‘Building the Global Network?’ The Reform of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office under New Labour

Abstract

From 1997 onwards the FCO was reshaped by New Labour. The removal of responsibility for overseas aid to a new Department of International Development (DFID) was perhaps the most dramatic change. Successive cuts to the FCO budget and the progressive centralization of foreign‐policy decision‐making in Number 10 also had their effects, as did a series of government‐directed reforms to recruitment practices. In an effort to make it more accountable to the public, the FCO was also bound by Public Service Agreements specifying targets for service delivery, publish Strategy Reports and mission statements, and Annual Departmental Reports setting benchmarks for performance. Together these reforms were designed to transform the FCO‘s culture, replacing inherited traditions of thought and practice with new ones believed better suited to contemporary world politics. This paper examines these inherited and new traditions, as well as the dilemmas they addressed.

Introduction: Interpreting British Foreign Policy

“…The centralisation of decision-making in British government has resulted in greater involvement in policy-making by the Prime Minister's Office and more oversight of diplomacy being performed by the Treasury (Williams 2004). Internal reforms to the FCO have attempted to transform it from a repository of expertise and a source of policy advice to a ‘network actor’ designed to facilitate the implementation of decisions made elsewhere (see Hall 2012b). Parallel reforms to other ministries have given them new channels to the outside world.…”

The Rise of Rhizomatic Cultural Policies

“…In the British context, the FCO has been accused in the past of being a self-closed entity insensitive to domestic political priorities stemming from other government departments. Much of this changed with the rise of New Labour to power in 1997 as the FCO tried to become more engaged with an array of stakeholders from NGOs, consultancies and the industry to other government entities (Hall, 2013). Indeed, Labour opened up horizontal channels of communication between the FCO and DCMS not only with the establishment of the Creative Industries Task Force as shown above but also with the creation in 2002 of the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board in which the FCO was the lead organisation (House of Commons, 2006).…”

The soft power of the United Kingdom

“…С приходом к власти правительства «новых лейбористов» во главе с Т. Блэром в 1997 г. британская внешняя политика была во многом пересмотрена и обновлена. Изменения коснулись, в частности, сферы содействия развитию и уже упомянутого выше выделения в отдельное министерство Департамента по международному развитию 406 . Новые тенденции были не только организационными: в их основе лежали идеи, которые были призваны сделать британскую внешнюю политику отвечающей вызовам современного мира 407 .…”