Diplomacy and Diplomatic Studies

Abstract

I read with great interest the responses of Brian Hocking and Andrew Cooper (winter 1997-8) to my article on diplomatic representation. It was an honour to draw the attention (and fire) of two scholars whose expertise in the field is self-evident. They make two charges: that my defence of diplomacy plays into the hands of its detractors (Hocking) and that the state-centric approach on which my argument is based closes down discussion of diplomacy just as it is becoming more important and interesting (Cooper). I will respond to these charges before addressing a more important question implied by both respondents. Is it useful to think of diplomacy as a discrete social practice, the study of which can be distinguished from the analysis of foreign policy in general or from even broader subfields of international relations?To Hocking's charge, I can reply only that I am not a diplomacy nostalgist conducting a rear-guard action on behalf of constituencies which somehow contrive simultaneously to dominate discourse and to be so far behind the times as to constitute a danger only to themselves and their friends. I cite De Callieres, Satow, and others both because they have important things to say and because they say those things in the language of an established discourse, although I suppose this could be translated into the language of horizontal and vertical networks, nodal points, and transmission belts. The other dead Frenchman I use is Foucault, passe among serious theorists perhaps but still insightful enough for our field, and scarcely a club for which diplomacy's old friends would naturally reach. I use him because, pace Cooper, I do not take a simple statecentric approach to discipline the discourse. My work on diplomatic representation has been prompted by the problematizing of all aspects of identity which has moved onto the centre stage of international relations from other areas of social theory in recent years. Cooper is right to say that the state and the state system should not be treated as rigid and static and that the former may be behaving more like firms, but, given how they present themselves and their claims upon us, do we not want to say something about this? I live in a state; so does everyone else I know, and the questions of how these states are presented and represented by those who act for them are important. They lead to the question of how they ought to be represented, and this explicitly normative concern is also in line with very recent developments in international theory. I have attempted to go beyond reiterations of the porous, penetrated, and fragmented character of the social structures in which we live and the resulting whorls, eddies, and constellations of communications within and between them to make the beginnings of a case for the re-integration of the state. One may think this is impossible or one may simply not like it, but my argument should not be ignored or suppressed with the accusation that it is a manifestation of the voice of orthodoxy attempting to impose closure.I argued that representation was both important and difficult to talk about. Witness Hocking's comments on diplomats and representation. 'Of course representation is significant,' he says, but adds that 'most of them, presumably, know who pays their salary and try to act accordingly' (pp 170-1). He then identifies certain policy issues on which the question of representation does become problematic and asks which 'interests were the United States, Japanese, or European Union diplomats representing at the Kyoto summit on climate change in December 1997?' But this was my point, and, while I have a prescriptive answer grounded in a conception of representation which goes beyond acting for interests, and with which one may disagree, there is something here worthy of further discussion. Indeed, I think it is perfectly possible to maintain my position that diplomats continue to derive their raison d'etre from the fact that they represent states and examine both the empirical and prescriptive consequences of this for the conduct of their relations with the complex of foreign and domestic actors whom Hocking and Cooper rightly say they must engage. …