Transnational institutional fields: Positionality and generalization in the study of diplomacy

Abstract

Using European diplomacy as an example, this article makes a methodological and conceptual argument about the study of transnational institutional fields. Empirically, I focus on diplomatic training in today's Europe. Although such training has traditionally been the realm of national foreign ministries, it increasingly includes non-state actors: universities, private consultancies, and European Union (EU) institutions. EU member states collaborate to train diplomats who are well-versed in the interests and working cultures of other such states. The result is a transnational field of cooperation and competition in which state and non-state actors as well as national and international players can be difficult to distinguish. Drawing primary empirical material from nine years of fieldwork, including well over one hundred interviews conducted with diplomats in Brussels and eight other cities, the paper describes that field of practice. Conceptually and methodologically, the paper delineates the difficulties of elucidating the daily operation of such fields. Central to these difficulties is the personalized character of transnational institutional settings. Individuals matter: to grasp what happens, how, and why, we must know a great deal about particular individuals' professional histories, agendas, and networks. This high level of specificity raises significant methodological challenges around positionality (of the researcher and the research subjects) and generalizability (of the argument). By dissecting these challenges, the paper improves our understanding of how transnational fields work and how to study them. I show why and how the conceptual and the empirical are integrally linked to methodological considerations in the study of transnational processes.