Persuasion: bad practices and … others

2013

Persuasion is a very relative concept. Like beauty, persuasion is the eye of the beholder. Admittedly, persuasion does not exist in the absence of results. One can say that persuasion can be defined as such, if and only if it is effective and reaches its goals. If we accept this prerequisite, we may find persuasion where we least expect it.

Twiter Facebook LinkedIn

A masterpiece of persuasion

When I was invited to contribute to this publication on the topic of persuasion, I naturally placed the issue in a diplomatic context. So, from the start, I had to put away all thoughts of various judiciary systems as well as the persuasion of juries and judges by legal and mainly procedural arguments.

I did so with the sincere regret that I would deprive myself of the opportunity to use a significant illustration of the persuasive power. I am alluding to the well-paid lawyers who made a jury believe that O.J. Simpson did not murder his wife. Notably, the rest of the American public is still persuaded that he did. The issue is no longer breaking news; other murderer was not found and ‘the trial of the century’ is just a banal Wikipedia file. People born recently may be persuaded that O.J. Simpson’s wife actually died of indigestion and not from being stabbed multiple times by her beloved husband. This is what I would call a masterpiece of persuasion.

Words and swords

It seems to me that persuasion is a very relative concept. Like beauty, persuasion is the eye of the beholder. Admittedly, persuasion does not exist in the absence of results. One can say that persuasion can be defined as such, if and only if it is effective and reaches its goals. If we accept this prerequisite, we may find persuasion where we least expect it.

For example, during the Dark Ages, the Inquisition was indeed very effective in persuading heretics and witches to stick to the right thinking. When soft techniques like interviews and frequently asked questions did not work, what could have been more persuasive than torturing the subjects and threatening to burn them at the stake?

Consulted by the Inquisition with respect to the conformity of their cosmologic doctrines to the astronomy and physics research undertaken by the four Evangelists, the academic world reacted differently. Giordano Bruno was not persuaded by arguments from the Church. He was burnt and he left us with his ashes dumped into the Tiber River. Galileo Galilei faked persuasion and escaped the fire. He left us with the famous quotation Eppur si muove.

The inquisitors had no mundane legal basis to respect. The rule of law was rather the law of the ruler. Nevertheless, highly educated as they were, they used to cite Psalm 73, paragraph 27 for their purpose: ‘For indeed, those who are far from You shall perish/ You have destroyed all those who desert You for harlotry.’ And as Shakespeare’s character Antonio would say: ‘The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.’

Finding useful quotations from the Bible still remains an argument nowadays. Yet, not all books were quotable in the eyes of the Church. On the contrary, some books may have been be very persuasive and at the same time very stubborn in their convictions. In addition, the books did not feel pain and they were very resistant to torture. The Inquisitors had a revelation: burning books may be as useful for their purpose as burning people. Centuries later, Goebbels, despite being much less Catholic than the Pope, would bless the autodafé of non-aligned books in 1933 by saying: ‘The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character.’

For the crusaders, persuasion by way of preaching and public speaking preceded more robust efforts to convince pagans to accept the holy claims of the Christian knights. Word in mouth and sword in hand were effective means of persuading indigenous people to accept the right faith and the wrong colonisation.

Robust diplomacy

But let us move to diplomacy, which is after all our area of interest. Much to the credit of my noble profession, diplomacy was very creative in designing new tools of persuasion which were not exclusively based on word power. Honestly, gunboat diplomacy was quite an effective procedure used to persuade undecided interlocutors. Negotiations were faster, the boring speeches of heads of delegations shorter, the reach of compromise quicker. Just try to figure how nicely United Nations negotiations would go on tough questions in New York, if some handsome crusaders patrolled East River and displayed fireworks in the immediate proximity of the General Assembly hall.

Persuasion was also nicely exercised through big stick diplomacy. Judged in terms of efficiency, Theodore Roosevelt cannot but be praised for this practical and theoretical contribution to the art of persuasion with his idea of negotiating while simultaneously threatening military fire power. As progress is inevitable and the world continuously improves, dollar diplomacy came to diversify the soft means available for diplomats, or at least for some of them (those whose Central Banks could print more dollars).

The United Nations did not at all neglect robust persuasion in trying to find acceptable solutions to international conflicts. Economic sanctions have been often used to persuade authoritarian regimes to step down from power, but not before starving the innocent and the poor. But this was taken care of. The Oil-for-Food Programme in Iraq came with its magic. It is true that some people continued to starve. Others got very rich indeed, precisely as a result of it.

Fortunately, recent sanctions try harder to focus more on the ruling regimes, before persuading the people to take to streets. Nowadays, these ways and means look much better and we see the advent of new persuasive embargoes and weapons, like smart sanctions and even smarter drones.

Persuasive metaphors

But let us not forget the hard operations called so softly safe havens and no-fly zones. It is true that those means were often not persuasive enough. The names of military operations themselves are called to play a role. For example, had I been Saddam Hussein, I would have been definitely persuaded by the planning of Operation Shock and Awe. Or, being Iraqi or an Afghan mujahedeen, one should be highly insensitive to resist the luring appeal of Operation New Dawn which brings us again a touch of poetry in realpolitik.

From bad practices to good theories

After this introduction to the wonderful world of persuasion, seen from a practical perspective, let us try to attach to it a more scientific approach. I looked into a solid book to find the best definition and I found this: ‘Persuasion is the process by which a person’s attitudes and behaviour are, without duress, influenced by communications from other people’.[1]

Oops! So, the essence of persuasion is communication. Other factors such as threats and physical coercion are not really part of the picture, suggests the respectable Encyclopaedia (V2012). As an illustration, torture may work very effectively but it cannot aspire to the glory of belonging to the noble family of persuasion. No wonder why we now have a United Nations Convention against Torture!

Yet, the same Encyclopaedia kills the joy of those who were about to believe that persuasion is entirely honest business. It admits: ‘Persuasion often involves manipulating other people, and for this reason many find the exercise distasteful.’ To be frank, so do I! Shame on the manipulators, from politicians in electoral campaigns to invasive TV advertising!

