Hostname: page-component-5d84bcc8dc-2vlzw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-08-10T23:07:24.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The changing practices of frontline diplomacy: New directions for inquiry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2018

Andrew F. Cooper  and
Jérémie Cornut
Andrew F. Cooper*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo, Canada
Jérémie Cornut
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, Canada
*
*Corresponding author. Email: acooper@uwaterloo.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article develops the concept of ‘frontline diplomacy’ – what practitioners referring to work in embassies, consulates, and permanent representation as ‘the field’ –, defined here as all diplomats’ activities taking place away from headquarters. IR scholarship tends to focus on Ministries of Foreign Affairs located in capitals. On the contrary, building on the practice turn in IR, we first show that international politics emerge from frontline practices. Adding to criticism against the practice turn, we then explain that it has missed important transformations occurring in frontline diplomacy because it tends to privilege stability over change. We finally discuss two innovations in frontline practices: the action of Sherpas in G20 summits following the 2008 crisis and the use of Twitter by US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul (2012–14). For each we answer three questions: How do these activities transform traditional modes of operation? How are non-state actors involved in them? What do they tell about transformation of global politics? Because diplomatic practices at the frontlines epitomise international politics, these new directions for inquiry contribute substantively to IR scholarship. At the theoretical level, they enrich the continuing encounter between IR and diplomatic studies through practice theory and help to understand change in practice.

Keywords

DiplomacyInternational Practice TheoryFrontline DiplomatsPolylateralismEmbassies

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 300 - 319
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Derian, James Der, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987)Google Scholar .

2 Sending, Ole, Pouliot, Vincent, and Neumann, Iver (eds), Diplomacy: The Making of World Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

3 Rebecca Adler-Nissen, ‘Relationalism: Why diplomats find International Relations theory strange’, in Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann (eds), Diplomacy, p. 298.

4 Sharp, Paul, Diplomatic Theory of International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 10 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

5 Seçkin Bari Gülmez, ‘Do diplomats matter in foreign policy? Sir Percy Loraine and the Turkish-British rapprochement in the 1930s’, Foreign Policy Analysis (2017).

6 Neumann, Iver B., At Home with the Diplomats: Life Inside a European Foreign Ministry (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Lequesne, Christian, Ethnographie du Quai d’Orsay: les pratiques des diplomates français (Paris: CNRS Edition, 2017)Google Scholar .

7 Sharp, Diplomatic Theory of International Relations, p. 10.

8 Neumann, Iver B., ‘To be a diplomat’, International Studies Perspectives, 6:1 (2005), p. 85 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

9 Sharp, Paul and Wiseman, Geoff (eds), The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)Google Scholar .

10 Wiseman, Geoffrey, ‘“Polylateralism” and new modes of global dialogue’, in Christer Jönsson and Richard Langhorne (eds), Diplomacy: Problems and Issues in Contemporary Diplomacy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004), pp. 409–430 Google Scholar ; Wiseman, Geoffrey, ‘Polylateralism: Diplomacy’s third dimension’, Public Diplomacy Magazine, 4 (2010), pp. 24–39 Google Scholar .

11 Neumann, Iver B., ‘Returning practice to the linguistic turn: the case of diplomacy’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 31:3 (2002), pp. 627–651 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats; Pouliot, Vincent, International Security in Practice: The Politics of NATO-Russia Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Pouliot, Vincent, International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Pouliot, Vincent and Cornut, Jérémie, ‘Practice theory and the study of diplomacy: a research agenda’, Cooperation and Conflict, 50:3 (2015), pp. 297–315 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann (eds), Diplomacy.

12 Sharp, Diplomatic Theory of International Relations; Murray, Stuart, Sharp, Paul, Wiseman, Geoffrey, Criekemans, David, and Melissen, Jan, ‘The present and future of diplomacy and diplomatic studies’, International Studies Review, 13:4 (2011), pp. 709–728 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

13 Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann (eds), Diplomacy.

14 On diplomatic culture, see Sharp, Paul, ‘The idea of diplomatic culture and its sources’, in Hannah Slavik (ed.), Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy (Malta: DiploFoundation, 2004), pp. 361–379 Google Scholar ; Wiseman, Geoffrey, ‘Pax Americana: Bumping into diplomatic culture’, International Studies Perspectives, 6:4 (2005), pp. 409–430 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Constantinou, Costas, ‘Everyday diplomacy: Mission, spectacle and the remaking of diplomatic culture’, in Jason Dittmer and Fiona McConnell (eds), Diplomatic Cultures and International Politics: Translations, Spaces and Alternatives (Abington: Routledge, 2006), pp. 23–40 Google Scholar .

