Diplomacy & Statecraft, 21:286–305, 2010
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0959-2296 print/1557-301X online
DOI: 10.1080/09592296.2010.482474
The New Diplomacy: Evolution of a Revolution
1557-301X & Statecraft,
0959-2296
FDPS
Diplomacy
Statecraft Vol. 21, No. 2, Sep 2010: pp. 0–0
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The
J.
R. New
KelleyDiplomacy: Evolution of a Revolution
JOHN ROBERT KELLEY
The continued rise of the non-state actor in twenty-first century
international politics issues a potent challenge to state primacy in
the area of diplomacy. Diplomacy’s statist tradition, once the
bedrock organising institution for pursuing international politics,
is ceding influence to non-state actors—the “new” diplomats—
who have displayed impressive skill at shaping policy through
means that foreign ministries fail to grasp. To the chagrin of established scholars and practitioners, this paper claims that nothing
has transpired to suggest the diplomatic profession is doing
anything but pluralising. Furthermore, the process by which the
foreign ministry opens itself to the public increasingly resides with
the latter. Does this revolution mean the evolution of the “new
diplomacy” has materialised? The contents in the following pages
suggest so, and the main reason for this is built upon a radical
view of agency: the age of diplomacy as an institution is giving
way to an age of diplomacy as a behaviour. Yet despite who dominates in the art of influence, caveats remain and it appears likely
that each side will need the other to achieve successful statecraft in
the years to come.
Is diplomacy solely the domain of the state? Until recently—the last fifteen
years—any answer but the affirmative proved a difficult proposition. For in
the era of the nation-state, few institutions have remained so stable and
enduring as the diplomatic. Though not itself an invention of the modern
international system, it retains, however tenuous these days, a tradition fusing the Machiavellian urges of the state with the pragmatic rationalism
borne of the Enlightenment. If states could be viewed as the hubs of political activity, diplomacy provided the spokes for one state’s political interests
to interface with those of another without resorting to military force. Adam
Watson defined it as “a negotiation of political entities which acknowledge
each other’s independence,” and by this accord participants partake in the
most pluralistic organising institution in the international system.1 One state
could confidently enter into diplomatic relations with another under a
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shared understanding of the rules of the game; with sovereignty mutually
recognised, states could then use diplomacy as the means to achieving
political ends.
However, from the 1990s onward some began to wonder if the state
monopoly on diplomacy and, more precisely, diplomats faced inevitable
decline. Several factors influenced this wave of declinism: the rethinking
of foreign affairs institutions that took place after the Cold War, expanding
perceptions of international agency to include firms, non-governmental
organisations [NGOs] and other actors, the widespread adoption of information communication technologies such as the Internet—each served to
reinforce claims of the looming disintegration of diplomacy as the world
had known it, and much epistemological soul-searching ensued.2 Without
diplomats, as the venerable George Kennan pondered around this time,
who would carry the profession forward?3 What hope lay ahead for the
orderly execution of international politics? Were diplomats still necessary?
That the challenge to the traditional view incited this kind of existential
despair underscored just how deep the institution of diplomacy had
grown. States liked it this way and so did the diplomats. Codes of conduct enshrined in the Congress of Vienna of 1814–15, and later in the
Vienna Conventions of 1961 and 1963, established norms of diplomatic
protocols adopted by nations worldwide. The club-like atmosphere of the
diplomatic realm, beyond promoting standards of official behavior and
shared values, supported the common view of diplomacy as an exclusive
and specialist pursuit. Mayer captured the mood of the early twentieth
century foreign policy establishment in this way: “policy-making and
negotiations in international politics, with a balance of power as the proximate objective, were [believed to be] so complex and unbending that
they should be left to specialists and professional diplomats.”4 The flow of
international affairs ran exclusively through the state and state-sanctioned
representatives.
Why let go so easily? Juergen Kleiner has recently stated in these pages
that this flow runs unabated; the institution, he says, has proved “remarkably resistant” to the fundamental changes that emerged in the 1990s.5 This
deduction rides on three assumptions that keep diplomacy firmly planted in
the foreign ministry. First, conventional wisdom assumes that states retain
exclusive control over the international agenda, dictating the priority of
issue-areas and how to handle them. Second, the overriding condition for
this form of management rests is inherently structural, that state initiative
precedes all substantive international action. Third, as far as agency is concerned the order of diplomatic action remains unchanged, which is to say
policy drives diplomatic action and not the other way around. To each of
these dissenters have responded, firstly, that whilst states once reigned
unchallenged in the management of international politics, as Langhorne has
noted, also in these pages, the contemporary environment accommodates
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“a wide range of human activities which owe little or nothing to geographical location, time of day and, most important of all, to government permission or regulation.”6 Secondly, with states’ continued focus on traditional
power metrics in military, economic, and geographic advantages, “information power” continues to undercut state primacy and confers unprecedented
influence to a new generation of actors on the global stage.7 These actors
are noted for their ability to harness this power in such a way that enables
them to operate largely unencumbered by sovereign controls. Thirdly, and
central to this article’s main argument, the beneficiaries of this new strain of
power politics are non-state actors, who with great agility and efficiency are
proving capable at bridging the multiplying information flows between the
body politic and political action, even to the point of shaping policy in ways
that today’s diplomats cannot.
Indeed, what this suggests is that state control over diplomacy is eroding. Purists would like to believe that even in the most turbulent periods,
the international system will not surrender this enduring practice to the
clutches of postmodern thinking on the subject. But the continued rise of
the non-state actor in twenty-first century international politics means challenges to state primacy in both agenda-setting and action remain present.
And let us not overlook the nagging questions of representation: if government does not provide the necessary mandate for diplomatic action, then
who does? Can the institution of diplomacy survive without state stewardship? And even if this fate comes to pass, could we even call such stateless
statecraft diplomacy? In this paper, I submit answers to these questions built
upon this radical view of agency, that the age of diplomacy as an institution
is giving way to an age of diplomacy as a behavior. The signs identified in
the 1990s presaged a convergence of forces reducing the power asymmetries between state and non-state actors and, together, these are challenging
the very ontology upon which official diplomacy has stood for more than
three centuries.8
In an attempt to prove this point, this article will first briefly survey the
process through which official diplomacy has slowly opened its exclusive
activities to the public domain. This gradual outreach to the public can
be characterised as the evolution, and the long-anticipated arrival, of
“newness.” We shall see the prospect of newness finally realised by the
ongoing liberalisation in the marketplace of ideas for governing international relations, a development that is one part technology due to the
enabling power of information communication technologies (ICTs), and
one part agency due to the unparalleled influence of non-state actors to
usurp conventional diplomacy and expose its weaknesses. Diplomatic
scholars and practitioners began highlighting this paradigm shift years ago,
when it first became apparent that states needed to enlarge the tent of its
liaisons to include firms, NGOs, and other “paradiplomatic” agents. Since
then, nothing has transpired to suggest that the profession is doing anything
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but pluralising. The argument to be made here is that diplomacy is now
well beyond the point of opening itself to the public—it is becoming
enmeshed within the public domain.
Second, I will briefly examine diplomacy as a non-state behaviour in
relation to power. Information power gained through the mastery of ICTs
has elevated the influence of the public domain to behave in ways that are
not necessarily coterminous with the system of states.9 There is one further
distinction to be made between official diplomats and unofficial or
non-state actors on the matter of authority. From where do they get it?
Those who view the traditional system as eroding argue that members of
the empowered global public are proving to be particularly adept at integrating political action networks and popular support at the supra-state
level. When populations identify more with transnational concerns than
those defined by the state, they “relocate” authority to a non-state entity or
figure, which in turn enables the non-state actor to amass moral legitimacy
and to influence the behaviour of states from outside.10 These “new diplomats” simultaneously manoeuvre within the state system and command
authority across it.
The essential question to emerge from this background is how diplomacy of the behavioural sort practiced by non-state actors or “new diplomats”
will continue to eclipse institutional diplomacy practiced by official diplomats into the 21st century. The remainder of the paper, then, isolates five
features already taking shape that shall permanently change the way diplomacy is practiced for the longer-term. It shall be argued that new diplomats
display distinct advantages over more traditional counterparts in their
connectivity to the public sphere. With great agility, they can marshal transnational networks into action and leverage legitimacy to transcend boundaries. On the other hand, new diplomats can exploit their mobility and
decentralised organisational structure to elude accountability. Like an
upstart company establishing its position in a niche market, new diplomats
excel in areas where states are not optimised to act. Neither is perfectly
positioned to pursue international action that is both innovative and responsible. To best serve the populations they claim to represent, old and new
worlds of diplomacy should not arrange their practices along arbitrary institutional norms, but must instead focus on finding synergy amongst their
respective behaviours.
Before launching into the core arguments, let us place the idea of “newness” into proper context. Up to this point, states have consistently managed
to integrate “new” approaches into the classical diplomatic model without
sacrificing the centrality of its own agents and institutions.11 The longevity
of code and rank as well as the ability of the state system to confine diplomatic dialogues to the foreign ministry attest to the perseverance of the status quo. Of course, the corps diplomatiques we associate with Metternich
and Talleyrand may remain central to today’s official communications—in
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the representation of political, economic, and military interests abroad, as
negotiators of agreements, and as liaisons and advisors to policymakers.
However, they now share the stage with a new cadre of agents and institutions reflective of an international environment made distinct from the past
by a number of factors. Among them, one may note that the expanded
number of nation-states is relinquishing the amount of power they once
held relative to non-state actors, even to the point where the latter are influencing the policy agenda and decisions of the former. State creation may
still be desirable—for instance, Kosovo declared independence in February
2008—and yet an abundance of transnational issues and trends is eroding
the significance once attached to borders and sovereignty. If one agrees
with Nye that information is power, then the recent generations of ICTs
have vastly empowered sub-state and supra-state actors so as to loosen the
control governments once had on media and content. On matters as farflung as climate change and international terrorism, we are constantly
reminded what changes a well-organised, equipped, and capable group of
individuals can bring to bear on an individual state or the state system as a
whole.