Despite being distasteful, it seems that manipulation is indeed a very popular technique of persuasion. However, to the extent that we do not have a UN Convention against Manipulation, any campaign based on arguments such as ‘they have weapons of mass destruction’ or ‘they have nuclear weapons’ may be seen as decent an attempt at persuasion as anything else.

Finally, Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us: ‘In European universities of the Middle Ages, persuasion was one of the liberal arts to be mastered by any educated man.’ Obviously the members of the ecclesiastic tribunals, assembled under the auspices the Inquisition, graduated from other universities.

Persuasion by repetition

As we have alluded to universities, we cannot escape making a link between persuasion and education. Persuasion implies that someone assimilates knowledge by being exposed to new information. Repetition of the messages containing the new information will modify learning, thus having a persuasive impact as well.

One may remind me that a repeated lie becomes a truth. Well, yes. Nobody is saying that persuasion is always in service of truth and other just causes. Remember the mass suicide of the People Temple’s followers in Jonestown, Guyana, 1978? No one can doubt the high skills displayed by Jim Jones in providing some kind of religious education to 909 members of the sect and convincing them to commit suicide. This is an illustration that both education and persuasion work very well if they are preceded by a robust effort to brainwash your target audience.

Propaganda: the step-brother of persuasion

I was about to end these considerations, when another concept raised its ugly head, to obscure the picture even more. Propaganda is also a systematic effort to persuade people, by manipulating their beliefs, attitudes, or actions. It is said that heavy emphasis on manipulation distinguishes propaganda from the free exchange of ideas and persuasion. The propagandist has a specified goal or set of goals. To maximise the effect, propaganda may omit pertinent facts and distort them. Persuasion may be more gracious, but it is not as alien to the evil nature of propaganda as we would like it to be.

Diplomatic persuasion

Persuasion, as depicted so far, may look to diplomats as a skunk at a lawn party. Obviously it was not my intention to recognise any virtue in the degenerate distant relatives of diplomatic persuasion. To quote Shakespeare again: ‘Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall’. Persuasion still has a life and a future in the multilateral diplomatic context, doesn’t it?

The main objective of diplomatic communication is persuasion through non-violent means. The word is the main vehicle. In ancient Greece, the agora activists observed that everything depended on the people, and the people were dependent on words. Wealth, fame, and respect could all be arrived at by persuading the populace. The same goes for the arenas of multilateral diplomacy. With one important remark, though. ‘People’ in the conference rooms are more or less as educated and as informed as the people on the rostrum.

From orators to speakers

There was a time, in a remote and glorious past, where indeed working with the word in multilateral diplomacy had something to do with oratory. Oratory is still the practice of persuasive public speaking. It is supposed to have immediate impact on its audience’s relationships and reactions. In theory, an oration involves a speaker and an audience. It is also expected to carry a message by voice, articulation, and ‘bodily accompaniments’.

The orator ought primarily to be persuasive rather than informative and entertaining. A genuine orator need not be a logician, but to have a capacity for good and clear thought and to use analogy, generalisations, assumptions, deductive/inductive reasoning, etc.

Nowadays, in multilateral conferences, oratory is no longer needed. Had they been endowed with Demosthenes’ public-speaking gifts, the diplomats at the United Nations would not be able to display their talent anyway. Some of the prerequisites of a persuasive speech are no longer relevant.

One hundred and ninety-three nations share six official languages at the United Nations. Only a minority of the delegates use their native language while the rest have to listen to simultaneously interpreted versions as dull as dishwater. The only decent approach to articulation is to speak slowly enough to allow the interpreters to understand the content and convey it properly. Yet, speaking slowly and at the same time conveying a rich and convincing message is difficult when the speaker must not exceed the time allocated.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to Fidel Castro for more than one hour in a plenary meeting of the General Assembly. We sat in perfect silence. Now, heads of states and governments can only aspire to 15 minutes. In the Human Rights Council, the speaking time allocated to an ordinary diplomat varies between 2 and 5 minutes. A successful speech is a short speech. The chairpersons will usually praise the short interventions rather than the smart ones.

‘Bodily accompaniments’ would be definitely ridiculous. The best speakers may turn out to be those equipped with prompters helping them to look extemporaneous. In informal meetings, PowerPoint presentations are replacing prompters, written declarations and, occasionally, the real knowledge of the speaker on the subject dealt with.

The higher ranked the speaker, the more likely it is that the text presented is written by somebody else. Yes, some political figures are assisted by qualified speech-writers. Yet, at the United Nations, most of the topics discussed are specialised. Input usually useful to brilliant electoral campaigns, such as generous promises, beautiful visions of a happier future, and confetti, cannot find their place. Texts are written, compiled, and approved collectively by more or less obscure bureaucrats. If there was any sparkle in the initial draft, it is inevitably lost at the end of the road.

The twilight of the audience

The audience is there. And in diplomacy, it is considerably more important than the speaker. People speak more and listen less. For the speaker to be persuasive, they need to capture attention, comprehension, and retention of the message. According to Aristotle, an essential mode of persuasion that a speaker may exercise is the ‘the excitation of desired emotions in the audience’.[2] The audience should be catalysed by new ideas, galvanised by calls to action, and electrified by the speaker’s enthusiasm. As you can see, good chemistry is not sufficient; basic physics is also needed.

The United Nations, unlike the Greek agora, works with internationally adopted concept and norms, which are meant to be understood in all countries of the world. The ‘excitation of emotions’, desired or not, is not very productive. Retention is provided by précis-writers, chairpersons’ summaries, and adopted conclusions, which keep track of what was meaningful for the organisation and cast the rest into oblivion.

Yet, with the development of communications technologies, attention in multilateral conferences is a very scarce commodity. Taking notes on laptops provides abundant alibis to all diplomats guilty of absent-mindedness. They exchange e-mails, SMSs, photos; they check the news in their own countries, speak on their mobile phones and Blackberries, tweet, and chat. As technology gets smarter, the gadget holders get dumber. They are physically in and virtually out. No wonder why persuasion is no longer a keyword in most diplomatic dictionaries and that Diplo is trying hard to re-discover it.

