Diplomacy after Policymaking: Theorizing Hyper-Empowered Individuals

Abstract

Diplomatic Afterlives. Edited by Andrew F Cooper. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015. 206 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6199-5). The academic study of diplomacy in the discipline of International Relations (IR) has flourished in recent years (see Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann ⇓; Pouliot and Cornut ⇓ for recent volumes that include substantive reviews of the recent diplomacy renaissance). After decades of discounting diplomacy's importance in favor of structural explanations (Rathbun ⇓:1), diplomacy has (re)-emerged on the landscape of mainstream IR theorizing. One reason for this is the growing recognition that states spend so much time engaging in diplomacy, it must be for a good reason (if we assume that states take purposeful actions). More important is the growing sense that structural features beyond the control of individuals, such as power, do not account for the tremendous variation we see in political outcomes in the international system. In order to make sense of this variation, we need a theory of agency, an understanding of how individual agents can affect outcomes independent of other structural factors. Several works in the last few years have attempted to construct theories of diplomacy as theories of agency. Rathbun's (⇓) Diplomacy's Value: Creating Security in 1920s Europe and the Contemporary Middle East is an exemplar. Rathbun sets out discrete propositions about how diplomatic styles and diplomat characteristics, particularly prosocial vs. proself orientations, combine to help explain the Locarno period in Europe. Yarhi-Milo's (⇓) Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations demonstrates that policymakers often make decisions about the intentions of states not just by looking at structural factors, but instead by relying on preexisting beliefs and …