Devolution in the Conduct of International Relations

Abstract

THE controversy at present dividing the protagonists of open and secret diplomacy has allowed the first stages of a significant change in the method of the conduct bv the British Government of official international relations to pass almost unnoticed. British practice by a slow evolution and in certain directions is diverging from the accepted constitutional doctrine and tending towards a decentralisation of control.2 The British machinery for the conduct of international relations has developed haphazard from origins established under conditions very different from those of the present day. Although fitful expansion and periodic outbursts of reforming zeal have in part adapted various parts to varying functions, the bases upon which the edifice rests remain untouched. It is true that the office of His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs finally evolved, in I782, with specialised functions by successive but ill-defined stages from the Royal Secretaries of the Tudors and the secretariat of Henry III. By further stages, equally spasmodic, the Northern Department, converted in I782 into the Foreign Office and employing in I793 two permanent undersecretaries, one chief clerk, two senior and nine junior clerks,3 has grown into a modern Department of State, honeycombed with specialised sections and the centre of a vast administrative machine. Similarly the net of diplomatic representation abroad -has spread from the beginning of the sixteenth century down to the present day, by the creation of an additional mission hereand there to meet new requirements. Internally, specialisation and