Unfair persuasion

Faced with so many bad influences, I still believe that there is a self-portrait that persuasion can paint for itself. There are still decent ways to practice persuasion in good faith. A cautious approach is a short list of what it is not diplomatic persuasion, although it may sound like one. Trying to impose exclusively one’s own views and ignoring the fundamental interests of the other side, for example, is mere pressure not persuasion.

Basing one’s positions and attitudes on personal considerations rather than on principles is unfair, even if it is effective. Wikileaks revealed postures that are embarrassing for many. I do not dare to give illustrations on this one. I will stick to an old quotation that the perspicacious reader can easily attribute: ‘He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.’ Without a moral stand, persuasion does not work.

Making promises one has no intention of keeping and forcing the other side to make commitments that cannot be kept either may squeeze an agreement that will not last and make the issue at stake even more complicated. This kind of persuasion is fraudulent.

Using arguments which will blow up in your face later and undermine your credibility is not only diplomatic malpractice, but also it could have huge unwanted consequences. The ‘weapons of mass destruction’ argument in the case of the second campaign against Iraq is one such example.

In the case of the United Nations-blessed intervention in Libya the use of the ‘responsibility to protect’ concept was done by-the-book until that moment where the objective of the campaign became ostentatiously the overthrow of the regime. Not surprisingly, ‘the responsibility to protect’ lost its appealing power and trustworthiness in the case of Syria. Many judgments of the International Tribunal on former Yugoslavia not only failed to persuade, they also cast doubts on its impartiality.

Fair persuasion

Yet there are still legitimate and fair tactics to persuade your partners:

- Identify which of your own arguments may be acceptable to the other side.
- Identify those arguments that are not shared by the other side but are shared by third parties, which are closer to your interlocutors
- Use arguments that are neutral, although they still serve your purpose.
- Identify and use arguments that also serve the public good.
- Identify among the possible arguments those that serve the interest of the other side, but which are not harmful to yours.
- Make a few concessions that will not alter your position substantially, but which will give enough ground to satisfy the other party.
- Offer decent and credible face-saving options in exchange for the concessions the other side may have accepted.

You may expect examples and illustrations of these simplistic precepts, if possible taken from reality. Where on Earth, do you, distinguished and educated reader, want me to find such examples? These are principles! You do not really expect these nice, good-looking phrases to replace torture and fire, guns and drones?

Their power of persuasion is limited, unless all parties are persuaded that they may work and bring the same results at lower costs.

Read the original file

You may also be interested in

Statecraft

The Evolution of Diplomatic Method

A Diplomat in Siam (introduced and edited by Nigel Brailey)

Nigel Brailey, a University of Bristol historian who is well known to students of Sir Ernest Satow, is to be congratulated on bringing out a revised edition of this work, the fruit of Satow's period as British minister-resident in Bangkok from 1885 until 1888. It is the journal which Satow, later the author of the famous Guide to Diplomatic Practice, kept on his long boat journey from Bangkok to the northern city of Chiangmai and back again, which took from the beginning of December 1885 until the end of the following February.

Inside the U.S. Embassy: How the Foreign Service Works for America

The British Diplomatic Service 1815-1914

A practitioner’s view

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): With examples from a detailed case study of the historical New Zealand Treaty of Waitangi, Aldo Matteucci shows us that the diplomat's job is to decode language. Matteucci writes that all language comes with "hidden baggage": hidden meanings and intentions, historical and political context, legal precedents, etc. In order to find these hidden meanings the diplomat needs a broad understanding of the context of a situation.

To joke or not to joke: A diplomatic dilemma in the age of internet

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): The first paper, presented by Prof. Peter Serracino-Inglott as the keynote address at the 2001 conference, examines the serious issue of diplomatic communication in a playful manner, through one of the most paradigmatic and creative examples of language use: joking.

The Craft of Diplomacy: How to Run a Diplomatic Service

Diplomacy by other means

Positive Diplomacy

Language, signaling and diplomacy

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Ambassador Kishan Rana introduces the dimension of diplomatic signalling. Beginning with a reference to the Bhagwad Gita, one of the sacred texts of the Hindus, Rana outlines the qualities of good diplomatic dialogue: not causing distress to the listener, precision and good use of language, and truthfulness.

The School for Ambassadors

Multistakeholder diplomacy at the OECD

In his paper John West outlines multistakeholder diplomacy at the OECD. West first explores the main points and facts of the OECD before going into the emergence of globalising stakeholder societies. Finally he gives his remarks on multistakeholder diplomacy at the OECD.

Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Vietnam Hawk

Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 2nd edn

The Summer Capitals of Europe, 1814-1919

This is an original work, meticulously researched, rich in detail, and written in a clear and – here and there – refreshingly pungent style. Soroka is a Russian scholar but at ease in English.

The Foreign Office

Twitter for Diplomats

Twitter for Diplomats is not a manual, or a list of what to do or not to do. It is rather a collection of information, anecdotes, and experiences. It recounts a few episodes involving foreign ministers and ambassadors, as well as their ways of interacting with the tool and exploring its great potential. It wants to inspire ambassadors and diplomats to open and nurture their accounts – and it wants to inspire all of us to use Twitter to also listen and open our minds.

The Limits of Neorealism

In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents

The Queen’s Ambassador to the Sultan: Memoirs of Sir Henry A. Layard’s Constantinople Embassy, 1877-1880

Once more students of Ottoman diplomatic history are in debt to the scholar-publisher, Sinan Kuneralp, for Sir Henry Layard was one of the most remarkable and controversial of British ambassadors to Turkey in the nineteenth century and served there during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 – and yet the volumes of his memoirs dealing with this period have hitherto languished unpublished in the British Library, in part perhaps because of their size. (Layard admits himself to having been ‘somewhat minute, perhaps a great deal too much so’, p. 692.)They are here published almost in their entir...

The Cinderella Service: British Consuls since 1825

Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time

In this classic text, an eminent historian of international affairs and a distinguished political scientist survey the evolution of the international system, from the emergence of the modern state in the 17th century to the present. Craig and George pay particular attention to the nineteenth century's "balance-of-power" system, the basic tenets of which still determine many applications of modern diplomacy. The authors also focus on the ways in which the 20th century diplomatic revolution--a complex of military, political, economic and ideological factors--has destroyed the homogeneity of th...