Transitions are a fixture of modern diplomacy. To illustrate their frequency, one may note how throughout the post-Westphalian era the mantle
of the “new” diplomacy is seized on several occasions. Without going into
too much detail on each, there are two instances that stand apart: during the
French Revolution and the immediate aftermath of the First World War
extending into the inter-bellum. In the first, the French revolutionary regime
spawned the notion of the nouvelle diplomatie in the same spirit that drove
the desired break from the ancien régime. The installation of popular sovereignty supported a radically different approach to diplomacy from that of
dynastic rule. Der Derian identifies the new, or “neo-diplomacy,” emerging
as a correction for social estrangement and alienation—monarchs had been
too preoccupied with the European balance to deal with the concerns of
the common man.12 After initial success, the nouvelle diplomatie failed without the widely embraced internationalist ideals it needed to be sustained:
“Before Napoleon was on horseback, neo-diplomacy was dead,” wrote Der
Derian.13 A time of internationalism provides the backdrop for the second
instance, when the establishment of a new order fuelled proclamations of
another “new diplomacy” by diplomatic historians and practitioners alike.
They attributed its arrival this time to the advancement of internationalist
ideals such as transparency in government and open, multilateral cooperation.14 Adam Watson viewed the League of Nations as symbolising a “major
new development” in diplomacy as far as a permanent collective security
architecture proved desirable, if not to be embodied by the League itself.15
But this transition induced adaptational qualities in the “old diplomacy,”
which successfully transferred traditional practices into shiny new packages:
“It is the outward appearance, or, if you like, the make-up of diplomacy
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which is gradually changing,” the influential French diplomat Jules Cambon
revealed. “The substance will remain . . .”16 Secrecy and exclusivity persisted. By the conclusion of E.H. Carr’s twenty-year crisis, Harold Nicolson
resigned himself to the conclusion that “so far from having died in 1918, the
old diplomacy is to-day more dynamic and more assertive than the new.”17
But the search for new frontiers in diplomacy did not cease there. From
the 1960s onwards, the gradual yet noticeable diffusion of diplomatic powers extending beyond the official realm restored intrigue in the transformations in the international system, including those associated with diplomacy.
James Rosenau is notable for having sensed the emerging supranational
tendencies of political participation. “Politics everywhere, it would seem,
are related to politics everywhere else,” he wrote during that time.18 In
1965, public diplomacy firmly entered the diplomatic vernacular buttressed
by the idea that diplomatic dialogues should not only welcome public
input, but also recognise the increasingly diverse and organised dimensions
of the public domain.19 In 1968, Arthur Hoffman assembled a group of journalists, anthropologists, psychologists and other social scientists to take
another look at the “new diplomacy.”20 In this volume, several contributors
wrote of the rapidly changing relationship between governments and foreign publics proposing, among other things, to factor foreign public opinion
into the framing of foreign policies.21 Global civil society surged throughout
the 1970s and 1980s led by the rise of transnational corporations (TNCs) in
the private sector and human rights-focused NGOs in the not-for-profit sector.
As of 2005, the Yearbook of International Organizations counted over 77,000
TNCs, more than 10,000 single-country NGOs and 7,300 well-established
international NGOs.22 “Complex global interdependence” revived liberal
internationalism for a new age, precipitating a more meteoric rise of nonstate international actors than anyone could have foreseen.23
Meanwhile, the appearance and substance of international activity has
and continues to transform in another significant way: communications. Earlier generations of diplomats faced revolutions in communications technologies with the introductions of the telegraph and telephone. In 1905,
Cambon contended these new technologies to be part of a new school of
diplomacy and incompatible with the freewheeling subterfuge of previous
generations.24 Nearly a century later, satellite and computer technologies
along with other forms of media came to dominate the information sharing
landscape. Discussions over the increasing sophistication of ICTs occupied
the minds of high-ranking American officials in 1987, when then-Secretary
of State George Shultz spoke of their centrality to the future success of public
diplomacy: “The need for instantaneous, reliable communications links
around the globe is perhaps the most obvious and immediate demand we
must continue to meet.”25 What has evolved in the space of innovation
between telegraphs and the Internet is the speed and the variety of the
technologies themselves and the widening availability of these tools to the
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global public. Where the breakthroughs occurred is in how such tools came
to be used. Politics leverages communication in its capacity to influence the
minds of constituents. As the growing selection of ICTs has become more
widely distributed worldwide, networks of non-state political actors are displaying their own ability to influence, and in so doing are venturing into territory once reserved solely for diplomats. A 1998 Center for Strategic and
International Studies [CSIS] report portrays a world rapidly advancing
beyond the capacity of official diplomacy: “Openness is crowding out
secrecy and exclusivity. The quill pen world in which modern diplomacy
was born no longer exists. Ideas and capital move swiftly and unimpeded
across a global network of governments, corporations, and NGOs.”26
Furthermore, Williams and Delli Carpini imagine the weakening role of the
diplomat as the gatekeeper of influence as creating “new opportunities for
citizens to challenge elite control of political issues.”27 Herein lies the
unsolved riddle of how traditionally hierarchical official diplomatic organisations shall coexist with horizontal non-state networks in general and a
new class of nonofficial diplomats in particular.
With the benefit of hindsight we can gauge the true impact of transitions and transformations as they pertain to official diplomacy. We discover
that what is sometimes regarded as “new” is not necessarily revolutionary,
and the “old” never truly fades into obscurity. Thus, for the sake of accuracy
one may be better served to discern diplomacy’s many “new” developments
from the radical shift we are witnessing now. The latest wave provides the
starkest evidence yet of separation from the institution, which began in the
1960s and accelerated through the 1990s up to the present. This movement
should be distinguished from previous developments by the sheer magnitude of public’s assumption of roles and involvement in the process. Unlike
previous moments in the evolution of “newness,” it is not only that the
recent generation of ICTs is faster and more accessible than ever before, but
also that its users are more proficient in maximising their services. Also
noteworthy is the grander scale of non-state action compared to the past.
Envoys of the state may remain vital to the pursuit of national interests, yet
the new diplomat’s mastery of ICTs draws attention to transnational issues
like global warming and human rights. This is compelling as far as content
management and technological innovation is concerned, since governments
and their bureaucracies seem ill-equipped to compete with the myriad unofficial content providers in the vast marketplace of ideas.28 After past
attempts by states and intergovernmental bodies to make diplomacy more
transparent, diplomacy is going public on its own accord.
As opposed to past attempts by the foreign ministry to pry itself open,
the current shift reflects pressure from the bottom up rather than the top
down. Take, for example, the resurgence of public diplomacy among scholars and practitioners of statecraft. The ascendancy of public diplomacy at
this time, Christopher Hill argues, is caused in part by a “necessity for
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governments to understand that people . . . must be drawn into the diplomatic process.”29 However, this may be according governments too much
control over the process. It may also be true that governments are ceding
control of diplomatic affairs to external forces. The fact that public diplomacy is on the ascendant in foreign ministries and diplomatic academies
may be perceived as an attempt by the state to arrest the loss of legitimacy
in its official envoys.30 It took hundreds of years before statist objectors
warmed to the idea that the attitudes and behaviours of the general public
might be germane to accomplishing foreign policy goals. States of the twentyfirst century fret haplessly over the enhancement of their national images
and attempt to match the technological prowess of new media and horizontal—rather than hierarchical—networks. Indeed, it took the post-9/11 struggles of the United States to draw much-needed attention to the widespread
neglect of public diplomacy by states. Yet when, in the late 1990s, Rosenau
noted the post-war explosion of non-state actors on the international scene,
he correctly presaged the “evolution of a multi-centric world” contributing
to the “unmanageability of public affairs that has weakened states.”31 States
and governments, he suggested, were suffering the consequences of blurred
borders and decentralising dynamics in the form of a “relocation of authority”: a crisis of state power that is shifting legitimacy to non-state actors.32
Although this trend appears to be reducing the power asymmetry
between the two, the new diplomats are not and indeed cannot be facsimiles of their official counterparts since they hail from an unorthodox, random
selection process that depends heavily on their networking capabilities.
Their skills, areas of leverage, and sources of legitimacy are derived from
different contexts. Both exhibit the same skills of persuasion: official diplomats are traditionally disposed to building coalitions of states, whilst new
diplomats delve into transnational advocacy networks, using their “information and beliefs to motivate political action and to use leverage to gain the
support of more powerful institutions.”33 Official diplomats rely on political
legitimacy for reinforcement; in lieu of political representation new diplomats
require moral legitimacy. The public domain, through vastly expanding
modes of access to information and capabilities to communicate—and
therefore organise into a network—grants this legitimacy based on what is
widely desirable.
How much control do states have over the evolution of this revolution?
Two reports released by American scholars in the late-1990s eloquently captured the changing landscape of international communication in pursuit of
politics.34 In admiration of the way the United States Department of Defense
transformed its force structure to tackle contemporary military challenges, a
process commonly known as the “revolution in military affairs,” these
authors called on the Department of State to initiate a “revolution in diplomatic affairs” [RDA] to stand any chance of success in a wired world. In
1998, David Abshire of CSIS endorsed a plan that called for no less than a
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reinvention of America’s diplomatic institutions, emphasising the adoption
of a kind of “diplomacy that must become increasingly public to serve the
national interest.”35 The following year, analysts David Ronfeldt and John
Arquilla backed the findings of the CSIS plan with the warning that few diplomats had noticed, or even seemed to care about their disadvantaged position in the realm of high technology.36 The decentralisation of control over
information placed diplomats in a far weaker position than contemporaries
of Cambons at the start of the twentieth century. This process, they argued,
would draw officials into competition with non-state actors ranging from
firms and NGOs to criminal and terrorist organisations. Few paid attention
at the time, but more than a decade later it appears the twin forces of an
empowered public domain and the proliferation of ICTs are yet more formidable. Since that time the essential question facing state-based diplomatic
institutions has changed. Once possibly having the proactive capability to
compete and cooperate with new diplomats today, the old guard has little
choice but to prepare for the future.
As the state continues to cede more ground to the empowered nonstate actor, five principal features of the future of diplomacy are unfolding.
They are: (1) The current state of diplomatic institutions can be characterised
as fragmenting, dividing its powers amongst a broad range of state and nonstate actors and institutions. (2) At the same time, diplomacy is becoming
more public: the “global public domain” is integrating social and technological networks to harness its developing diplomatic capabilities. (3) New diplomacy possesses an advantage in its agility, relies on grassroots mobilisation,
and highlights the relevance of policy entrepreneurs. (4) Official diplomacy
is and shall remain superior in areas of accountability and legitimacy, continuing to capitalise on its close proximity to policymakers. (5) New diplomats are competing with government action as well as compensating for
government inaction.
