Visa Diplomacy

The consular element of national diplomatic power plays an essential, but often overlooked role in international relations. This is unfortunate, since the process of globalization places increasing importance on so-called “low politics”—trade, commerce, tourism, migration—all traditional consular areas of interest. This study examines the visa component of consular diplomacy as an integral device in the conduct of international relations. The simple visa serves an important purpose in international relations and is a well-used, but little studied, instrument of foreign policy in today’s system of sovereign states.

In this article, “visa diplomacy” is defined as the use of visa issuance or denial at an individual, group, and interstate level, to influence another state’s policies. Although possessing limitations, visa diplomacy is an available signaling and retorsion instrument which makes it a viable policy option in the arena of international affairs. At the operative level, it links an individual or group to its sovereign country and respective national policies. Denial or issuance at the individual or group level can have outcomes on overall interstate interactions as illustrated in the cases selected for this study. The conclusion assesses where the use of visa diplomacy seems most effective in international relations.     

A Doctrine of Contingent Sovereignty

Disengagement of U.S. leadership in recent years has not only emboldened the world's worst actors, it has enabled the emergence of non-state groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to threaten a new and ominous trend in international affairs—the pursuit of sovereign authority by transnational violent-extremists. Amending both the Clausewitzian “remarkable trinity” to explicitly encompass non-state actors in war and the balance-of-power praxis of Talleyrand to one favoring dynamic repair of failed and failing states in diplomacy, the Doctrine of Contingent Sovereignty proposed in this article provides the requisite tools for bolstering legitimacy of weakened states while simultaneously affording the necessary freedom-of-action for the United States to secure its vital national interests. Analogous to the Monroe Doctrine of the nineteenth-century, which put putative expansionist powers on notice, this new doctrine asserts that the privilege of sovereignty remains contingent upon adherence to accepted international norms of behavior.     

Theodore Roosevelt: Imperialist or Global Strategist in the New Expansionist Age?

This article argues that as the first modern US president and an innovative shaper of American foreign relations, Theodore Roosevelt launched the rising United States on the world stage as a major actor in power politics, that American diplomacy came of age with him and not with Woodrow Wilson, and that the secular pragmatist who succeeded because he was abreast of the times should not be begrudged the laurels that are so often bestowed on the religious-minded visionary who failed because he was ahead of his time. In American historiography Wilson has often eclipsed—unfairly and erroneously—the geopolitical and diplomatic skills, professionalism and expertise in foreign policy of Roosevelt. Even as ex-president, Roosevelt would be a force to be reckoned with. The use and misuse of a misconstrued legacy that some have tried to confiscate for their own benefit is perhaps best illustrated by presidential candidate John McCain's reverential claim that he is “a Teddy Roosevelt Republican” rather than a neo-Wilsonian.     

Two Complementary Settings of Peace-making Diplomacy: Political-Elite Diplomacy and Public Diplomacy

In terms of the question, “how to create an effective peace-making process in the Israeli–Palestinian case,” this article argues that the answer is a multidimensional approach to peace-making diplomacy that contains two main settings: political-elite diplomacy and public diplomacy. Political-elite diplomacy suggests various modes of peace-making interactions between political-elites. Public diplomacy provides instruments to involve the people in the peace-making struggle, prepares them for a change, and presses the leadership to reach agreements. The analysis suggests establishing an institution for the operation of public diplomacy—a major Israeli-Palestinian public negotiating congress. The congress is a democratic peace-making institution that invites representatives of the opposing societies to discuss, debate, and negotiate solutions to their struggle. The article also presents the concepts of political-elite diplomacy and public diplomacy as competitive settings that should be regarded as complementary. It includes lessons from the “Minds of Peace Experiment”—a small-scale Israeli–Palestinian public negotiating congress—which has been conducted in different places around the world.     

新时代中国特色大国外交“特”在何处?