The Beijing-Washington Back-Channel and Henry Kissinger’s Secret Trip to China

Brian Barder’s Diplomatic Diary

Sir Brian Barder, the senior British diplomat and author of the always sage and sometimes gripping What Diplomats Do, died in 2017 but, courtesy of the professional editorial hand of his daughter Louise, has left us another treat. This is what he called a diary and which for the most part has the form of a diary (dated daily entries), although originally it was a series of letters sent to friends from foreign parts. Compared to diplomatic memoirs, diplomatic diaries are a rarity. And since this one is the product of an acute observer who loved the English language and used it in a vigorous and...

Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 4th ed

The Practice of Diplomacy: Its evolution, theory and administration

First published in 1995, the long-awaited second edition of this valuable textbook on the history of diplomacy has at last appeared. The first chapter has been expanded to include non-European traditions, and a wholly new chapter has been added to take account of developments over the last 15 years. It is for the main part a work of relaxed authority, clearly written, and – unusually for an introductory work – full of intriguing detail which it would be difficult if not impossible to find in other secondary sources.

Diplomats on Twitter: The good, the bad and the ugly

Texts in diplomacy

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Professor Dietrich Kappeler provides an overview of the various types of formal written documents used in diplomacy, pointing out where the practices surrounding these documents have changed in recent years. He also discusses multi-language treaties, including the difficulties of translation and interpretation.

The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy, Third Edition

Indispensable for students of diplomacy and junior members of diplomatic services, this dictionary not only covers diplomacy's jargon but also includes entries on legal terms, political events, international organizations, e-Diplomacy, and major figures who have occupied the diplomatic scene or have written about it over the last half millennium.

21st Century Diplomacy: A practitioner’s guide

Kishan Rana is a man of lengthy and varied experience in the Indian Foreign Service, ending his career as ambassador to Germany. Since then he has spent many years as a globe-trotting trainer of junior diplomats on behalf of DiploFoundation. Few people, therefore, are as well placed to write a practitioners’ guide to the diplomatic craft; and, insofar as concerns the content of his book, which can be found described here, he has not disappointed.

Preventive Diplomacy in Southeast Asia: Redefining the ASEAN Way

The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy

Book by Geoff Berridge

The Nineteenth Century Foreign Office

Diplomacy for the New Century

Diplomacy and Global Governance: The Diplomatic Service in an Age of Worldwide Interdependence

Diplomatic Education

Diplomatic Education’ was published as Chapter 11 in: An Anthology Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of the Higher Colleges of Technology, ed. Tayeb A Kamali, (HCT Press, UAE, 2007).

A Diplomat in Japan

The first portion of this book was written at intervals between 1885 and 1887, during my tenure of the post of Her Majesty's minister at Bangkok. I had but recently left Japan after a residence extending, with two seasons of home leave, from September 1862 to the last days of December 1882, and my recollection of what had occurred during any part of those twenty years was still quite fresh. A diary kept almost uninterruptedly from the day I quitted home in November 1861 constituted the foundation, while my memory enabled me to supply additional details. It had never been my purpose to...

Inside Diplomacy

This is a book on diplomacy in general and the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in particular. It is also a gem, and a large gem. It breathes life, wisdom, and good humour, and is full of rich detail. I found it thoroughly absorbing. Students of diplomacy at all stages of their careers will find it immensely useful, while those in a position to influence the future shape of the IFS will discover a whole raft of constructive suggestions for reform fearlessly advanced.

Managing the Cold War: A view from the front line

Michael Alexander, a Russian-speaking senior British diplomat who died in 2002, was a major behind-the-scenes figure in what he calls the ‘management’ of the cold war to a peaceful conclusion.

Embassies in Armed Conflict

Theatre of Power: The Art of Signaling

What Diplomats Do: The Life and Work of Diplomats

Sir Brian Barder’s book What Diplomats Do offers comprehensive insight into the life and work of diplomats. It deserves to be read by practitioners and aspiring practitioners of diplomacy, by students and teachers of diplomacy, and by anyone interested in what diplomats actually do. It crosses genres as easily as it addresses and holds the attention of a broad audience.

Diplomatic Persuasion: An Under-Investigated Process

The under-investigation in diplomatic studies of processes of persuasion in explaining diplomatic outcomes needs to be addressed in the interests of better scholarly explanations and diplomatic practice. Although such processes are implicit in nearly all concepts and practice of diplomacy, neither scholars nor practitioners explicitly investigate them. Yet other related fields of study and disciplines examine persuasion and demonstrate its explanatory value.

On the manner of practising the new diplomacy

The traditional model of diplomacy, founded on the principles of national sovereignty and of statecraft, is becoming less relevant as a field of new, influential actors enter the international system.

The New Diplomacy

Shaun Riordan was a British diplomat for 16 years before resigning in 2000 to take up private consultancy work and journalism in Spain, where he had ended his diplomatic career as political officer in the embassy. He has written a conceptually flawed, often vague, sometimes contradictory, and essentially polemical attack on 'traditional diplomacy'. It is also peppered with New Labour jargon ('stakeholders', 'global governance', 'civil society'), has its fair measure of superficially examined mantras, misquotes Clausewitz, and sports a shop-soiled title - is he not aware that Abba Ebban publish...

Persuasion in sociology of diplomacy

Dr Milan Jazbec, a practitioner and researcher in diplomacy, positions a discussion on persuasion in the sociology of diplomacy. Social context determines both diplomacy and persuasion. Dr Jazbec makes a distinction between pressure and persuasion. In a rather counter-intuitive view to dominant discourse, he argues that genuine persuasion cannot be public. As soon as it becomes public, it immediately becomes pressure.

The Turkish Embassy Letters

Guerrilla Diplomacy: Rethinking International Relations

In a previous book review for DiploFoundation, Petru Dumitriu described G. R. Berridge’s Diplomacy: Theory and Practice as 'a Robinson Crusoe’s book on diplomacy'. Suppose one is left on a deserted island and allowed only one book to study diplomacy; in that case, Dumitriu recommends Diplomacy: Theory and Practice. Without doubt, I wholeheartedly support this recommendation.

