Analyses the foreign policy decision-making of Britain in Libya and Bahrain during the 2011 Arab Uprisings. It builds on prior research to identify the primary motivations of Britain’s key players in the decision-making process. Moreover, it provides a novel investigation into the existence of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine as a factor in Britain’s foreign policy formulation. This research applies Graham Allison’s Bureaucratic Politics Model to analyse primary and secondary data on key players in the decision. It outlines their interests, positions, and bureaucratic position during each crisis and reflects on the existence of R2P notions within these. The results of this analysis suggest that the motivating factors of key players in the decision-making process were primarily guided by bureaucratic positions. Additionally, through critical analysis, this dissertation finds that R2P had limited impact on the decision-making process in Bahrain, and minor impact in Libya. This research has significant implications on the importance of R2P in foreign policy; it suggests that humanitarian disaster is a lower priority than state interest in policy formulation. Future research direction could build on this study to develop strategies to integrate R2P into states’ foreign policy and therefore, assist in the reduction of humanitarian disasters.
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