15 Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann (eds), Diplomacy.

16 Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, ‘International practices’, International Theory, 3:1 18 (2011a), p. 4.

17 Neumann, ‘Returning practice to the linguistic turn’, pp. 637–8; Adler and Pouliot, ‘International Practices’, (2011a), pp. 6–7; Bueger, Christian and Gadinger, Frank, International Practice Theory: New Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 19 Google Scholar .

18 Bueger, Christian, ‘Pathways to practice: Praxiography and international politics’, European Political Science Review, 6:3 (2014), p. 383 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

19 Pouliot, Vincent, ‘Practice tracing’, in Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey Checkel (eds), Process Tracing: From Analytic Metaphor to Best Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 237–259 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

20 Adler and Pouliot, ‘International Practices’, (2011a); Pouliot and Cornut, ‘Practice theory and the study of diplomacy’.

21 Ringmar, Erik, ‘The search for dialogue as a hindrance to understanding: Practices as inter-paradigmatic research program’, International Theory, 6:1 (2014), pp. 1–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

22 Lequesne, Christian, ‘EU foreign policy through the lens of practice theory: a different approach to the European External Action Service’, Cooperation and Conflict, 50:3 (2015), pp. 63–76 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

23 Wiseman, Geoffrey, ‘Bringing diplomacy back in: Time for theory to catch up with practice’, International Studies Review, 13:4 (2011), p. 712 Google Scholar .

24 Cornut, Jérémie, ‘Diplomacy, agency and the logic of improvisation and virtuosity in practice’, European Journal of International Relations, 24:3 (2018), p. 726 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

25 Pouliot and Cornut, ‘Practice theory and the study of diplomacy’.

26 Kuus, Merje, ‘Symbolic power in diplomatic practice: Matters of style in Brussels’, Cooperation and Conflict, 50:2 (2015), p. 380 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

27 Cornut, Jérémie, ‘To be a diplomat abroad: Diplomatic practice at embassies’, Cooperation and Conflict, 50:3 (2015), pp. 385–401 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Pouliot, Vincent and Cornut, Jérémie, ‘Bilateral and multilateral diplomatic practices’, in Pauline Kerr and Geoffrey Wiseman (eds), Diplomacy in a Globalizing World (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 185–198 Google Scholar .

28 Ole Jacob Sending and Iver Neumann, ‘Banking on power: How some practices in an international organization anchor others’, in Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot (eds), International Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011b), pp. 231–54.

29 Adler-Nissen, Rebecca and Pouliot, Vincent, ‘Power in practice: Negotiating the international intervention in Libya’, European Journal of International Relations, 20:4 (2014), pp. 889–911 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

30 Ibid.

31 Vincent Pouliot, ‘The practice of permanent representation at international organizations’, in Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann (eds), Diplomacy, pp. 80–108.

32 Cornut, ‘To be a diplomat abroad’.

33 Adler and Pouliot, ‘International Practices’ (2011a).

34 Wiseman, Geoffrey, ‘Diplomatic practices at the United Nations’, Cooperation and Conflict, 50:3 (2015), pp. 316–333 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

35 Sending and Neumann, ‘Banking on power’.

36 Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann (eds), Diplomacy, p. 7.

37 Ibid., p. 18.

38 Ian Hurd, ‘International law and the politics of diplomacy’, in Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann (eds), Diplomacy, pp. 31–54.

39 Cooper, Andrew F., Celebrity Diplomacy (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishing, 2007)Google Scholar ; Cooper, Andrew F., Diplomatic Afterlives (Cambridge: Polity, 2014)Google Scholar .

40 Janice Gross Stein, ‘Background knowledge in the foreground: Conversations about competent practices in “sacred space”’, in Adler and Pouliot, International Practices (2011b), p. 91.

41 Adler-Nissen, Rebecca, Opting out of the European Union: Diplomacy, Sovereignty and European Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

42 See, for example, Schindler, Sebastian and Wille, Tobias, ‘Change in and through practice: Pierre Bourdieu, Vincent Pouliot, and the end of the Cold War’, International Theory, 7:2 (2015), pp. 330–359 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Holmes, Marcus and Traven, David, ‘Acting rationally without really thinking: the logic of rational intuitionism for International Relations theory’, International Studies Review, 17:3 (2015), pp. 414–440 Google Scholar .

43 Bueger and Gadinger, International Practice Theory; Cornut, Jérémie, ‘The practice turn in International Relations theory’, in Robert A. Denemark and Renée Marlin-Bennett (eds), The International Studies Encyclopedia (Blackwell Publishing: Oxford Reference Online, 2016)Google Scholar .