These features may be best interpreted as two sets of related features—
the first four—and an independent observation—the fifth. Inverse relationships between new and official diplomats form the core of this analysis, and
I offer three brief points in support of this approach. First, despite a history
of operating independently of one another, it is increasingly clear that with
expansion of transnational issue-areas official and non-state actors share
same spheres of activity. This is becoming more true of diplomacy as well,
where states and civil society at times vie for command of policies, be it
through agenda setting or negotiation with parties involved in social, security, or environmental affairs.37 Mathews has noted that this may also lead to
a redrawing of social lines as populations come to identify more with globalising issues than narrowly defined national interests.38 Therefore, the second point to be made is that this competition over setting the international
agenda undermines state primacy. The resulting relative decline of states in
global governance places such non-state actors as new diplomats in an
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opportunistic position, as relational power dynamics dictate. This assumes
of course that there is a direct causal relationship between the fragmentation of diplomacy and integration in the public nonofficial realm and downplays other factors such as shifts in policymaking behaviour or
transformational events such as the end of the Cold War—but it is more
likely that states are too bureaucratic to adjust. Finally, the inverse power
relationship between official diplomacy and the nonofficial public capitalises on the contrasting ways in which each has adjusted to the availability of
information, expanding forms of media, and multiplying forms of policy
entrepreneurship. Much in the same way that market forces thrive on deregulation, the liberalisation in the marketplace of ideas heavily favours new
diplomats. Each of these factors applies pressure towards changes in the
state-non-state power relationship, highlighting a new form of legitimacy
and actuating Rosenau’s relocation of authority.
Diplomatic institutions, in the official sense, are reflections of the
state-based international system that created them. They base much of their
organisational design, rules of conduct, and sense of mission on essential
conditions of the international environment. Foremost among them Watson
cites plurality: diplomacy is “recognition” by political leaders of the need to
coexist with a number of other independent states in an interdependent
world.39 This presumes actions of consequence to ultimately rest with the
state. Beneath this presumption also exists an important partitioning of affairs
distinguishing those that are foreign from the ones dealing with domestic life.
The traditional focus of the diplomat has been on the “outside world,” where
ministries of foreign affairs showcased a rigid hierarchy of officials who communicate directly with counterparts, analyze intelligence, and manage missions located in spaces external to the state. The problem facing official
diplomacy is how to remain accurately reflective of and relevant to ongoing
changes in the international system. Just as the business world has begun to
dispense with the domestic-international duality, Rosenau argues, “so must
the political world begin to think in terms of authority without territoriality.”40
When Ronfeldt and Arquilla issued their RDA call, their argument suggested states retained the power to not only recognise but also initiate the
process.41 Of course states do reserve the power to actively transform their
diplomatic institutions, evidenced, for example, by the American “transformational diplomacy” initiative launched in 2006. But states cannot control factors
that are beyond their reach. One of the ways this is occurring is through the
apparent fragmentation of official diplomacy to the point of surrendering its
traditional authority and resources to actors beyond the jurisdiction of the foreign ministry. This decentralising dynamic, illustrated in Figure 1, means that
diplomatic authority is being relocated to NGOs, public intellectuals, religious
leaders, and other active subsets of the non-state sector.
Agenda-setting and negotiation provide two immediate examples of
where fragmentation is happening. The emerging salience of transnational
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FIGURE 1 Decentralized diplomacy.
issues combined with the flexibility and reach of civil society individuals and
groups have loosened the two fundamental responsibilities once restricted to
diplomats. Some of these challengers hail from official backgrounds. After a
long political career that included nearly eight years as Australia’s foreign
minister, Gareth Evans became president and chief executive International
Crisis Group [ICG] in 2000. Under Evans’ leadership, the ICG has grown into
one of the world’s foremost reporters and analysts of conflict occurring
worldwide. Its sustained focus and ground presence on the African continent
has proved vital to keeping crises in the Congo, Sudan, and Somalia in public circulation so as to maintain pressure on states to take action. Several
former heads of state, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, and Bill
Clinton have taken active roles in bringing causes to public attention. In
some cases, former heads of state assumed the role of negotiator, either at
the request of states—such as Tony Blair in Israel–Palestine—or against state
wishes—such as Jimmy Carter’s negotiations with Hamas in early 2008.
Another area of fragmentation is in the control of information. During
the Cold War years, the main challenges of persuading publics in closed
societies amounted to perfecting the means to reach populations with
limited information about the world within and beyond their borders, and,
as a result, deprived to some degree of their political participation. The
technology available to publics was not robust enough to bypass these barriers. But the proliferation of ICTs has made it far more difficult for governments to control information flows than was once possible. For example,
whereas the Soviet Union could at one time filter information by jamming
the shortwave radio signals of the BBC and Voice of America with some
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success during the Cold War, it is increasingly difficult for governments
today to block access with the same level of success. A recent OECD study
reported Internet usage in Russia in 2006 to incorporate approximately
20 percent of the population.42 And this number is rising steadily: between
2007 and 2008 Russia’s Internet audience grew at an astounding 27 percent,
far exceeding the growth rates of any of its European neighbours.43 Not to
be overlooked is the fact that government attempts to deprive its population
of information is a double-edged sword. Especially in times of social
upheaval, tech-savvy protestors all too often find a way around government
controls, thereby defeating the purpose of the controls in the first place and
exacting a political price for the regime in power to pay as well.
Recent research suggests that the influence of global civil society is on
the rise.44 One of the reasons for this is the demonstrated ability of civil society organisations (CSOs) to channel, through the effective use of ICTs, their
power collectively to achieve common goals. Furthermore, CSOs of sufficient
resources do this in such a way that concentrates the moral behavior of a
transnational population into a means of global governance. The actions of
global CSOs are mobilised collectively in a manner distinctly different from
states. State bureaucracies operate hierarchically: policies are debated and
decided at high levels in the chain of command, and it is only after a decision
has been reached that representatives of the state are dispatched with explicit
guidance to see that the policy is implemented. In this model, power is
centralised and consolidated amongst a select few individuals who, based on
intelligence, make informed judgments on issues salient to national interests.
By contrast, the global public domain is becoming skilful in dealing with
issues transnationally through horizontally structured networks. The impulse
to act derives from constituents within the network. Unlike hierarchies, horizontal organisations eschew elite decision-making and advance agendas
through consensus-building and grassroots advocacy. Ronfeldt and Arquilla
have labelled these “sensory” organisations, which are described as “nodes in
network apparatuses” self-motivated to draw attention to important issues
beyond the narrow scope of national interests.45
Networks built from the global public domain are amassing diplomatlike powers despite the fact that actors within the networks are not traditionally viewed as diplomats. Examples appear in three different levels of social
activity: systemic, organisational, and individual. At the systemic level global
CSOs have historically taken the lead in advancing the human rights agenda,
and in the 1970s started to effect notable changes in the behavior of states.46
One might refer to the 1975 Helsinki Accords and the revival of the human
rights movement in the Soviet Union. In the wake of the successful campaign to ban landmines in the late 1990s, global CSOs turned their attention
to another issue seen to be lagging in the UN system: child soldiers. In June
1998, six influential NGOs banded together to form the Coalition to Stop the
Use of Child Soldiers with the goal of strengthening international legal
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protections against the use of children in armed conflict. Through their combined efforts, the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in
Armed Conflict was implemented in 2002 as a safeguard against conscription
of children under 18. In its most recent tally—2004—the group reports that
the number of states that have ratified the Protocol is 117.47
Because CSOs are so numerous and operate beyond the purview of
traditional statecraft, it is easy to overlook the contributions of singular
group. On an organisational level, the Aga Khan Development Network
mobilises a close-knit group of development agencies to address transnational issue-areas ranging from health and education to microfinance, rural
development, and urban renewal. It happens to be one of the largest development agencies in the world, boasting an annual budget of $300 million
for not-for-profit activities.48 The driving force of this network is the Aga
Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili sect of Islam and endowed with a
considerable base of popularity and income-generation. The Aga Khan and
representatives of his network often command meetings with high-level
state officials and enlist their commitments to partnerships.49
At the individual level, consider the case of what one well-connected
religious leader has accomplished. Bishop John Chane, head of the Episcopal
Diocese of Washington, DC, describes his engagement with religious and
political figures overseas as a prolonged act of public diplomacy.50 In 2005,
Chane accepted an invitation to visit Iran from Mohammed Khatami, who
had recently lost a close presidential election to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in
August. The defeated Khatami redirected his energies toward the “Dialogue
Among Civilizations” campaign he helped to launch in 2001 with the
backing of the United Nations. In Chane, Khatami sought an American
counterpart who would promote peaceful relations between the United
States and Iran upon common theological principals. In turn, Chane took
advantage of the access Khatami provided him to the inner circle of Iranian
academic, political and religious leadership. He held private meetings with
the head of the University of Tehran, with the current chairman of the
Iranian parliament Ali Larijani, and with several senior clerics to discuss
common virtues. His experiences in Iran spurred Chane to become involved
in the Club de Madrid, a high-powered network of former heads of state,
scholars, and policy experts. This has enabled him to participate in, among
other activities, a 2007 Oslo conference on religious dialogue and tolerance
and, in 2008, a conference on religion and modernity in Tehran.