新时代中国特色大国外交由新时代、中国特色和大国外交三部分组成。对于新时代的含义,党的十九大报告已经做出了明确的表述。大国外交的研究,历来是国际关系学界关注的重点,但对于什么是“中国特色”,学术界似乎着墨极少。所谓中国特色,就是指中国独有而其他国家没有或罕有的某些环境、指导思想、操作原则和具体抓手。本文探讨了新时代中国特色大国外交的“独特”之处。中国特色大国外交是在百年未有之大变局这一独特外部环境中展开的,其指导思想是作为新时代中国特色社会主义思想重要组成部分的习近平外交思想,采取了结伴不结盟这一独特的外交原则,以及“一带一路”倡议这一独特的工作抓手。中国特色大国外交有三个独特的理论来源:中国特色社会主义道路、中国传统文化和新中国外交传统。明确新时代中国特色大国外交“特”在何处,有助于我们总结和把握中国特色大国外交理论和实践的发展,有助于我们理解中国外交总体布局,有助于我们观察和分析当前和今后一个时期中国外交政策的走向。     

“But the UN Said So …”: International Organisations as Discursive Authorities

Many scholars take it as given that international governmental and non-governmental actors play a decisive role in international politics as regulative, moral or epistemic authorities. Hence, a denationalised “multi-centric world” (James Rosenau) is said to be emerging, although empirical evidence for this is incomplete at best. Building on a variety of communication theoretical approaches, I argue for a clear-cut differentiation between authority and the power of the better argument. Moreover, I claim that, by looking at the way actors select and refer to the statements of others (“authority talk”), we can research the reproduction of authority as a specific type of relational power exercised by a variety of political actors, including governments, international agencies and non-state actors. The usefulness of this kind of analytical framework for researching an emerging “world authority structure” (John Boli) is illustrated, using speeches and news pieces on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan/Darfur. Results suggest that the common perception of an existing “non-governmental order” in humanitarian politics is highly exaggerated. Instead, what we see is a high degree of “UN-isation” of debate and a pivotal role of national governments that are widely acknowledged as authoritative sources of meaning.     

Revisiting Putnam’s two-level game theory in the digital age: domestic digital diplomacy and the Iran nuclear deal

Few studies to date have investigated the impact of digitalization on Putnam’s two-level game theory. Such an investigation is warranted given that state and non-state actors can employ digital tools to influence decision-making processes at both national and international levels. This study advances a new theoretical concept, Domestic Digital Diplomacy, which refers to the use of social media by a government to build domestic support for its foreign policy. This model is introduced through the case study of the @TheIranDeal twitter channel, a social media account launched by the Obama White House to rally domestic support for the ratification of the Iran Nuclear Agreement. The study demonstrates that digitalization has complicated the two-level game by democratizing access to foreign policy decisions and increasing interactions between the national and international levels of diplomacy.     

哈萨克斯坦参与全球治理的举措、动力及前景

自1991年独立以来,哈萨克斯坦不但成功巩固了国家主权,在政治、经济、社会发展等领域取得了举世瞩目的成就,而且在外交领域赢得了国际社会的高度赞誉,使哈萨克斯坦成为全球治理舞台中最为活跃的中亚国家。在参与全球治理进程中,哈萨克斯坦将自己定位为“有实力的重要地区大国”,奉行以巩固主权独立和维护国家利益为中心的“全方位务实平衡”外交战略,通过建立睦邻友好信任带的“近邻外交”和以伙伴关系为基础的“远邻外交”,拉近与世界各大国及周边国家的外交关系,在国际和地区热点问题上扮演着“沟通者”和“调停者”角色,积极推动中亚地区内部的一体化进程,广泛参与全球与地区性国际组织,在核不扩散和文明对话等领域提出了各种有影响力的倡议,力图将本国的利益和世界的利益融为一体,为哈萨克斯坦的发展赢得了很大的机遇和空间,使哈萨克斯坦在国际社会中的能见度不断提升。作为中亚国家经济发展最为成功、外交最为活跃、国际影响力最为显著的国家,哈萨克斯坦参与全球治理的实践经验值得发展中国家学习借鉴。     