44 Adler and Pouliot, ‘International Practices’ (2011a), p. 5.

45 Hopf, Ted, ‘Change in international practices’, European Journal of International Relations, 24:3 (2018), p. 705 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

46 Navari, Cornelia, ‘The concept of practice in the English School’, European Journal of International Relations, 17:4 (2011), p. 614 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

47 Bueger and Gadinger, International Practice Theory, p. 19.

48 Ted Hopf, ‘The logic of habit in International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, 16:4 (2010), pp. 539–61.

49 Pouliot, Vincent, ‘The logic of practicality: a theory of practice of security communities’, International Organization, 62:2 (2008), pp. 273–274 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

50 Pouliot, ‘The logic of practicality’, p. 273.

51 Pouliot, Vincent and Thérien, Jean-Philippe, ‘The politics of inclusion: Changing patterns in the governance of international security’, Review of International Studies, 41:2 (2015), p. 4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

52 Cooper, Andrew F. and Pouliot, Vincent, ‘How much is global governance changing? The G20 as international practice’, Cooperation and Conflict, 50:3 (2015), pp. 334–350 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

53 Cooper, Andrew F., ‘The changing nature of diplomacy’, in Andrew F. Cooper, Jorge Heine, and Ramesh Thakur (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 35–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

54 Ilan Manor, ‘The Digitalization of Diplomacy: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Terminology’, Working Paper No. 2, Oxford Digital Diplomacy Research Group (January 2018).

55 Bradlow, Daniel D., ‘Lessons from the frontlines: What I learned from my participation in the G20’, Global Summitry, 1:2 (2016), pp. 135–150 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Cooper, Andrew F., ‘Civil society relationships with the G20: an extension of the G8 template or distinctive pattern of engagement?’, Global Society, 27:2 (2013), pp. 179–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

57 Alexandroff, Alan S. and Brean, Donald, ‘Global summitry: Its meaning and scope Part One’, Global Summitry, 1:1 (2015), p. 2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

58 Stone, Diane, Knowledge Actors and Transnational Governance: The Public Private Policy Nexus in the Global Agora (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

59 Cited in Jim O’Neill and Alessio Terzi, ‘The world is ready for a global economic governance reform, are world leaders?’, Bruegel, Blogpost (29 October 2014).

60 Kirton, John, G20 Governance for a Globalized World (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013), p. 302 Google Scholar .

61 Stone, Diane, ‘Global public policy, transnational policy communities and their networks’, Policy Studies Journal, 36:1 (2008), pp. 19–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

62 Cooper, ‘Civil society relationships with the G20’.

63 Higgott, Richard, Underhill, Geoffrey, and Bieler, Andreas, Non-State Actors and Authority in the Global System (London: Routledge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

64 Cited in Stephen Slaughter, ‘Building G20 outreach: the role of transnational policy networks in sustaining effective and legitimate summitry’, Global Summitry, 1:2 (2015), p. 2.

65 Lesley Wroughton, ‘Bill Gates urges G20 to live up to aid promises’, Reuters (3 November 2012).

66 Cooper, Andrew F. and Thakur, Ramesh, The Group of Twenty (G20) (New York: Routledge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Kirton, G20 Governance for a Globalized World.

67 Cooper, Andrew F., ‘The G20 and contested global governance: BRICS, middle powers and small states’, Caribbean Journal of International Relations & Diplomacy, 2:3 (2014), pp. 87–109 Google Scholar .

68 Cooper, Andrew F., ‘The G20 as an improvised crisis committee and/or contested “steering committee” for the world’, International Affairs, 86:3 (2010), pp. 741–757 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

69 Alan Alexandroff, ‘G20 Global Governance is Hard Work, World – Get Used to It!’, Rising BRICSAM (7 November 2011), available at: {http://blog.risingbricsam.com/?p=950} accessed 8 November 2018; Jonathan Luckhurst, G20 since the Global Crisis (New York: Palgrave, 2016)

70 Baker, Andrew, ‘The new political economy of the macroprudential ideational shift’, New Political Economy, 18:1 (2013), pp. 112–139 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

71 Cited in Robert Koenig, ‘Using “social diplomacy” to reach Russians’, The Foreign Service Journal (January/February 2014), p. 22.

