Communicability in UK Foreign Policy: How Public Communication Concerns can Shape Policy Substance

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the growing influence of concerns about ‘communicability’ over how the UK makes foreign policy. It draws on government documents, published policymaker accounts and a set of interviews with current and former officials to highlight how communications professionals have gradually gained influence over substantive foreign policy processes. This development has fundamental implications for the UK’s engagement with international affairs and for scholars interested in domestic influences on foreign policy. Firstly, communications advisors typically gain greater access to and influence over decision-makers than policy advisors. British ministers are elected politicians. They care a great deal about domestic politics. No one foreign policy issue matches that interest. The British foreign policy bureaucracy’s acceptance that public communication matters fuels the point it further. Secondly, greater access translates into earlier involvement in policymaking. Most academic accounts assume policy communication considerations follow substantive decision-making. That appears no longer to be the case in the UK. Communication imperatives now enter into the substantive foreign policy calculus. Leaders seek to make ‘communicable’ decisions that can readily be presented publicly. Thirdly, this shift in the place of communications within the policymaking process changes the nature of the process itself. For example, in order to work government communication efforts must align with media deadlines. That places time pressures on the decision-making process, encouraging governments to make early and potentially costly commitments. Fourthly, the introduction of communications imperatives into policymaking changes the type of policies governments can make. This creates a ‘feedback loop’ between public opinion, the news and social media, and policymaking. Some decisions simply cannot be ‘sold’. Others are made purely for communication purposes. Taken together, these implications explain why communication concerns belong at the heart of foreign policy research in the UK, and potentially in other free media states.