The gradual wresting of diplomacy out of the firm grip of diplomats
represents a postmodern turn for what passes as statecraft in contemporary
international relations. Rhiannon Vickers, a British scholar, recently posited:
the “proliferation of ways of thinking about diplomacy” has sharpened the
view that it is “a set of skills and processes which can be learnt” rather than
as belonging inherently to some traditional notion of a “diplomatic class.”51
In effect, the advent of new diplomats challenges us to think about new
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299
notions of the diplomat and the role they play on the international stage. As
global CSOs, well-placed policy entrepreneurs, celebrities, religious figureheads, and other transnational actors wade into the once-exclusive territory
of diplomats and adopt diplomatic behaviours, they are displaying a unique
ability to link grassroots movements with tangible outcomes at the state
level. In Andrew Cooper’s estimation, such agility as to oscillate between
these two political spheres sets this new class apart from conventional activism, advocacy, or philanthropy. Familiarity with the corridors of power and
access to state officials are among the chief capabilities of the new diplomat, but a cause célèbre with global reach demonstrates how grassroots
movements create the popular support to make these capabilities salient.52
To underscore this point, Cooper highlights the activities of policy
entrepreneurs reflective of all these traits and aptly named “celebrity diplomats.” Anointed members of this special cadre, which includes Irish musician
Bono, actress Angelina Jolie, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, have proven
exceptionally skilful in alternating between the popular culture world in
which they achieved stardom and the world of international politics. Even
more remarkable is that they have managed thus far to do so without damaging their standings in either world. On the contrary, the double lives of
these celebrity diplomats arguably have elevated their stature in both capacities, which may be attributed to the fact that their activities have become
mutually reinforcing. For example, in advance of the 2005 Group of Eight—
G—summit in Scotland, the London Live 8 concert, part of a broad strategy
to inject public influence into the meeting, featured Bono and his band U2 as
the opening act. It would reaffirm his iconic status as a musician-diplomat at
an appropriate time: days later Bono would be socialising amongst leaders
of the world’s richest nations in search of alleviating poverty in Africa.53
The welcoming receptions many leaders have granted celebrity diplomats clearly testifies to their mastery of certain diplomatic skills, but it bears
noting that their representation is another compelling, if not an enigmatic,
factor in their success. The social movements that they represent are not necessarily state-based, but transnational. They normally champion single-issue
causes which join otherwise disparate constituencies within civil society
under one umbrella. How is it that non-state actors who happen to be independently famous obtain this representational power? The answer lies somewhere within the Hegelian division between moral and ethical foundations
for political behaviour. Ethics are enshrined in the political community, a
“shared way of life” with its own conceptions of “duties, virtues, and the
good.”54 The archetypal political community, the state, is by Hegel’s own writ
“the actuality of the ethical Idea.”55 One’s morality, on the other hand, is a
code devised within the individual conscience, a belief system made manifest
by will. As this suggests, it exists in a dimension separate from the state, as if
to serve as an abstract precursor to a realised idea. For our purposes, New
Diplomats are mobilised by moral legitimacy supplied by a collective, state-
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less will to somehow reorient the ethical foundations of states, and to change
state behaviour in a way that is desirable to the represented movement.
Whilst the speed and efficiency of NGOs offer tremendous advantages
over government bureaucracy, drawbacks do exist in some critical areas.
“Networks are not panaceas,” Anne-Marie Slaughter correctly cautions, “they
have big disadvantages as well as advantages.”56 One of the disadvantages
lies in the matter of accountability. When non-state action goes wrong, who
takes responsibility? A good example of this can be found in the story of
mass protests that took place during the meeting of the World Trade
Organisation in Seattle in 1999. Originally billed as a peaceful expression of
popular discontent, the protestors’ loose organisation and divergent interests could not be contained by overwhelmed police forces. The scene escalated into violence with collateral damage sustained by law enforcement,
protestors, and the city itself at an estimated cost of $20 million.57 After the
“Battle of Seattle,” the impromptu social action network was ill-suited to
account for disrupting the lives of uninvolved city inhabitants. Violations
perpetrated by city’s law enforcement, by contrast, could be prosecuted in
the judicial system. The chain of command and clear delegation of responsibilities available in official bureaucracy make it far easier for affected constituencies to demand accountability. Where direct democracy enables
polities to express their grievances domestically, official diplomats gather
feedback from abroad to apprise the foreign ministry of opinion climates.
Government watchdogs strive to ensure that imperfections in official
bureaucracy are fully disclosed to concerned publics; little such oversight
exists in the non-state realm. Simmons bemoaned this fact in pointing out that
“any group with a fax machine and a modem has the potential to distort public debate” at no risk to themselves.58 A similar hazard confronts the second
problem of legitimacy where nonofficial diplomats are concerned. Official
diplomats derive their legitimacy from their affiliation via the rule of law; nonofficial diplomats, and more broadly NGOs, derive their legitimacy through
the pursuit of social goals widely viewed as desirable.59 Cooper lists a number
of ways in which the new breed of celebrity diplomats can suffer a crisis of
legitimacy. Celebrity diplomats can undermine their populist appeal by veering too closely to officialdom. Their star quality and personal activities
become open to scrutiny, which may also weaken their cachet. It is telling
that at September 2007 CBS/New York Times poll reported that forty-nine percent of Americans think celebrities should stay out of politics.60 In some ways,
non-state diplomacy invites an even more imperfect, highly volatile, and less
forgiving strain of political participation from the global public domain. Official bureaucrats also maintain an edge in their access to policymakers, despite
the fact that non-state actors are proving increasingly adept at navigating the
corridors of power. To a large degree, international negotiations remain committed to exclusive official participants even to the point—as public diplomats
know all too well—of shutting out some of their own. The revolution in
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301
diplomatic affairs represents dramatic change in the liberalisation of diplomacy, but success in collaborating with official counterparts at the negotiating
table still comes sporadically and often elusively.
Even in light of these developments there remain those who suggest,
as many have in the past, that diplomacy be left to the specialists. It is true
there are instances when novices wade far too deep into these murky
waters and lack the capacity to build a network.61 On the other hand, some
are well-suited to the task. “Why should religious leaders be engaged in
diplomacy?” asked Bishop Chane in response to the suggestion that statecraft should be left to the specialists. The answer: “Because our politicians
have failed us, and who else but our leaders of faith to pick up the process?” As with economics, where for example the private sector seizes on a
market failure induced by the limitations of government, civil society naturally assumes responsibility for political action when the politicians falter.
In presaging the RDA, Ronfeldt and Arquilla identify a crucial element
deemed to be lacking in the evolution of diplomacy: competition. The thrust
of their argument evoked a pattern of prior revolutions in business and military affairs, that they were aided by the presence of competing forces impelling both enterprises to innovate or else become antiquated and irrelevant.62
The argument is a plausible one in that competition is now seen to be reducing the asymmetries between state and non-state power. However, the new
diplomacy also fills a niche set apart from the actions, or some would say the
inactions, of governments. For whilst the state-centric system is preoccupied
with national interests, the new diplomats excel in the realm of global governance and pursue “genuine political activity on a global level apart from the
system of states.”63 New diplomats have shown an ability to spur the
advancement of global initiatives by leveraging the power of their networks,
without which governments otherwise would have pleaded ignorance.
Instances where this has been the case cover a wide range of issue-areas.
Mingst and Warkentin cite the example of the collapse of negotiations of the
Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), a plan generated by the world’s
developed nations to further enhance liberal economic policies enshrined in
the Bretton Woods institutions. A torrent of activity from civil society groups,
including trade unions, development organisations, and human rights networks constituted a formidable campaign against its implementation.64 In the
private sector, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) an international
association whose membership boasts thousands of companies of every size
in over 130 countries worldwide, has demonstrated an ability to negotiate at a
high level with intergovernmental organisations on global governance issues.
It owns a large stake in the execution of the UN Global Compact as a mediator between business and government as they came to agreement on new
norms of labour standards and environmental practices.65
The most celebrated achievement involving a diplomatic process
beyond the state is recognised in the landmark international treaty to ban
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J. R. Kelley
landmines, informally known as the Ottawa Treaty, launched in December
1997. By the time of its signing conference, attended by representatives of
156 states and NGOs, the treaty would represent the culmination of a truly
worldwide social action network, benefiting from timely publicity stirred by
Princess Diana of Wales, and gaining much-needed political legitimacy
through the support of Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy. But in
the years leading up to this achievement momentum accumulated at a more
deliberate pace under the direction of the International Campaign to Ban
Landmines (ICBL). The ICBL meticulously built a network of over 1,000
NGOs from over 60 countries, which in turn created the necessary political
pressure for many states to respond by acceding to the ban.66 Given the
virtual absence of this issue from the international agenda prior to the ICBL,
one can conclude with a high degree of certainty that states would not have
arrived at this action on their own accord. In their place, global civil society,
and particularly New Diplomacy, negotiated the appropriate climate for
states to join the campaign long after its establishment.
Non-state actors present a formidable challenge to state primacy in the
diplomatic world and must be viewed as such. They both embody and
mobilise the global public domain taking on issues “no longer coterminous”
with national interests, but oriented towards over transnational issue areas
instead. The new diplomats emerging now are best described as an
epistemic and entrepreneurial aspect of civil society performing diplomatic
deeds de facto by adopting its behaviours, as opposed to de jure sanctioned
by the state. They are displaying uncanny abilities to shape and influence
state behaviour by advancing agenda items and negotiating at high levels.
This article makes the argument that a new breed of diplomat defined by a
unique skill set rather than membership to an established class is expanding
in number. Whether we can call their activities diplomacy is a complicated
question. New Diplomats are nonofficial by nature but show themselves to
be effective in navigating the narrow straits between official and nonofficial
worlds. This is what separates them from strict advocacy or activism. They
include celebrities, norm entrepreneurs, religious figureheads, former officials who have reinvented themselves so as to remain relevant in some
aspect of world affairs. Above all, as Cooper explains, New Diplomats combine a moral basis of legitimacy with access to political change agents. They
match their official counterparts in their familiarity with the corridors of
power as well as their display of fundamental skills. They are beginning to
exceed them in their ability to forge coalitions across borders. And finally,
they act when government fails to do so.
Accepting the evidence presented here, the question that follows—and
the course that forthcoming research on this topic should take—is determining the ways in which diplomats, traditional and new, will join their energies for the common good. The direction of the state-system is not yet clear,
as Langhorne points out, since governments have not yet reconciled the
The New Diplomacy: Evolution of a Revolution
303
incompatibilities between the inter-state system of the past and the globalising, interconnected environment of the future.67 Yet if the evolution of the
revolution in diplomatic affairs stays the course, the states that stand the
greatest chance of political success in an information-driven environment
will recognise these growth areas beyond the ministry.
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NOTES
I wish to express gratitude to the USC Center for International Studies for its generous support of this
project, and to acknowledge Cristina Barrios, Geoff Pigman, Kathy Fitzpatrick, and Ouida Maedel for
providing invaluable feedback.
