Introduction

This book is concerned with the question of how decisions get made in British politics. We are not as much interested in contemporary developments in British politics as in trying to use a specific approach to answer this question. Our approach is the case-study method, and our main aim is to try and locate the six case-studies chosen within a theoretical framework. This framework comprises the main theories of decision-making, and the main accounts of how the British political system operates. A second aim is to see what the case-studies tell us about the theories that comprise our framework. That is to say, we want not only to use the theories of decision-making and British politics to illuminate our case-studies, but also to use the findings from our case-studies to say something about the relative utility of the theories.