Two decades of diplomatic representation of the Slovak Republic in the world – political-geographic perspective

Abstract

The aim of the paper is political-geographical evaluation of the institutional representation of the Slovak Republic abroad. The geographical (complex) point of view on the foreign policy and localisation of the embassies significantly influence the way of understanding the nature of the network of diplomatic representation of the small state in central Europe. In the first section, we compare and evaluate government documents regarding the establishing, cancellation, or planning of the Slovak embassies in the world in three main periods. Subsequently, we compare official data with the real steps of diplomacy and the government of the Slovak Republic, especially in terms of time and space. In the next section, we point out the other diplomatic representations and their progressive increase. The last section identifies and defines the main factors affecting spatial changes in the localisation of the Slovak embassies abroad by most frequently mentioned reasons in government documents. We pointed out embassies and their effectiveness by economic relations, tourists and other factors. This article is a contribution to the Slovak political geography and the evidence of the undoubtable role of geography in foreign political decisions on the example of the embassy network of the Slovak Republic.