1. Adam Watson, Diplomacy (London, 1991), p. 33.
2. For examples see Susan Strange, “States, Firms and Diplomacy,” International Affairs,
68(1992), pp. 1–15; Richard Langhorne, “Current Development in Diplomacy: Who are the Diplomats
Now?” Diplomacy & Statecraft, 8(1997), pp. 1–15; Paul Sharp, “For Diplomacy: Representation and the
Study of International Relations,” International Studies Review, 1(1999), pp. 33–57; Brian Hocking, “Catalytic Diplomacy: Between ‘Newness’ and ‘Decline’,” in Jan Melissen, ed., Innovation in Diplomatic
Practice (New York, 1999).
3. George F. Kennan, “Diplomacy without Diplomats?,” Foreign Affairs, 76(1997), pp. 198–212.
4. Arno J. Mayer, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918 (New York, 1969), p. 14.
5. Juergen Kleiner, “The Inertia of Diplomacy,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, 19(2008), pp. 329–41.
6. Richard Langhorne, “The Diplomacy of Non-State Actors,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, 16(2005) p. 332.
7. Jospeh S. Nye, Jr. and William A. Owens, “America’s Information Edge,” Foreign Affairs,
75(1996), pp. 22–23.
8. David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla, “What if there is a Revolution in Diplomatic Affairs?,” United
States Institute of Peace Virtual Diplomacy website, 25 February 1999, http://www.usip.org/virtualdiplomacy/
publications/reports/ronarqISA99.html (accessed on 6 December 2007).
9. Here I apply the definition of the public domain articulated in J. G. Ruggie, “Reconstituting the
Global Public Domain-Issues, Actors, and Practices,” European Journal of International Relations, 10
(2004), p. 519.
10. James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier (Cambridge, 1997).
11. Ronfeldt and Arquilla, “Revolution.”
12. James Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Engagement (Oxford, 1987), p. 173.
13. Ibid., p. 182.
14. Mayer, New Diplomacy, 36–58; K. Hamilton and R. Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy
(New York: Routledge, 1995), pp 136–182.
15. Watson, Diplomacy, p. 118.
16. Cambon, quoted in Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy, Third Edition (New York, 1964), p. 29.
17. Ibid., p. 30.
18. James N. Rosenau, “Introduction: Political Science in a Shrinking World,” in J.N. Rosenau, ed.,
Linkage Politics, (New York, 1969), p. 2.
19. According to the Fletcher definition, public diplomacy “deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international
relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of another; the reporting
of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as
between diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the processes of inter-cultural communications. . . .
Central to public diplomacy is the transnational flow of information and ideas.” Edward R Murrow
Center for Public Diplomacy, brochure, http://fletcher.tufts.edu/murrow/public-diplomacy.html
(accessed 20 February 2005).
20. Arthur S. Hoffman, ed., International Communication and the New Diplomacy (Bloomington,
IN, 1968).
21. L.A. Free, “Public Opinion Research,” in Hoffman, International Communication, p. 61.
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J. R. Kelley
22. Peter Willetts, “Transnational Actors in International Organizations in Global Politics,” in John
Baylis, Steve Smith, and Patricia Owens, eds., The Globalization of World Politics, Fourth Edition,
(Oxford, 2008), p. 332.
23. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge,
MA, 1972).
24. Hamilton and Langhorne, Diplomacy, pp. 131–37.
25. George P. Shultz, “Public Diplomacy in the Information Age” (speech given before the United
States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Washington, DC, 15 September 1987).
26. CSIS Report, quoted in Steven Livingston, “The New Media and Transparency: What are the
Consequences for Diplomacy?” in Evan Potter, ed., Diplomacy: Managing Foreign Policy in the TwentyFirst Century (Montreal, 2002), p. 121.
27. Williams and Delli Carpini quoted in Manuel Castells, “Communication, Power, and Counterpower in the Network Society,” International Journal of Communication, 1(2007), p. 257.
28. I attribute the best articulation of this argument to Livingston, “New Media.”
29. Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (Basingstoke, 2003), p. 279.
30. Brian Hocking notes that public diplomacy is “increasingly defined as diplomacy by rather
than of publics,” in Brian Hocking, “Rethinking the ‘New’ Public Diplomacy,” in Jan Melissen, ed., The
New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 32.
31. Rosenau, Domestic-Foreign Frontier, pp. 67–68.
32. Ibid, pp. 61–64.
33. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders (Ithaca, NY, 1998), p. 30.
34. In addition to Arquilla and Ronfeldt, “Revolution,” and CSIS Report, observe how the American
“new diplomacy” dialogue has taken shape in United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy,
The New Diplomacy: Utilizing Innovative Communication that Recognize Resource Constraints: Report of
the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (Washington, DC, July 2003); David Bollier, The Rise
of Netpolitik: How the Internet is Changing International Politics and Diplomacy: Report of the Eleventh
Annual Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology (Aspen, CO, 2003).
35. CSIS Report, p. 3.
36. Ronfeldt and Arquilla, “Revolution.”
37. P.J. Simmons, “Learning to Live with NGOs,” Foreign Policy, 112(1998), pp. 82–96. It is important to view non-state diplomats not as a parallel exclusive institution to those dealing in official statecraft, but embedded in global civil society. Lipschutz defines global civil society as, “self-conscious
constructions of networks of knowledge and action, by decentred local actors, that cross the reified
boundaries of space as though they were not there.”
38. J.T. Mathews, “Power Shift,” Foreign Affairs, 76(1997), p. 52
39. Watson, Diplomacy, p. 15.
40. Rosenau, Domestic-Foreign Frontier, p. 28.
41. Ronfeldt and Arquilla, “Revolution”; John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, The Emergence of
Noopolitik: Toward and American Information Strategy (Santa Monica, CA, 1999). The 1998 CSIS report
also portrays the RDA as a willful exercise of modernization, but it is my belief that states have less to
say on the direction of this process than these reports imply. This may something to do with the policyoriented format and the intended (American) audience.
42. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Science, Technology and
Industry Scoreboard 2007 (Paris, 2007), p. 123
43. According to comScore, “Russia Has Fastest Growing Internet Population in Europe,” press
release, August 27, 2008, http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2008/08/Russia_Internet_
Growth (accessed 10 February 2009).
44. Keck and Sikkink, Activists; Mathews, “Power Shift”; Simmons, “NGOs.”
45. Ronfeldt and Arquilla, “Revolution.”
46. Keck and Sikkink, Activists, pp. 24 and 88–103.
47. UNHCR, Status of Ratifications of the Principal Human Rights Treaties, 9 June 2004.
48. According to the AKDN website.
49. In one instance, the Aga Khan met in October 2006 with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper to negotiate the establishment of the Global Center for Pluralism in Ottawa.
50. Author’s interview of Bishop John Chane, Washington, DC, 14 April 2009.
51. Rhiannon Vickers, “The New Public Diplomacy: Britain and Canada Compared,” British Journal
of Politics and International Relations, 6(2004), p. 183.
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52. Andrew F. Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy (Boulder, CO, 2008), p. 7.
53. Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy, pp. 42–48.
54. Robert Piercey, “Not Choosing Between Morality and Ethics,” Philosophical Forum 32(Spring
2004), p. 54.
55. G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Amhearst, NY, 1996).
56. Anne-Marie Slaughter, interview with Art Kleiner, Strategy + Business (Autumn 2007), http://
www.strategy-business.com/press/article/07310?gko=5279d (accessed on February 21, 2008).
57. “WTO Protests Hit Seattle in the Pocketbook,” CBC News, 6 January 2000.
58. Simmons, “NGOs,” p. 90.
59. R. Barnett and M. Finnemore, “The Power of Liberal International Organizations,” in M. Barnett
and R. Duvall, eds., Power in Global Governance (Cambridge, 2005), p. 162.
60. Quoted from Daniel W. Drezner, “Foreign Policy Goes Glam,” National Interest Online,
November 1, 2007, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=15932 (accessed January 31, 2008).
61. Many such cases depict celebrities cashing in on their fame to draw attention to a cause. During the George W. Bush presidency, actor Sean Penn traveled to Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba and used
these trips as a platform to criticise United States foreign policy. Whilst many during this time might have
agreed with him in principle, his methods did decidedly little to boost his moral legitimacy.
62. Ronfeldt and Arquilla, “Revolution.”
63. Ruggie, “Public Domain,” p. 502.
64. C. Mingst and K. Warkentin, “International Institutions, the State, and Global Civil Society in
the Age of the World Wide Web,” Global Governance, 6(2000), pp. 240–46. Simmons, “NGOs,” p. 90
portrayed civil society interference in MAI discussions as a potential liability out of a sense that the core
ideas of the accord did not get a fair hearing. A situation “where any group with a fax machine and a
modem has the potential to distort public debate” may amount to a “rise of the global idiots.”
65. Brian Hocking and Dominic Kelly, “Doing the Business? The International Chamber of
Commerce, the United Nations, and the Global Compact,” in Andrew F. Cooper, John English, and
Ramesh Thakur, eds., Enhancing Global Governance (Tokyo, 2002), pp. 203–28.
66. Maxwell A. Cameron, “Global Civil Society and the Ottawa Process,” in Ibid., pp. 75–77.
67. Langhorne, “Non-State Actors,” p. 33.
Ole Jacob Sending,
Vincent Pouliot, &
Iver B. Neumann
The future of
diplomacy
Changingpractices, evolving relationships
As we enter the 21st century, everybody seems to agree that diplomacy is
changing and yet few people can specify exactly how or where it is heading.
Since its very inception, Internationaljournal has been a key forum for such
discussions. A 1998 exchange between Paul Sharp and Andrew Cooper, for
example, gave new scholarly prominence to the ways in which, and degrees
to which, state-to-state diplomacy was being challenged by new actors.'
This has remained a core question in debates about the changing faces
of diplomacy ever since. In this issue of I], we seek to contribute to the
Ole Jacob Sending is senior researcher and head of the Centre for Global
Governance at the Norwegian Institute of InternationalAffairs. Vincent Pouliot
is assistant professor in the department of political science at McGill University
and associate director of the Centrefor International Peace and Security Studies.