Orchestration and transnational climate governance

With multilateral efforts to mitigate climate change in gridlock, attention has turned to transnational climate governance initiatives, through which sub- and non-state actors seek to reduce greenhouse gases. These initiatives include networks of cities committed to lowering their carbon footprints, voluntary corporate reduction targets and disclosure processes, and many of the rules that govern carbon markets. The paper considers the role of “traditional” actors in world politics—states and intergovernmental organizations—in orchestrating such initiatives. This strategy accounts for nearly a third of transnational climate governance initiatives, we find, and upends the conventional dichotomy between “top down” and “bottom up” solutions to global collective action problems. We develop a theory to explain when states and intergovernmental organizations are likely to engage in orchestration, and we provide initial support for this theory with a new dataset of transnational climate governance initiatives and case studies of two of the most active orchestrators, the World Bank and the United Kingdom.     

To Denounce,or Not To Denounce: Survey Experiments on Diplomatic Quarrels

Despite widespread concern over heated diplomatic debates and growing interest in public diplomacy, it is still incompletely understood what type of message is more effective for gaining support from foreign public, or the international society, in situations where disputing countries compete in diplomatic campaigns. This study, through multiple survey experiments, uncovers the effect of being silent, issuing positive justification, and negative accusation, in interaction with the opponent’s strategy. We demonstrate that negative verbal attacks “work” and undermine the target’s popularity as they do in electoral campaigns. Unlike domestic electoral campaigns, however, negative diplomacy has little “backlash” and persuades people to support the attacker. Consequently, mutual verbal fights make neither party more popular than the other. Nevertheless, this does not discourage disputants from waging verbal fights due to the structure similar to the one-shot prisoner’s dilemma. We also find that positive messages are highly context-dependent—that is, their effects greatly depend on the opponent’s strategy and value proximity between the messenger and the receiver.     

Grassroots Diplomacy in Battles for Legitimacy: The Transnational Advocacy Network for the Brazilian Recognition of the Palestinian State

Few grassroots-based coalitions from a “peripheral” region have affected high international politics to the degree of creating a global domino effect. However, the process that led to Brazil’s declaration of Palestinian state recognition on 3 December 2010, followed by regional and worldwide echoes of similar actions, provides a pertinent illustration. This analysis examines the winding road to the declaration, focusing on the domestic circumstances that conditioned this Brazilian policy. Using process tracing and content analysis techniques, it describes how a pro-Palestinian Transnational Advocacy Network grew in its degree of institutionalisation, political access, and popular mobilisation, managing to constrain Brazilian policy-makers’ preferences. The findings suggest some novel insights about the changing nature of diplomacy and the role of civil societies in the “Battles for Legitimacy” that characterise contemporary global politics.     

“Democracy as Civilisation”

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy has come to embody the very idea of legitimate statehood in international politics. It has done so largely through defining a new standard of civilisation, in which “democraticness” determines the limits of international society and helps to construct relations with non-democracies “beyond the pale”. Like the “classical” standard, this new version again reflects a considerable interest in the socio-political organisation of states. Central in this shift back to a more “anti-pluralist” international society has been the democratic peace thesis, which emphasises how the internal (democratic) characteristics of states influence their external behaviour. Against more optimistic interpretations, it is argued that the democratic peace is a distinctly Janus-faced creature: promoting peace between democracies, while potentially encouraging war against non-democratic others. Within the democratic peace, non-democracies become not just behaviourally threatening but also ontologically threatening. Non-democracies are a danger because of what they are (or are not). In sum, the argument presented is that democracy, positioned as the most legitimate form of domestic governance in international society, has become caught up and used in global structures of domination, hierarchy and violence. Thus, the role of “democracy” in international politics is much more complicated, and, at least in its current guise, less progressive than often portrayed.     