72 McFaul, Michael, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018)Google Scholar ; Mark Landler, ‘In the scripted world of diplomacy, a burst of tweets’, The New York Times (4 February 2014); Will Wright, ‘America’s digital diplomacy in Russia after Michael McFaul’, Global Voices (2 January 2015); Chrystia Freeland, ‘Social media statecraft: a multiplatform strategy’, The Globe and Mail (5 April 2012).

73 Cull, Nicholas J., ‘The long road to public diplomacy 2.0: the Internet in US public diplomacy’, International Studies Review, 15:1 (2013), p. 135 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

74 McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace; Koenig, ‘Using “social diplomacy” to reach Russians’.

75 Miriam Elder, ‘Michael McFaul, US ambassador to Moscow, victim of Kremlin “Twitter war”’, The Guardian (29 May 2012); McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace, p. 306.

76 McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace, p. 302; David M. Herszenhorn, ‘Putin critic gets 5-year jail term, setting off protests’, The New York Times (18 July 2013); Will Englund, ‘In Russia, activist Alexei Navalny freed one day after conviction’, The Washington Post (19 July 2013).

77 Ben Brumfield, ‘Outspoken Putin critic Alexei Navalny hit with prison sentence’, CNN (19 July 2013).

78 Cited in Koenig, ‘Using “social diplomacy” to reach Russians’, p. 21.

79 Louie Fréchette, ‘Foreword – diplomacy: Old trade, new challenges’, in Cooper, Heine, and Thakur (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, pp. xxx–xxxv.

80 Ilan Manor, ‘Ambassadors as digital gatekeepers’, Exploring Digital Diplomacy (8 March 2017), available at: {https://digdipblog.com/2017/03/08/ambassadors-as-digital-gatekeepers/} accessed 20 December 2017.

81 McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace.

82 Koenig, ‘Using “social diplomacy” to reach Russians’.

83 Bjola, Corneliu and Holmes, Marcus (eds), Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 2015)Google Scholar ; Owen, Taylor, Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Seib, Philip, The Future of Diplomacy (Malden: Polity Press, 2016)Google Scholar .

84 Freeland, ‘Social media statecraft’.

85 McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace, p. 283.

86 Faizullaev, Alisher and Cornut, Jérémie, ‘Narrative practice in international politics and diplomacy: the case of the crisis in Crimea’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 20:3 (2017), pp. 578–604 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

87 Koenig, ‘Using “social diplomacy” to reach Russians’.

88 Freeland, ‘Social media statecraft’; McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace.

89 Cited in Freeland, ‘Social media statecraft’.

90 Sabrina Sotiriu, ‘Digital diplomacy: Between promises and reality’, in Bjola and Holmes (eds), Digital Diplomacy, p. 43.

91 McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace, p. 299.

92 Gilboa, Eytan, ‘Diplomacy in the media age: Three models of uses and effects’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 12:2 (2001), pp. 1–28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

93 Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann (eds), Diplomacy, p. 3; Constantinou, Costas M. and Sharp, Paul, ‘Theoretical perspectives in diplomacy’, in Costas M. Constantinou, Pauline Kerr, and Paul Sharp (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Diplomacy (London: SAGE, 2016), pp. 13–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

94 Watson, Adam, The Dialogue between States (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar .

95 McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace, p. 314.

96 Wiseman, ‘Polylateralism’.

97 Jönsson, Christer and Hall, Martin, Essence of Diplomacy (New York: Palgrave, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Kleiner, Juergen, ‘The inertia of diplomacy’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 19:2 (2008), pp. 321–349 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Hocking, Brian, ‘Catalytic diplomacy: Beyond “newness” and “decline”’, in Jan Melissen (ed.), Innovation in Diplomatic Practice (New York: Palgrave, 1999), pp. 19–42 Google Scholar ; Sofer, Sasson, ‘Old and new diplomacy: a debate revisited’, Review of International Studies, 14:3 (1988), pp. 195–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Hocking, Brian, Melissen, Jan, Riordan, Shaun, and Sharp, Paul, Futures for Diplomacy: Integrative Diplomacy in the 21st Century (Clingendael: Netherlands Institute of International Relations, 2012)Google Scholar .

98 Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann (eds), Diplomacy; Cooper and Pouliot, ‘How much is global governance changing?’.

99 Philip Seib, Real-Time Diplomacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

100 Cited in Cooper, Heine, and Thakur (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, p. 22.

101 Holmes, Anthony, ‘Where are the civilians? How to rebuild the U.S. foreign service’, Foreign Affairs, 88:1 (2009), pp. 148–160 Google Scholar .

102 Copeland, Daryl, Guerrilla Diplomacy (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2009)Google Scholar .