Iver B. Neumann is professor and research director at the Norwegian Institute
of International Affairs and adjunct professor in international relations at the
Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
1 Paul Sharp, "Who needs diplomats? The problems of diplomatic representation,"
International journal 52, no. 4 (autumn 1997): 609-32; Andrew F. Cooper, "Beyond
representation," Internationaljournal 53, no. 1 (winter 19977-78): 173-78.
I International Journal
I Sumrnmer
2011 | 527
1
I
Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, & Iver B. Neumann
I
search for emerging patterns in diplomatic practices. Instead of focusing
solely on new actors, however, we cast a wider net and locate both traditional
and nontraditional diplomatic agents as part of an evolving configuration
of social relations. Overall, the picture we draw shows an intriguing
combination of the "gentlemanly diplomacy" inherited from a state-centric
world with various heterodox forms of political intercourse made possible by
globalization. In the changing diplomatic landscape, we argue, old and new
practices coexist in a mutually constitutive relationship.
As innovative relationships develop among an increasingly
heterogeneous cast of diplomatic actors, the nature and function of
diplomacy also evolves. Of course, today's diplomacy, just like yesterday's,
remains primarily concerned with the ways in which states deal with the
external world. But emerging practices also indicate efforts on the part of
states to enrol various nonstate actors, just as nontraditional agents seek to
act globally through the state's diplomatic outreach. Observe, for instance,
how foreign ministries have bankrolled historically nondiplomatic practices
such as development and disaster relief, and how nontraditional agents
use public resources toward their ends. As soon as one scratches a little, in
fact, examples of new forms of diplomatic relations abound. Globalization
and increased interdependencies have caused line ministries to interact
directly with their counterparts in other countries, thereby challenging the
position of foreign affairs ministries. In multilateral settings, the practice
of diplomacy is being reshaped by recent changes in the global distribution
of power, often in unexpected ways. Nongovernmental organizations have
become more visible in world politics through delegation and indirect rule,
thereby opening new state-society interfaces at the global level. All the while,
military professionals have developed new practices for mediating and
interacting with a broader set of actors. With the current trend toward the
legalization of world politics, lawyers have become central diplomatic actors
in their own right, providing authoritative interpretations of other actors'
room for maneuver. Religious actors are often powerful by virtue of the
capacity to mobilize transnational constituencies. Economists, for their part,
shape diplomatic practice through claims of expertise that go far beyond the
technical details of economic governance.
In this introduction, we specify two main areas in which diplomacy is
changing as a result of these evolving social patterns. First, we look at the
relationship between representation and governance: if anything, diplomatic
work is traditionally about representing a polity vis-ai-vis a recognized other.
| 528 |
Summer 2011 jIInternational
Journal I
1The future
of diplomacy
I
To the extent that such representation now increasingly includes partaking
in governing, however, a whole array of questions about the relationship
between diplomats and other actors emerges. Most prominently, are the
governing and representing functions compatible in practice, or do they
contain inherent tensions? Second, we focus on the territorial-nonterritorial
character of the relation between the actors who perform diplomatic work
and the constituencies on whose behalf they act and from which they claim
authority. Building on these distinctions, contributors to this issue use their
empirical findings to reflect not only on the evolution of diplomacy, but also
on broader debates on the changes in world politics. That is, to the degree
that diplomacy is constitutive of world politics, an empirical focus on its
manifold practices and the social relationships that they weave offers an
excellent vantage point on important debates about the changing distribution
of power, the role of ideas in shaping states' interests, the relationship
between state and nonstate actors, and the effects of globalization on state
sovereignty.
The following pages seek to accomplish two main tasks. First, we
briefly survey the literature on diplomacy and identify two strands, each
with its own merits and limits. The traditional literature on diplomacy is
characterized by a combination of history, practitioners' reflections, and a
proliferation of typologies, with a relative dearth of theoretically informed
analysis. While we embrace the move to capture diplomacy as a practice
that develops over time, we also conceive of it as a category of analysis. More
recently, multiplying works about the so-called "new diplomacy" inquire
into the rise of nonstate actors on the diplomatic stage. We, too, observe the
emergence of various nontraditional agents alongside traditional diplomacy.
However, instead of providing an "explanation by naming," which seeks to
demonstrate the power of new agents, we suggest analytical categories that
help recover the relationalnature of contemporary changes in the diplomatic
practice.
Second, we discuss two such conceptual lenses. To begin with, we argue
that diplomats, especially those of the nontraditional type, increasingly
make authority claims that are nonterritorial in nature. Economic or legal
expertise, for instance, has a universalistic tone that is quite different from
the communitarian state-to-state diplomacy of the good old days. Although
constituencies often (though not always-witness moral actors) remain
"national," this territoriality is slowly eroding as authority becomes tied to
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"global" symbolic systems, which has significant effects on what diplomats do,
how they do it, and why. Our next move is to suggest that diplomatic practice
and its evolution over time can be explored by looking at the relationship
between representation, historically the core function of diplomacy, and
governance, which has become progressively more important. Military
diplomacy, to take one obvious example, is less about dialogue than it is
about getting things done. To the extent that governing takes precedence as
the matrix for global politics and foreign policy, the task of representation is
increasingly conditioned by the task of governing. We conclude by showing
how the study of diplomacy helps illuminate core debates in the international
relations discipline. Diplomacy, understood as the representation and
governing among recognized polities, is the infrastructure of world politics.
As such, it offers a good empirical intake to reflect on and contribute to
broader theoretical debates in the study of world politics, such as changes
in the distribution of power in the international system; the role of ideas
and representations in explaining changes in states' interests and policy
outcomes; the nature of global governance and relationship between state
and nonstate actors; and the effects of globalization on state sovereignty.
THE STUDY OF DIPLOMACY
Historically, the study ofdiplomacy has been more the province ofpractitioners
than academics. Key texts have been written by diplomats like Sir Ernest
Satow and Harold Nicolson and by statesmen like Henry Kissinger. This
helps explain why diplomacy has often been defined by its purpose and ideal
functions, or by the particular skills that the diplomat should have, either
to excel in the "art" of resolving negotiations peacefully or more generally
to define the national interest beyond the constraints and lack of vision
expressed by elected politicians, as in the example of Talleyrand's tenure at
Quai d'Orsay, or in Kissinger's idea that diplomats should balance the dual
goals of advancing the state's interests and maintaining the state system. 3 A
2 Sir Ernest Satow, Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice, 6th edition (London: Longman,
[1917] 2009); Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy, 3rd edition (London: Oxford University
Press, [19391 1963); Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).
For a critique, see Iver B. Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats: Ethnography of a
European Foreign Ministry (Ithaca: Cornell University PreSS, 2011).
3 Paul Sharp, Diplomatic Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009); Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh
and the Problem of Peace, 1815-1822 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 195.7).
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definition that is similarly tilted towards functionalism may be found within
the English school of international relations.4
Beyond the list of specific functions said to define diplomacynegotiation, communication, information-gathering, etc.-and the skillset that goes with them, the study of diplomacy has, as Christer J6nsson
put it, been "short on theory" but "long on typologies."5 There seems to be
no agreed-upon baseline definition from which to theorize about change,
and the tendency is-with a few exceptions-for studies to identify and
account for changes in diplomatic practice by adding a prefix: there is paradiplomacy, small states diplomacy, NGO diplomacy, business diplomacy,
public diplomacy, "catalytic" diplomacy, "triangular" diplomacy, etc. 6
In this literature, diplomacy is often defined prescriptively. More
elaborate definitions highlight a set of core functions, typically focusing on
physical and symbolic representation.7 Thus, an often-used definition holds
that diplomacy is essentially a dialogue about representation and negotiation
between political units that recognize each other.8 To us, as much as we need
to define diplomacy in order to start analyzing it empirically, any exercise in
definition becomes sterile if we do not factor in that the understanding of
diplomacy, like state sovereignty, must be studied by recognizing the inherent
relationship between diplomacy as a category of practice and diplomacy as a
4 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. (London:
Macmillan, 1977),
171-2; Adam Watson, Diplomacy: The Dialogue between States.
(London: Methuen, (1982] 1984).
5 Christer j6nsson, "Diplomacy, bargaining and negotiation," in Walter Carslnaes,
Thomas Risse and Beth Simmons, eds., Handbook of international Relations (London:
Sage, 2002), 215.
6 The exceptions include James Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western
Estrangement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); Costas Constantinou, On the Way to
Diplomacy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Iver B. Neumann,
"Returning practice to the linguistic turn: The case of diplomacy," Millennium 32, no.
3 (2002): 627-52; Christer j6nsson and Martin Hall, Essence of Diplomacy (London:
Palgrave, 2005); Rebecca Adler-Nissen, "Late sovereign diplomacy," Hague journal
of Diplomacy 4 (2009): 121-41; Vincent Pouliot, International Security in Practice: The
Politics of NATO-Russia Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010);
Sharp, Diplomatic Theory; and Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats.
7 Hans J.Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th
edition (New York: Knopf, 1967); Sharp, Diplomatic Theory.
8 Watson, Diplomacy, 33.
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category of analysis.9
Given the aforementioned influence of practitioners in the study of
diplomacy, there seems to be a conflation of the two: the "folk-models"
and self-understandings of diplomats have been codified and described at
length in historical treatises and books, over time also becoming part of the
scholarly attempt to unpack and account for the nature and functioning of
diplomacy. Thus, while Kissinger's account of diplomacy is important, it
is more so because of its influence on the ideal-typical self-understanding
of diplomats, and more generally on "diplomatic culture," than as a source
from which to try to unpack and account for what that diplomatic culture
is.'0 Discussing the analytical purchase of the concept of identity, Rogers
Brubaker and Frederick Cooper argue, with George Orwell, that we must
let the meaning choose the word and not the other way around. For them,
identity has lost its analytical purchase because it means too little and too
much, and often nothing at all in analytical terms:
Everyday "identity talk" and "identity politics" are real and important
phenomena. But the contemporary salience of "identity" as a
category of practice does not require its use as a category of analysis.
Consider an analogy. "Nation" is a widely used category of social and
political practice. Appeals and claims made in the name of putative
"nations"-for example, claims about self-determination-have
been central to politics for a hundred-and-fifty years. But one does
not have to use "nation" as an analytical category to understand
and analyze such appeals and claims. One does not have to take
a category inherent in the practice of nationalism...and make this
category central to the theory of nationalism."