Getting to the Table: The Process of International Prenegotiation

Lessons from two fields

The Diplomats, 1919-1939

The Diplomats, 1939-1979

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy

The New Diplomacy

“Control yourself, Sir!”: A call for research into emotion cultures in diplomacy

This essay examines and seeks to explode the notion that diplomats are, or should be, immune to emotion in the conduct of their duties. It also discusses the concept of emotion cultures - cultural rules governing the experience and expression of emotion and suggests the possibility that modern diplomacy, perhaps a distinctive culture in itself, encourages the socialisation of diplomats into a distinctive, ostensibly global diplomatic emotion culture.

British Heads of Mission at Constantinople, 1583-1922

Manuel de droit diplomatique

Quick Diplomatic Response

In the increasingly interdependent world, diplomacy is our only alternative. Wars do not provide solutions for modern problems, whether these are regional crises, environmental challenges, such as climate change, or the risk of global pandemics. Compromise and consensus are not only the most ethical approach, but necessity. This interesting comic presents one day in life of an e-diplomat.

The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages

Persuasion: bad practices and … others

Diplomatic Notebooks 1, 1958-1960: The view from Ankara

Zeki Kuneralp (1914-1998) was one of Turkey’s most gifted, well-liked and influential diplomats of the second half of the twentieth century. This book, dispassionately edited, introduced and annotated by his son, the scholar-publisher Sinan Kuneralp, is the first of a promised series of six volumes. Beginning in January 1958 and ending in August 1960, when Zeki Kuneralp became ambassador to Switzerland, it covers all but the first seven or eight months of the period when he was assistant secretary-general for political affairs in the Turkish foreign ministry in Ankara (in May 1960 he was ele...

Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 3rd edn

True Brits: Inside the Foreign Office

Diplomatic Classics: Selected texts from Commynes to Vattel

Diplomat’s Dictionary

Diplomacy for a Crowded World

Journeying Far and Wide: A Political and Diplomatic Memoir

Kaiser was an active Democrat and 'noncareer officer' in the US Foreign Service under three Democratic presidents: Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. His memoir, which is uncluttered with the trivial detail sometimes found in this genre and written with great verve, will be valued by diplomatic historians of the whole period since the Second World War. (Kaiser had served earlier as Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs in the Truman administration.)

Yes, (Saudi) Minister! A Life in Administration

After a brilliant ministerial career in Riyadh, Algosaibi fell from grace at the Ministry of Health in 1984. This was the start of his diplomatic life, which commenced in Bahrain and continued in London. This is a shrewd and lively book.

Diplomacy: Theory and Practice

Let us suppose that you are left, like Robinson Crusoe, on a deserted island, under instructions to learn about diplomacy. To that elevated purpose you would be allowed to keep one book only, the rest of the luggage consisting of things more essential for your physical survival, like a gun and gunpowder. The choice of that particular book may not be that difficult, if you had at hand the third edition of Diplomacy: Theory and Practice by G.R. Berridge.

Curing the Sick Man: Sir Henry Bulwer and the Ottoman Empire, 1858-1865

This is the first book of a very promising young historian. Laurence Guymer, who is head of the Department of History at Winchester College and a research associate in the School of History at the University of East Anglia, has produced a biography of Sir Henry Bulwer that successfully challenges the conventional account of this colourful mid-Victorian figure. It also raises the question of how ‘diplomatic success’ is judged.

Switzerland’s good offices: a changing concept, 1945-2002

The Consular Dimension of Diplomacy

Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy

Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a political survivor

Jack Straw was the ablest and wisest of Tony Blair’s foreign secretaries and served in this capacity from 2001 until he was ungratefully dumped without warning by his leader in 2006. Afterwards he hit the headlines by courageously publishing his dislike of the full veil worn my some Muslim women, on the grounds that this was such a visible statement of separation and difference that it complicated community relations and was, in any case, a cultural preference rather than a religious obligation. (Straw was then and still is the Labour MP for a Bradford constituency with a large Muslim popula...

The Practice of Diplomacy, 2nd ed

The Art of Diplomacy: The American Experience

All Fall Down: America’s fateful encounter with Iran

All Fall Down is the definitive chronicle of Americas experience with the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis of 1978-81. Drawing on internal government documents, it recounts the controversies, decisions and uncertainties that made this a unique chapter in modern American history. From his personal experiences, the author draws revealing portraits of the people who engaged in this test of wills with an Islamic revolutionary regime.

Reflections on multistakeholder diplomacy

Through analysis of the procedural and institutional arrangements in the functioning of international bodies, Valentin Katrandjiev, seeks to measure the extent to which diplomats accept nonofficial networks and entities as equal partners in the diplomatic negotiation process. Katrandjiev analyses the trend that on the domestic front, societies demand greater public accountability of governments in the process of national foreign policy making. He attempts to do so through the organisational units in MFAs responsible for relationships with domestic stakeholders.

Enhancing Global Governance: Towards a New Diplomacy

The idea of diplomatic culture and its sources

To what extent does an independent diplomatic culture exist which permits diplomats to exert their own influence on the conduct of international relations? Insofar as such a culture exists, what does it look like, is it a good thing and, if it is, how is it to be sustained? This paper explores what we generally mean when we talk about culture and how we see culture operating in contemporary international relations. It sketches the basic elements of a diplomatic culture and discusses different accounts of its origins.

Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880-2006

Book review by Geoff Berridge

Twentieth Century Diplomacy: A case study of British practice, 1963-1976

Book review by Geoff Berridge What is so original about the book is that the author has asked himself: What are the major forms of diplomatic contact? And followed this with the question: How and to what effect were they each employed by one state over a period sufficiently short to make detailed research possible […]

Ottoman Diplomacy

Getting Our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue: The Inside Story of British Diplomacy

Diplomacy and domestic politics: The logic of two-level games

Persuasion, trust, and personal credibility

Ambassador Kishan Rana indicates the cultivation of relations and the credibility of diplomats as the basis for persuasion in diplomacy. He provides an initial taxonomy of the type of relations that diplomats should cultivate. When it comes to credibility, Ambassador Rana presents the main ways of developing and maintaining credibility in diplomatic relations. The more credible the diplomat, the more likely it is that their persuasion with local interlocutors will be successful.

