Introduction

The Introduction associates policy change with both the success and failure of policy, the rise and fall of government objectives. Recognizing ‘policy’ as being whatever a government might decide to do, or not to do, it defines and strategizes the analysis of its single case study: the rise and fall of the British policy for membership of European institutions that was established in January 1973 and failed in June 2016, setting out the relevant inclusions and exclusions. It also addresses and describes the two types of readers for whom the book is written, the General Reader and the Academic Theoretician.