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National Interest & Policy Makers Nationa

National policy makers are not free to select their policy options in a vacuum. Fundamental to the development and the very concept of "national interest" is, of course, the existence of other nations whose interests must be taken into account in various ways. Even nations which are close allies because of their convergent interests in many areas may find their interests opposed in other areas: thus, for example, the United States in the Suez crisis of 1956 found reason to join forces with a "rival," the Soviet Union, against three "allies," France, Great Britain, and Israel. Even in one region, nations with parallel interests in some respects may have sharply divergent interests in other respects; thus the United States and many Arab states long shared an interest in restraining Soviet expansionism, but were sharply divided in their responses to Israeli expansionism. These complicated international elements shaping nationalinterest policy may collectively be called the external policy environment.

In addition, in the real world, nations' policy makers must be responsive to internal political factors. These include the institutional structural of the government itself  i.e., who has the "right" to set policy, and subject to what constraints by other institutions? Especially in pluralist societies, organized interest groups must also be taken into account, while in democracies, public opinion is the background against which policy decisions must be made. These factors comprise the internal policy environment.

In the case of the United States, this internal environment is particularly rich and complex. The "separation of powers" embodied in the United States constitution means that the ability to shape policy within the government as a whole is divided between the executive and legislative branches, which have different agendas and which in most recent years have been divided between the two major polit...

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National Interest & Policy Makers Nationa. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 22:26, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705866.html