A Dictionary of Diplomacy, Second Edition

Blundering Into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age

Bilateral Diplomacy

Bilateral Diplomacy is the first of the DiploHandbooks, a new series on practical diplomacy. The book breaks new ground in the role ascribed to bilateral diplomacy, and its importance in international affairs today. It also covers the de facto “empowerment” of the embassy that flows from its new responsibility for relationship management.

Renaissance Diplomacy and the Reformation

We invite you to continue our walk along timeline of Evolution of diplomacy and technology. In May, our next stop is Renaissance diplomacy and the impact of the invention of the printing press on diplomacy in the Reformation period.

Diplomacy and Power: Studies in Modern Diplomatic Practice

Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy

Review by Geoff Berridge

Internet Guide for Diplomats

The Internet Guide for Diplomats is the first guide specifically conceived and realised to assist diplomats and others involved in international affairs to use the Internet in their work. The book includes both basic technical information about the Internet and specific issues related to the use of the Internet in diplomacy. Examples and illustrations address many common questions including web-management for diplomatic services, knowledge management and distance learning.

Diplomatic culture and its domestic context

Is there a specific, distinctive diplomatic culture? Given the fact that the conduct of diplomacy is regulated by international law and by custom, and since the structures through which states conduct their external relations, both bilateral and multilateral, are standardized, it is fair to say that both the institutions and the process form a pattern of their own, unique to this profession. The professional diplomatist actors on the international stage, and their institutions, display certain shared characteristics.

Embassies under Siege

English Medieval Diplomacy

British Envoys to Germany 1816-1866

Chinese Ambassadors: The rise of diplomatic professionalism since 1945

Xiaohong worked on Western European affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing from 1977 until 1989. At some point after this she entered the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, and in 1997 was awarded a Ph.D. This book is her doctoral thesis, and - on the whole - a very good one it is. Chinese Ambassadors is based on many interviews with former diplomats and a variety of Chinese primary sources (including memoirs), and is clear, well organized, and - in its main thrust - tightly argued. As a result, it offers a rare insight int...

Why Persuasion? Reflections after 50 years of practising, teaching and studying diplomacy

From the faraway days when representatives of fighting tribes tried to arrange for a truce, thereby risking their head, to the often derided endless discussions within present day international frameworks, the common aim of diplomacy has remained persuasion. The better a diplomat is at persuading, the more successful he will be in furthering the cause he represents.

Preventive Diplomacy: Stopping Wars Before they Start

The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries

Reveiw by Geoff Berridge

Lucky George: Memoirs of an Anti-Politician

This is a belated and less than comprehensive note on this book, which I stumbled upon in a second-hand bookshop while on holiday. It is one of the most lively, shrewd, and brilliantly written diplomatic and political memoirs that I have ever come across.

Twentieth-Century Diplomacy: A Case Study of British Practice, 1963-1976

Some years ago, John Young, Professor of International History at the University of Nottingham and long-serving Chair of the British International History Group, turned his thoughts and research in the direction of diplomatic procedure. This is the first monograph to be the product of his shift in direction and it is to be most warmly welcomed. It is original in focus, impeccably researched (private papers and oral history transcripts have been sifted as well official documents in The National Archives), crisply written, and altogether a major contribution to the contemporary history of diplom...

Diplomats as cultural bridge builders

Diplomats are people who are on the fringe somewhere, because they are either permanently living in or at least dealing with alien cultures, cultures with different values. The success of a diplomat depends on this brinkmanship because, on the one hand, they must remain credible with their superiors back home and, on the other hand, they must have access to the leaders in the country where they are posted. This paper discusses the role of diplomats as cultural bridge-builders.

The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450-1919

Instruzione e formazione del diplomatico: la tradizione inglese

A weak diplomatic hybrid: U.S. Special Mission Benghazi, 2011-12

In the widespread coverage of the brutal murder of US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and others in the US mission in Benghazi on 11 September 2012, there has been much confusion over the character of the post. It has been repeatedly described in the media as the American ‘consulate’ but the official position, recently stated emphatically by the Report of the Accountability Review Board for Benghazi (ARB) convened by secretary of state Hillary Clinton, is that ‘the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi was never a consulate and never formally notified [in any character] to the Libyan ...

FDR’s Ambassadors and the Diplomacy of Crisis: From the rise of Hitler to the end of World War II

What effect did personality and circumstance have on US foreign policy during World War II? This incisive account of US envoys residing in the major belligerent countries – Japan, Germany, Italy, China, France, Great Britain, USSR – highlights the fascinating role played by such diplomats as Joseph Grew, William Dodd, William Bullitt, Joseph Kennedy and W. Averell Harriman. Between Hitler's 1933 ascent to power and the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki, US ambassadors sculpted formal policy – occasionally deliberately, other times inadvertently – giving shape and meaning not always intended by ...

Innovation in Diplomatic Practice

International Regimes

The 21st Century Ambassador: Plenipotentiary to Chief Executive

Ambassador Kishan Rana, a diplomatist for four decades, is now a noted scholar and theorist of international relations and the new diplomacy that has evolved.

Pragmatics in diplomatic exchanges

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Edmond Pascual interprets diplomatic communication with the linguistic tools of pragmatics. He begins by reminding us that while the diplomat is a "man of action," the particular nature of the diplomat's action is that it consists of speech. Pascual applies three concepts of pragmatics to diplomatic discourse: speech as an intentional act; the effects of the act of speech; and the role of the unsaid in the act of speech.

Language and Diplomacy: Preface

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): In the preface below, Jovan Kurbalija and Hannah Slavik introduce the chapters in the book, and extract the general themes covered by the various authors.

The inertia of Diplomacy

Diplomacy is used to manage the goals of foreign policy focusing on communication. New trends affect the institution of diplomacy in different ways. Diplomacy has received an additional tool in the form of the Internet. In various cases of interdependence and dependence interference in a country’s affairs is accepted. Multilateral cooperation has created parliamentary diplomacy and a new type of diplomat, the international civil servant. States and their diplomats are in demand to curb the excesses of globalization. The fight against terrorism also brought additional work for diplomac...

DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War

The publication of these memoirs in autumn 2005 caused a public furore in Britain so I shall not waste time giving any background on Sir Christopher Meyer. (Just punch his name into Google, which will enable you in the blink of an eye even to find out from the BBC website which records he chose when he appeared on Desert Island Discs.)

Performance Management in Foreign Ministries: Corporate Techniques in the Diplomatic Service

The Work of Diplomacy

How do you know what you think you know?

In his paper, J. Thomas Converse focuses on four records-related areas where the issues of knowledge management and diplomacy come together and provide the greatest challenges to archivists, diplomats, historians and technology providers: validation, trustworthiness, context and longevity. He also explores some of the changes and challenges brought about by technology, and urges for a continued embrace of technology, while at the same time demanding the validating and relational functions which give archives their trustworthiness.

Beyond diplomatic – the unravelling of history

In his paper, Robert Alston travels through time to rekindle an important highlight – as well as a personal highlight – in the history of knowledge management. His journey takes him back to the 1850s, which saw Antonio Panizzi’s efforts in creating a universal repository of knowledge in the British Museum; and to the 1990s, a time in which he acquired first-hand experience at the same museum, drawing conclusions on the various available ways of navigating large bibliographical and archival databases.

Politics Among Nations

The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell diaries

Until his resignation amid huge controversy in August 2003, Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s official spokesman and director of communications and strategy – ace spin doctor, closest confidante, and constant travelling companion. His diaries have probably been mined chiefly for their astonishing revelations about the internal machinations of his government and the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, they should also be read for the sharp and often amusing light they throw on certain aspects of diplomacy.

DiploDialogue – Metaphors for Diplomats

On Diplo’s blog, in Diplo’s classrooms, and at Diplo’s events, dialogues stretch over a series of entries, comments, and exchanges and may even linger. DiploDialogue summarises. It’s like in sports events: DiploDialogue aims to bring focus by deleting what, in hindsight, is less relevant. In this first DiploDialogue, Katharina Höne and Aldo Matteucci discuss the usefulness of analogies and metaphors for understanding international relations and diplomacy.

21st Century Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Guide

In the 21st century, new kinds of challenges resulting from interdependence among states and globalisation have had a determining impact of the conduct of diplomacy. Diplomacy has become multifaceted, pluri-directional, volatile and intensive, due to the increased complexity in terms of actors, dialogues subjects, modes of communication, and plurality of objectives. This unique text, written by a leading scholar and Foreign Service expert, examines all such factors to provide the definitive guide to diplomacy as it is practiced today. With a multitude of examples from around the world, includi...

Diplomatic security and the birth of the compound system

Embassies and Foreign Courts

The origins, use and development of hot line diplomacy

Japanese middle-power diplomacy

Reflections on Persuasion in Diplomacy by Ambassador Joseph Cassar

In our families, in our jobs, in our political dynamic at a national level, we always try to persuade others, first and foremost. Since, diplomacy is part of the global human existence, it is natural that persuasion is an essential part and an essential tool of diplomacy … as much it is in your family life, in my family life, when you try to sort out trouble within your family, between your brothers and sisters, between your children and between your grandchildren at my age.

Diplomatenleben

A must-have for German-speaking students of Swiss diplomacy (and diplomacy generally) since the Second World War is Dr. Max Schweizer’s recently published Diplomatenleben.

Diplomats at War: British and Commonwealth diplomacy in wartime

In their Preface, the editors of Diplomats at War say that the two world wars in the twentieth century had a “catalytic impact upon the practice of diplomacy”; among other things, they continue, this produced “an unprecedented revolution” in the way heads of mission conducted their business.

Ever the Diplomat

The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy

The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society

Just a Diplomat

Close students of the new, Conservative Party Mayor of London, the at once engaging and alarming Boris Johnson, will know that he has Turkish cousins. One of these is Sinan Kuneralp, a son of the late Zeki Kuneralp, probably the most distinguished and well liked Turkish diplomat of his generation. Sinan Kuneralp is a scholar-publisher and runs The Isis Press in Istanbul, a house at the forefront of publishing scholarly works and original documents on the Ottoman Empire, chiefly in English and French. The three works noticed here are all its products and reflect the publisher’s own special in...

The Visa Dimension of Diplomacy

Diplomacy under a Foreign Flag: When nations break relations

The Professional Diplomat

Building relations through multi-dialogue formats: Trends in bilateral diplomacy

Inside Diplomacy

Who needs diplomats? The problem of diplomatic representation

This paper discusses the problem of diplomatic representation. Diplomats should remind themselves and others that they are first and foremost the representatives of sovereign states, that this is their raison d’être and a precondition for anything else they might aspire to be or to do. This might require an adjustment in their professional orientation but not a transformation.

John le Carré: The Biography

I thought to review this book because I had enjoyed the spy novels of John le Carré and, having introduced a chapter on secret intelligence into the latest edition of my textbook and mentioned him in it (p. 155), was keen to see if Adam Sisman had turned up anything new about the novelist’s own short career as an intelligence officer in what was then West Germany.

Diplomacy and Journalism in the Victorian era: Charles Dickens, the Roving Englishman and the “white gloved cousinocracy”

The impact of the Internet on diplomatic reporting: how diplomacy training needs to be adjusted to keep pace

Over the last 20 years, the Internet has changed the ways in which we work, how we socialise and network, and how we interact with knowledge and information.

International Encyclopedia Of Public Policy And Administration

Public administration - the implementation side of government - is becoming an increasingly international discipline.

Diplomacy at the Cutting Edge

I started writing a memoire in 1998, but on a long train journey in Germany (Stuttgart to Essen), accompanied by my wonderful wife Mimi, a thought came that it might be much more interesting to write about how the Indian diplomatic system works – or does not really work. That became my first book, Inside Diplomacy (1999). Diplomacy at the Cutting Edge, first published in 2015, is that delayed memoire.

