Galtung on Diplomacy

Datos Bibliográficos

ID17820022
AutoresIver B Neumann (0000-0002-1199-2813, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, autor de correspondencia)
Año2026
Volumen11
Número2
Fecha de publicación2026-03-20
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Global Security Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2057-3189 • E-ISSN: 2057-3189
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jogss/ogag005
OpenAlexW7155420062
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas16

Amongst Galtung’s many articles from the second half of the 1960s, we find two on diplomacy, one on patterns of diplomacy co-written with Mari Holmboe Ruge, and one on summit diplomacy. Particularly the former of these is noteworthy as a harbinger of what was to come. At the time, Diplomatic Studies were in the hands of (mostly) former practitioners like Sir Ernest Satow and Sir Harold Nicolson, who wrote manuals and overviews. While the British Committee on International Studies did produce important work concurrently with Galtung, theirs was basically legal-historical work. Only in the 1980s did diplomatic studies experience an academic professionalization along the sociologizing lines pioneered by Galtung. This piece presents and assesses Galtung’s major article, charts its reception history as part of a wider discussion of the emergence of Diplomatic Studies and assesses its lingering importance. The basic take-away is that, when structural analysis reached Diplomatic Studies in the guise of Bourdieusian rather than Galtungian analysis, it was because Bourdieu and other structuralists followed the basic scientific rule that one has to be in dialogue with others working on similar theoretical stuff. Galtung did not. One may speculate whether this point has wider purchase, so that Galtung turned from a scientific mode of knowledge production to a prophetic one exactly as a result of having been crowded out of scientific discourse. Galtung the scientist was hoist on his own petard

Diplomacy · Diplomatic history · International relations · Presidential system · Professionalization · Summit · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography · Political Science Research and Education