Decision-Making in Great Britain During the Suez Crisis

Small Groups and a Persistent Leader

This radically new work provides an innovative approach to the question of why the Suez Crisis erupted. Bertjan Verbeek here applies foreign policy analysis framework to British decision making during the crisis, providing the first full foreign policy analysis of this important event. Moreover, the book offers a new interpretation on British decision-making during the crisis. Many existing studies of Suez emphasise the role of the Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, and often focus on the matter of collusion with Israel. This study demonstrates that small group dynamics in the institutional context of cabinet decision-making in the British political system are much more important. This study offers the possibility of determining more precisely the interrelationship between systemic constraints on states' behaviour and the actual behaviour of states under such constraints.