Mediation in International Relations

Diplomacy: The world of the honest spy

Born a Foreigner: A Memoir of the American Presence in Asia

This is the eighth volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, and is a very solid addition to it. Cross, who was born of missionary parents in Beijing, spent 32 years in the US Foreign Service, and though his tours abroad included Egypt, Cyprus and London, most were in Asia and it is on these which this memoir concentrates.

Diplomatic Security under a Comparative Lens – Or Not?

“Diplomatic security” is the term now usually preferred to “diplomatic protection” for the steps taken by states to safeguard the fabric of their diplomatic and consular missions, the lives of their diplomatic and consular officers, and the integrity of their communications; it has the advantage of avoiding confusion with the controversial legal doctrine of diplomatic protection.

A Diplomat’s Handbook of International Law and Practice

British Diplomacy and the Descent into Chaos: The career of Jack Garnett, 1902-19

I am in favour of biographies of relatively obscure individuals like Jack Garnett because there are plenty of them on the famous; moreover, studies of this kind often turn up interesting details (including how the famous were seen from the foothills) and stimulate thought on bigger questions. John Fisher’s well written and thoroughly researched study of this early twentieth century British diplomat, into which contextual detail is expertly woven, is no exception.

Diplomacy, Satire and the Victorians

This book, which rests on extensive use of private papers, official documents, press archives and not least Grenville-Murray’s vast output (including novels), is the first biography of this complex man to be written. It begins with the difficulties produced by his illegitimate birth, and then describes his patronage by Lord Palmerston and Charles Dickens, his colourful diplomatic career, and finally his blossoming as a successful writer in France in the 1870s

Bilateral Diplomacy: A Practitioner Perspective (Briefing Paper #15)

The Contemporary Embassy: Paths to Diplomatic Excellence

A Selection of New diplomatic memoirs

I have just written a review article on these six books of British diplomatic memoirs for the English Historical Journal, so here I shall just provide some notes on those that I believe to be most valuable to students of diplomacy.

Diplomacy, Force & Leadership: Essays In Honor of Alexander L. George

Byzantium and Venice: A study in diplomatic and cultural relations

This book traces the diplomatic, cultural and commercial links between Constantinople and Venice from the foundation of the Venetian republic to the fall of the Byzantine Empire. It aims to show how, especially after the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Venetians came to dominate first the Genoese and thereafter the whole Byzantine economy. At the same time the author points to those important cultural and, above all, political reasons why the relationship between the two states was always inherently unstable.

Public diplomacy: Taxonomies and histories

DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War

DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain's ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War.

A Dictionary of Diplomacy

Like all professions, diplomacy has spawned its own specialized terminology, and it is this lexicon which provides A Dictionary of Diplomacy's thematic spine. However, the dictionary also includes entries on legal terms, political events, international organizations and major figures who have occupied the diplomatic scene or have written influentially about it over the last half millennium. All students of diplomacy and related subjects and especially junior members of the many diplomatic services of the world will find this book indispensable.

Reforming Diplomacy: Clear Choices, New Emphases

Essence of Diplomacy

Christer Jönsson is Professor of Political Science at Lund University in Sweden, where Martin Hall is a Researcher. Their book is described as an exercise in ‘theorizing’ diplomacy, that is, an attempt to provide a general account of its causes and consequences. (The authors are thus severe in denying the title of ‘theory’ to the ‘prescriptive tracts’ which scholar-diplomats have written about their art over hundreds of years, though I notice that they are more indulgent to the use of the term ‘political theory’ as in, for example, ‘liberal political theory’.)

Modern Diplomacy: Dialectics and Dimensions

Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy

On 21 April 2004, the Security Council adopted resolution 1538(2004), the most embarrassing resolution in the history of the United Nations. The resolution appointed an independent high-level inquiry whose mandate was to 'collect and examine information relating to the administration and management of the Oil-for-Food Programme, including allegations of fraud and corruption on the part of United Nations officials, personnel and agents, as well as contractors, including entities that have entered into contracts with the United Nations or with Iraq under the Programme.'

Applying the pedagogy of positiveness to diplomatic communication

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Dr Francisco Gomes de Matos applies what he calls the "Pedagogy of Positiveness" to diplomatic communication. He proposes a checklist of tips for diplomats to make their communication more positive, emphasising respect and understanding of the other side, and keeping in mind the ultimate goal of avoiding conflict.

Leaders’ rhetoric and preventive diplomacy – issues we are ignorant about

In this paper, Drazen Pehar analyses the argumentation made by George Lakoff of the University of California at Berkeley in his seminal paper on ‘Metaphor and War’, in which he tried to deconstruct the rhetoric U.S. president George Bush used to justify the war in the Gulf. He also analyses a reading by psycho-historian Lloyd deMause, whose theory differs from Lakoff’s. Throughout his analysis, Pehar describes the role of rhetoric in diplomatic prevention of armed conflicts, and its several functions, and concludes that the methods of preventive diplomacy depend heavily on the theory of...

Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, Fifth Edition

In 2005, I reviewed the third edition of Diplomacy: Theory and Practice by G.R. Berridge as essential reading for Robinson Crusoe, had he been a student of diplomacy. We all know that eventually Crusoe ended his assignment on the foreign island and returned to his native country where he found himself a wealthy man for whom bibliography no longer had a role to play … unlike the rest of us, who have continued to practise diplomacy and read books about it.

American Negotiating Behaviour: Wheeler-Dealers, Legal Eagles, Bullies, and Preachers

Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador

Satow’s Diplomatic Practice, 6th ed

Satow’s Diplomatic Practice is a classic work, first published 90 years ago and revised four times since. This is the first revised edition for thirty years, during which time the world and diplomacy have changed almost beyond recognition. The new edition provides an enlarged and updated section on the history of diplomacy and revises comprehensively […]

Foreign Ministries: Managing Diplomatic Networks and Optimizing Value

This is a collection of papers presented at the 2006 Conference on Foreign Ministries hosted by DiploFoundation in May 2006, in Geneva. The overarching theme is the adaptation and reform that these ministries have undertaken, in the shape of country experiences and the transformation implemented in specific areas such as the application of information technology for outreach to domestic publics, adaptation in consular services and outsourcing options. Some of the challenging issues addressed cover relations between civil servants and politicians, the role of sub-state entities in diplomacy, an...