We contend that the same can be said of diplomacy, and that to study
diplomacy, we need analytical categories that offer distance and clarity,
which the concept of diplomacy itself cannot offer. As a social phenomenon,
diplomacy calls for analytical tools that capture how diplomats and others
9 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
o Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society; James Der Derian, "Hedley Bull and the idea
of diplomatic culture," in Rick Fawn and Jeremy Larkins, eds., International Society
after the Cold War Anarchy and Order Reconsidered (Houndsmills: Macmillan, 1996),
84-100.
11 Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, "Beyond identity," Theory and Society 29,
no. 1 (2000): 5.
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understand and do diplomatic work-as a category of practice, that isand at the same time can situate and account for these folk-models with
reference to the broader sociocultural and political-institutional frameworks
within which they operate.
Note that there is nothing inherently problematic in using a practice
category as an analytical category. Rather, it is what Wacquant calls the
"uncontrolled conflation of social and sociological... [or] folk and analytical
understandings" that cause problems.' For example, if a central selfunderstanding of diplomats is their ability to "keep a bracket" during
negotiations, or to showcase to their political superiors back home that their
analysis of the situation in a country rivals that of others, then this must
surely be included in the analysis. But analytical tools are needed to capture
why this is so, how it affects what diplomats do, and how it differs from
the work of nondiplomatic actors, whose register for evaluating skills and
capacity may be different.
On top of traditional studies of diplomacy, a strand of studies of
changes in, and even decline of, diplomacy started in the 198os and 199os,
continuing to this day. Most prominently, a number of books announcing
the age of a "new diplomacy" document the arrival en force of an array of
new actors on the diplomatic stage.' 3 Various nonstate actors, from NGOs
to celebrities, are analyzed as new actors and forces in world politics. An
interesting aspect of this literature is that it seems not to have been integrated
with the parallel literature in international relations theory more generally,
which showcased the role and power of a range of nonstate actors, such as
epistemic communities, transnational advocacy networks, and civil society
organizations.14
12 L6ic Wacquant quoted in Brubaker and Cooper, "Beyond identity," 6.
13 Andrew F. Cooper, John English, and Ramesh C. Thakur, eds., Enhancing Global
Governance: Towards a New Diplomacy (New York: United Nations University Press,
2002); Shaun Riordan, The New Diplomacy. (Cambridge: Polity, 2003); Andrew F.
Cooper, Brian Hocking, and William Maley, eds., Governance and Diplomacy: Worlds
Apart? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2oo8); Andrew F. Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy
(Boulder: Paradigm, 2008).
14 Peter M. Haas, "Knowledge, power and international policy coordination,"
International Organization 46, no. 1 (1992); Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink,
Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1998); Manuel Castells, "The new public sphere: Global civil society,
communication networks, and global governance," Annals ofthe American Academy of
Political and Social Science 616, no. 1 (2008): 78-93.
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The "new diplomacy" literature essentially describes the effects that
globalization is having on the diplomatic crowd. We, too, observe that
the social and political fabric of diplomats is evolving as we enter the 21st
century. After all, if globalization means the gradual deterritorialization of
some social relations and politics, then the nature and role of the diplomatwhose traditional function precisely is to represent at a distance, that is, to
span geographic space-must be changing as well.5 Thanks to technological
innovation and a hospitable normative environment, the breadth and depth
of interactions at the global level is reaching levels unprecedented in human
history. In fact, Badie may well prove right that "the present international
system is on the verge of acquiring the same level of social density that
characterized the nation state at the end of the nineteenth century."' 6 The
global stage, in other words, is becoming home to social and political
relations that could soon be almost as intense and numerous as those that
characterized national politics in earlier stages of the modern western state.
Inevitably, we conjecture, heightened social density (to use Durkheim's
notion) brings important changes for diplomatic practice, which, after all,
has long been a-if not the-central form of social and political intercourse
at the international level.
That being said, we also depart from the new diplomacy literature
because, like that on global governance more generally, it tends to adopt an
actor-centric focus and engage in "explanation by naming": a set of actors
is defined-a transnational advocacy group, say-and these actors are then
analyzed with a view to demonstrating their ability to shape policy outcomes
and state interests. But by hanging the causal story to be told on one set of
actors-defined by the analyst-we know little about the relative significance
of other groups, the relationship among different types of actors, and the
relations of power at work between these. In other words, it is one thing
to demonstrate the power of a certain type of actor, but quite another to
account for the process by which they become and are powerful relative to
other actors.
In a volume on environmental policymaking, for example, Michelle
Betsill and Elizabeth Corell try to measure how and under what conditions
NGOs influence negotiations over international environmental policy.
15
Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2001).
16 Bertrand Badie, "The European challenge to Bismarckian diplomacy," International
Politics 46, no.5 (2009): 519.
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They find evidence of such influence and thus refer to "NGO diplomacy,"
equating this to a challenge to traditional interstate diplomacy.'? We contend
that in defining the relationship between diplomats and nondiplomats
in this way, the most significant aspects of diplomacy and its changing
character and function are difficult to identify. Put differently, finding that
some nondiplomatic actors are powerful in some sense still does not tell us
anything about the relative significance of traditional diplomats, or about
the institutional environment in which diplomats and nondiplomats both
operate. There is a corollary to this in the study of state sovereignty and
globalization, where empirical demonstration ofthe power of global financial
markets, or of any particular type of nonstate actor, is used as an argument
for how the sovereign state is being circumvented, undermined, or rendered
less powerful under conditions of globalization. More recent contributions
to this debate challenge this view, arguing instead that we are seeing a
reassemblage of state practices, or the reconfiguring of the governmental
strategies employed by states and nonstate actors alike.' What these studies
have in common, we suggest, is their taking stock of contemporary shifts
in diplomatic practices thanks to a focus on the relations among actors and
practices.
ANALYTICAL TOOLS: TERRITORIAL VS. NONTERRITORIAL AND REPRESENTING VS.
GOVERNING
The role of nonstate actors is neither new, nor necessarily something that
undermines, in and of itself, the position of traditional diplomacy. As much
as there is a diffusion of authority and new role for nondiplomats in work
hitherto conducted by diplomats, we do not believe that we are moving
towards what Kennan called a world of "diplomacy without diplomats."'9
For as long as there has been contact between different polities, there has
17 Michelle Betsill and Elizabeth Corell, eds., NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of Nongovernmental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2007).
18 Saskia Sassen, Global Transformations: Authority, Territory, and Rights (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2007); Rita Abrahamsen and Michael C. Williams, Security
Beyond the State: Private Security in international Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010); Iver B. Neumann, and Ole Jacob Sending, Governing the
Global Polity: Practice, Rationality, Mentality (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2010).
19
George Kennan, "Diplomacy without diplomats?" Foreign Affairs 76, no. 5 (1997):
198-212.
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been diplomacy at work, and when the character of the relations between
these polities changed, so, too, did diplomatic practice. Even in a globalizing
era, hardly any group other than traditional diplomats perform all of those
tasks that are typically associated with diplomacy, namely negotiation,
representation, information-gathering, and communication.2 0 Thus, an
NGO involved in environmental negotiations or a transnational corporation
setting up global transparency standards can be said to perform some
elements of diplomatic practice, but not all of them.
Moreover, diplomacy is an institutionalized feature of the state system
and, like sovereignty, it therefore remains significant even when it is being
supplanted and changed by new practices and new actors. Established
diplomatic practices-summits, preparatory committees charged with
draffing, and so on-provide the infrastructure for other actors to partake in
representation and governing where different polities are involved. By virtue
ofrepresenting the primary actors in the system-states-state diplomats are
in a powerful position that enables them to draw on and use different types
of actors to advance particular interests in different contexts. Thus, states
now typically include key nonstate actors in negotiations where these can
offer information and advice and when they are seen to represent powerful
domestic constituencies. By virtue of how the institution of sovereignty
sets up states as primary interlocutors-codified in international law and
practice-the interesting question seems to us to be not whether diplomacy
as an institution is being challenged or how diplomatic actors are pressured
from the outside. Rather, it is how the institution of diplomacy, as well as
the work done by diplomats and nondiplomats, is changing over time as
new actors are included in global governance and new forms of governing
are being developed and put to use. In order to tackle this issue, we
propose two analytical distinctions: the first, territorial versus nonterritorial
representation, focuses on varying forms of authority claims and their effects
on constituencies; the second, representing versus governing, emphasizes
the evolving balance between two core diplomatic functions.
Territorialversus nonterritorialauthority claims
If we want to account for changes in diplomatic practice by virtue of the
proliferation of actors involved in diplomatic work, the question of how
and why different actors "do" diplomacy must be central. For example,
20 Iver B. Neumann, "Globalisation and diplomacy," in Cooper, Hocking, and Maley,
Global Governance and Diplomacy,
15-28.
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an actor representing a religious community is expected to represent that
constituency in a different way than an actor representing a territorial unit,
and both will differ from an actor who claims to represent institutionalized
expertise. Aside from the constituency per se, it is primarily the source of
authority that is shifting or, more precisely, "deterritorializing." We wish to
stress that an adequate understanding of diplomacy necessitates a closer
look at variation and similarities in the character of the relation between
diplomats and the territorially defined unit they represent, on the one hand,
and other types of representatives whose constituencies differ in that they
are not territorially defined.
In her analysis of economics as a global profession, for instance, Marion
Fourcade shows how economists, while still located within a national
professional setting, are able to rely on a technical knowledge and language
whose universalistic tone makes it possible to claim global jurisdiction.2
Expertise, which is in fast-increasing demand in contemporary diplomacy,
is shifting the principle of representation away from territoriality toward
virtual forms of authority grounded in symbolic systems. Note, however, that
the distinction between territorial and nonterritorial representation is ideal:
economists who perform regulatory work with counterparts from other
countries are engaged in both territorial and nonterritorial representation,
as Leonard Seabooke's contribution makes clear. Conversely, state diplomats
deploy moral arguments and expert-based legal interpretations produced by
nonstate actors as they debate whether or not state behaviour conforms to
international law, as Ian Hurd demonstrates.
The deterritorialization of diplomatic representation is attributable .
not only to expertise, but also to older symbolic forms embedded in valuesystems. We have already mentioned the doubly territorial and virtual
nature of religious constituencies. Here, too, value-systems intersect with
territoriality. Cecelia Lynch shows how different loyalties and constituencies
intersect to constitute the sui generischaracter of how Christian humanitarian
organizations are involved in both representation and governance. Still, the
deterritorialized character of representation is seen in the diplomacy-or
"good offices"-functions of the UN secretary-general. This representation
is distinct in type and scope because it is performed on behalf of an
international organization, with all the symbolic pomp of the "international
community," and not of a state or NGO. This difference stems from the
21 Marion Fourcade, "The construction ofa global profession: The transnationalization
of economics," American journal of Sociology 112, fO. 1 (2006): 145-94.
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character of the relation between the representative and the constituency:
the nature of the constituency that is represented by the secretary-general
is in part embedded in the UN charter, for which the secretary-general acts
as the highest international civil servant, but it is also embedded in part in
the member-states themselves, whose approval is ultimately necessary for
forceful action. Moreover, there is the shored up "moral authority" that a
secretary-general may be able to build up over time.
Similarly, many NGOs advocating on behalf of "humankind" (e.g., in
favour of a right to migrate) also claim an authority that is not territorially
bounded. An actor representing Amnesty International is communicating
with others, gathering information, and engaging in negotiations in a way
that differs from that of representatives of states or other actors. As Stephen
Hopgood has demonstrated, Amnesty's effort to build and institutionalize
its authority as representatives of certain values (human rights) affect both
what it does and how: Amnesty is torn between two different and competing
claims to authority-one moral, the other political-and this tension runs
through the organization, shaping its identity and mode of operations.22
There is reason to believe that this dynamic also goes for other actors, but
representatives of states are here distinct by virtue of the institution of
sovereignty. But this difference holds primarily for the task of representation,
and less so for the task of governing, to which we now turn.
Governing versus representing
While state actors remain in a powerful position with regard to governing,
arguably a growing number of actors-those claiming to represent
expertise, values, "civil society," or affected populations-are also becoming
more important. This evolution is largely due to the fact that governing is
concerned with acting on an external social reality, the contents of which
must be assessed and known in order to be governed effectively. This is not
to suggest that governing is rational while representing is political. On the
contrary, we submit that both are political, but that the form that the political
process assumes in governing is distinct from its form in representation.
Given that there is more transborder regulation and governing afoot
than ever before, we contend that governing has become more important
to the life of diplomacy. By implication, the resources that different actors
bring to bear hang to a considerable degree on whom, and what, they claim
22 Stephen
Hopgood, Keepers of the Flame: Inside Amnesty International (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2oo6).
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to represent as they partake in the process of governing. Note that we are
not assuming that the character of what is to be represented-whether it be
a nation, a faith, or a set of interests or values-is in any sense objective or
reified. They are all constructed, but with varying degrees of acceptance and
institutionalization.
Typically, representation is organized around the idea of advancing
the interest of a given constituency, where those interest are presumed
to be defined through communication with the constituency, and where
judgements about how to advance those interests are central. Governing, in
contrast, is organized around changing other actors' behaviour to achieve
certain objectives, the achievement of which calls for the enrolment and
participation of a greater number of actors and the use of different types of
judgement and expertise. As an example, consider the military. There has
always been a strong connection between a polity's diplomatic and military
capabilities. For example, in the middle ages, diplomats were frequently
tucked away behind the military when it went into battle, only to re-emerge
to begin negotiations when the new status quo had been decided on the
battlefield.23 Alternatively, military threats have, implicitly and explicitly,
hovered in the background of diplomatic negotiations. If we consider the
situation on the ground in places like Afghanistan today, however, the soldier
and the diplomat are working in tandem, both partaking in governing and
deploying distinct claims to authority by virtue ofwhat they represent. Indeed,
Tarak Barkawi's contribution to this special issue shows how military-tomilitary relations between states-legitimated in the language of diplomatic
representation-have very much been about governing and the constitution
ofhegemonic relations. Strong states gain "direct access" to act on and govern
in other, weaker, states through such systems of representation. The general
point here is that such transnational links between professionals-whether
representing the state or not-are assuming an institutionalized form.24
When states meet in the World Health Organization or the International
Monetary Fund, delegations are typically dominated by representatives from
line ministries (such as health and finance) whose claim to authority is linked
to the territorial unit being represented and to the specific expertise over the
issue-area in question. We interpret this trend as having to do with the fact
that governing is becoming a central frame of reference for representation
23
24
Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (New York: Dover, 1955).
Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order Government Networks and the
Disaggregated State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
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and thus for traditional diplomatic work. A case in point is, we argue,
the degree to which the performance of the task of representation in the
making of new international law, or in setting up new financial regulations,
necessitates in-depth technical expertise.
FOUR DEBATES AND HOW DIPLOMACY MATTERS TO ALL OF THEM
By way of conclusion, we argue that studying diplomacy is central as an
empirical intake to a range of central debates about world politics. One
debate concerns the changes in the distribution of power in the international
system. Another addresses the role of ideas in policy change. A third has
to do with the role of nonstate actors in shaping policy outcomes. The last
concentrates on the effects of globalization on state sovereignty.
The first debate has centred on the nature of power, the role and
character of balancing, and competing claims about the source of strength
of great powers, notably the US and China.25 Whether diplomatic practice
has or has not changed is a central empirical test for the claims made. Do
diplomatic practice and the relations between distinct diplomatic actors
change in response to shifts in the distribution of power? At one extreme
is the view that diplomacy is so stable and institutionalized-an unmoved
mediator-that it does not change in the face of changes in its immediate
environment (or adjacent and interlinked practices). Another is that
diplomacy reflects the underlying distribution of power, priming us to see
changes in diplomatic practice when there is a change in the distribution of
power. Pouliot's contribution charts a middle way between these two views,
arguing that due to its thick social fabric-expressed in diplomats' "sense
of one's place"-changes in the distribution of power more or less translate
into a socially contingent pecking order between diplomats.
A central claim by constructivist scholars is that how states behave
and define their goals is defined by the intersubjectively shared ideational
framework within which they operate. Norms, in short, are said be
constitutive of identities and to regulate behaviour, and so changes in
the normative and cognitive framework will result in actors having new
identities, new objectives, and new strategies. If diplomacy is, as Reus-Smit
has argued, defined by foundational purposive norms, then changes in
those purposive norms will, over time, result in new organizing principles
25 Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World out of Balance: International
Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2008).
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between states and, thus, also in diplomatic practice.6 Few others have
taken up this challenge, however, as the major focus of constructivist work
has been on how and why ideationally induced change takes place. And here
the institution of diplomacy has been relegated to the background, the focus
being instead on how one set of actors-often transnational norm advocates
in alliances with state actors-advocate norms that others are socialized into
accepting.27 But the character of diplomacy, and the identity of diplomats,
is much more than a vehicle through which ideationally driven political
change takes place. 8
Indeed, a range of questions here emerges about the functioning and
possibly changing character of diplomacy: does the "legalization" of world
politics mean that legal actors (law firms, law professors, ministries of
justice) become more influential in shaping diplomatic practice? Hurd's
contribution suggests that it has not, and argues that while nonstate actors
can offer important legal arguments, it is state representatives who publicly
defend state behaviour and its conformity with international law. Similarly,
Seabrooke finds that the revolving doors between public and private actors
do not challenge the position of state diplomats. Much more important is
the question of the status and authority of those actors who can demonstrate
acumen in both the private and public sphere.
As regards the literature on global governance and its attendant
focus on the role and power of nonstate actors, it is quite remarkable that
diplomacy-as an institution mediating and communicating among distinct
polities-has not been a central empirical focus of analysis. The claim that
nonstate actors are powerful is a mainstay in this literature, and it is typically
based on accounts that focus on a particular type of actor, such as advocacy
groups, civil society organizations, or expert groups. 9 In singling out one
set of actors, and hanging the causal story on their doings, analysts of
nonstate actors have marginalized the practice of diplomacy and the actions
of diplomats in these processes. This also holds, we believe, for accounts
that are chiefly concerned with measuring the relative significance of state
26 Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and
Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1999).
27 Jeffrey T. Checkel, ed., International Institutions and Socialization in Europe
(Cambridge University Press, 2007).
28 Pouliot, International Security in Practice; Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats.
29 Haas, "Knowledge, power;" Keck and Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders.
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and nonstate actors, as they see the relationship between state and nonstate
actors as a zero-sum game. We opt for a different strategy, asking instead
how changes in the cast of actors involved affect diplomatic practice, and
how, in turn, diplomatic practice itself conditions and structures nonstate
actors' strategies. Both Lynch's and Sending's contributions suggest that
diplomatic practices are central structuring sites for the actions of others,
such as humanitarian and development actors engaged in global governance.
At the same time, as diplomats are increasingly engaged in representation
in the context of global governance efforts, distinct relations of dependence
and information-sharing are being developed between diplomats and other
actors.
Finally, studies of diplomacy have a direct bearing on the debate
about globalization and changes in state sovereignty. Since diplomacy is
about mediation between the inside and the outside of distinct polities,
and the character and relationship between these polities change so that
the boundaries between them become blurred, it would be surprising if
diplomatic practice were to remain unchanged. Sending's contribution
attributes the relative stability of the institution of diplomacy to the fact that it
is a "thin" culture-a version of Granovetter's argument about the "strength
of weak ties."30 Still, examples of changes in diplomatic practices are legion,
a case in point being Neumann's analysis of how small and medium powers
increasingly invest in systems-maintenance-previously assumed to be
the province of great powers. Neumann speculates that this change may
be a response to the rise of new great powers, and more generally to the
rise of governance as the frame of reference for representation and the
advancement of national interests.
When all is said and done, we can be certain of one trait that the future
of diplomacy will inevitably share with its past: it will remain a key practical
grounding of ever-changing configurations of social relations beyond the
state. In assessing the evolution of practices over time, therefore, scholars
should remind themselves that diplomacy is a social form deeply embedded
in historically and culturally contingent contexts that produce meanings and
politics.
30 Mark S. Granovetter, "The strength of weak ties," American journal of Sociology 76,
no.6 (1973): 1360-80.
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Summer 2011 | International journal I