Modern Diplomacy In Practice

This textbook, the first comprehensive comparative study ever undertaken, surveys and compares the world’s ten largest diplomatic services: those of Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Chapters cover the distinctive histories and cultures of the services, their changing role in foreign policy making, and their preparations for the new challenges of the twenty-first century.

This book informs students about the practice of modern diplomacy while simultaneously inviting them to critically reflect on it. The work introduces the world of diplomacy from a practitioner’s point of view. Rather than listening to what diplomats say they do, the book looks at what they actually do. Diplomacy is thus approached through the lenses of its manifold practices: from political analysis to policy-shaping, from conflict prevention over conflict-management to conflict-resolution. However, the book not only aims at informing or instructing but also, and primarily, wants its readers to critically reflect on diplomacy. It reviews received ideas by posing questions such as: what does ‘preventive diplomacy’ really mean?; what is the place of ‘transparency’ in diplomatic practice?; why is the relationship between ‘law and diplomacy’ ambiguous?; how come that our leaders have such a difficult time in credibly defending ‘human rights’?; and why is conducting an ‘ethical foreign policy’ a mission impossible? To tackle these and other questions, the book uses the tools of contemporary academic disciplines, such as behavioural economics, game theory, social psychology, argumentation theory, and practical logic, among others. This interdisciplinary approach brings fresh perspective to a field of study that has long remained self-contained. This book will be of great interest to students of diplomacy, foreign policy, and International Relations, as well as those seeking a career in diplomacy and existing diplomatic practitioners and international analysts.

Modern Diplomacy provides a comprehensive exploration of the evolution and concepts of the institution of diplomacy. This book equips students with a detailed analysis of important international issues that impact upon diplomacy and its relationship with international politics. The subject is bought ‘to life’ through the use of case studies and examples which highlight the working of contemporary diplomacy within the international political arena. Organised around five broad topic areas, including the nature of diplomacy, diplomatic methods and negotiation, the operation of diplomacy in specific areas and natural disasters and international conflict, the book covers all major topic areas of contemporary diplomacy.

Including chapters from some of the leading experts in the field this Handbook provides a full overview of the nature and challenges of modern diplomacy and includes a tour d'horizon of the key ways in which the theory and practice of modern diplomacy are evolving in the 21st Century.

Contemporary, thoughtful and extensively illustrated, Modern Diplomacy examines a broad range of current diplomatic practice. This leading and widely used book - now in its fifth edition - equips students with a detailed analysis of important international issues that reflect and impact upon diplomacy and its relations. The subject is brought to life through case studies and examples which highlight the working of contemporary diplomacy within the international political arena. Organised around five broad topic areas, including the nature of diplomacy, diplomatic methods, negotiation, the operation of diplomacy in specific areas and international conflict, the book covers all major topic areas of contemporary diplomacy. New features for this edition: Developments in diplomatic practice Strategies in diplomacy International trade, geopolitics and agreements Diplomacy of new regional organisations and groupings Developing country diplomacy Non-traditional diplomacy New concepts – parallel and counter diplomacy New case studies include: the Paris Climate Agreement, Brexit, international finance and trade agreements, and the UN security forces. Modern Diplomacy is essential reading for students and practitioners of international relations, foreign policy, international law, international political economy, international economics, the Foreign Services Institutes and the National Diplomatic Academies.

Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World offers a new contribution to the ongoing reassessment of early modern international relations and diplomatic history. Divided into three parts, it provides an examination of diplomatic culture from the Renaissance into the eighteenth century and presents the development of diplomatic practices as more complex, multifarious and globally interconnected than the traditional state-focussed, national paradigm allows. The volume addresses three central and intertwined themes within early modern diplomacy: who and what could claim diplomatic agency and in what circumstances; the social and cultural contexts in which diplomacy was practised; and the role of material culture in diplomatic exchange. Together the chapters provide a broad geographical and chronological presentation of the development of diplomatic practices and, through a strong focus on the processes and significance of cultural exchanges between polities, demonstrate how it was possible for diplomats to negotiate the cultural codes of the courts to which they were sent. This exciting collection brings together new and established scholars of diplomacy from different academic traditions. It will be essential reading for all students of diplomatic history.

The present volume aims at outlining a new field of research with regard to the history of diplomacy: the material culture of diplomatic interaction in early modern and modern times. The material culture of diplomacy includes all practices in foreign policy communication in which single artifacts, samples of artifacts, or else the whole material setting of diplomatic interaction is supposed to be constitutive for creating an intended effect in terms of diplomatic objectives. The chapters of this volume focus on intercultural diplomacy in different regions of the world wherein diplomatic actors of various kinds might have been confronted by a whole universe of unfamiliar artifacts and artifact-related practices. Most of them concentrate on gift giving as a diplomatic practice that offers multiple insights in the complex dynamics of diplomatic relations between representatives of culturally highly diverse political entities. In doing so, they gainfully apply different theoretical approaches of material culture as an interdisciplinary field of study to the investigation of diplomatic cultures across the globe. As a result, it becomes obvious that future research into the history of diplomacy should take into account material practices much more thoroughly than has been done before.