Contemporary Challenges for Foreign Ministries
At Home and Abroad
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12257537 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Geoffrey Wiseman (Australian National University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 786-798 |
| Publication date | 2019-10-02 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Diplomacy and Statecraft (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0959-2296 • E-ISSN: 1557-301X |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09592296.2019.1673554 |
| OpenAlex | W2999122548 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
Whilst the diplomatic studies field has grown impressively in the past decade, paradoxically there is much still to be learnt about ‘state foreign services’, a term covering the two sides of the diplomacy coin: diplomats serving at home – in the Foreign Ministry – and abroad – at embassies and consulates. Diplomats have a Janus-faced view of their profession: as envoys abroad and bureaucrats at home. This analysis first assesses the American approach to diplomacy’s two sides, focusing on the impact of the Donald Trump presidency as a benchmark. Flowing from this are several key challenges that bedevil virtually all democratic foreign ministries: How to frame the ‘national interest’? How to represent blemished or populist leaders? How to deal with dissent? How to balance the field-headquarters nexus? And how to manage relations with non-state actors. So long as the Westphalian state system survives, so, too, will the two-sided foreign-service model. Only when moving away from diplomacy as ‘state practice’ to diplomacy as ‘social practice’ can the foreign-service model recede, with diplomacy becoming disintermediated, omnilateral, and post-Westphalian, potentially manifesting radically different practices
Diplomacy · Foreign policy · Foreign relations · Ministry of Foreign Affairs · Nexus (standard · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Presidency · Sociology · State (computer science · Engineering · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Public Administration
| Citations per year | 1.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |