knowledge of problems to solve.

I would like to draw your attention to a words of political scientist George Modelski, even though these words are half a century old but they perfectly reflect today's foreign policy making -

"Foreign policy is the system of activities evolved by communities for changing the behaviour of other states and for adjusting their own activities to the international environment"

(Kegley,2007,55)