Sport and Diplomacy: A Global Diplomacy Framework

ABSTRACT

The actors, or “players,” involved in the transactions of diplomacy occasioned by sport are manifold. In the case of the world’s “global game”—association football—they include but are not limited to individual footballers, football clubs, national leagues, national associations, football’s international governance structures, multi-national sponsors, and numerous hangers on. Importantly for this analysis, such a panoply of actors creates an architecture, replicated across other sports, which speak to the necessity of furthering the understanding of the relationship between sport and diplomacy. These two phenomena share a long-standing similarity in global affairs; both having been over-looked as means of comprehending relations between different polities otherwise centred on the nation-state. This exegesis advances our understanding in two areas. First, it addresses the parameters of the discussion of “sport and diplomacy” and problematises the discourse between the two with a note on language; and second, it utilises a framework provided by an appreciation of “global diplomacy” to explore concepts of communication, representation, and negotiation in sport and diplomacy.     

积极开创新时代民间外交工作新局面

一、民间外交的定位和历史贡献周恩来总理指出:“中国的外交是官方的、半官方的和民间的三者结合起来的外交。”习近平总书记强调:“民间外交是增进人民友谊、促进国家关系发展的基础性工作,是国家总体外交的重要组成部分。”可见,民间外交也是外交,也是国家行为,根本目的是为了推动中外民相亲、心相通。对外工作中,除了官方的、半官方的,其他包括友好城市、企业、智库、媒体、社会组织和青年、妇女等自然人等都属于民间外交范畴和主体。民间外交具有主体多、领域广、资源丰、接地气、打基础等主要特点。     

Deconstructing the “Deep State”: Subordinate Bureaucratic Politics in U.S. National Security

Does America really have a national security “deep state”? If by this loaded term we simply mean a sprawling bureaucracy filled mostly by a permanent cadre of lower-level officials, then inarguably the answer is yes. But how much influence does this so-called “deep state” exert, and to what ends? This debate conspicuously lacks for useful academic insight about the “real” deep state. For various reasons, the international relations field of foreign policy analysis (FPA) has largely neglected to study the role, motivation, and influence of lower-level bureaucrats. We seek to redress this knowledge gap by suggesting a new conceptual paradigm of subordinate bureaucratic politics to augment existing models for explaining American national security decisions. This additional lens enriches the analytic toolkit of FPA by revealing hitherto underappreciated dynamics including intra- and trans-agency bargaining, the key role of issue-driven interest coalitions, and persistent divisions such as between regional and functional issues.     

Sport,Empire, and Diplomacy: “Ireland” at the 1930 British Empire Games

ABSTRACT

International sport, as Geoffrey Pigman has correctly observed, emerged “as a quintessential case study demonstrating the part that public diplomacy plays in contemporary diplomacy.” The British Empire Games/Commonwealth Games [BEG/CG] are one such example, being the second largest multi-national multi-sport event today. Their origins lie in the interwar era when members of sporting organisations, many of whom were active in other formal aspects of public life, considered the organisation of specific Imperial events through international networking. Described as lacking a “thoroughly analytical and interpretive account of their history,” questions of identity politics, public diplomacy and statecraft are at their core because the BEG, inaugurated in 1930, represented qualities and values that appealed to governments, civil society, and sportspeople alike. In the waning of the British Empire, the BEG was one attempt to maintain Imperial prestige and cement cultural bonds. Yet, not only is there an absence of analytical accounts of their history, but the inter-relationships between the BEG and diplomacy, and among global sport and diplomacy more broadly, have been similarly under-investigated. This absence is striking, representing a missed opportunity in understanding the development of global sport and international relations more generally.     

Lost in Translation? Domesticating Global Policy on Genetically Modified Organisms: Comparing India and China

This article compares the way in which China and India, two leading developing countries in the global debate on biotechnology, have sought to translate policy commitments contained in international agreements on trade and biosafety into workable national policy. It is a complex story of selective interpretation, conflict over priorities and politicking at the highest levels of government. It connects the micro-politics of inter-bureaucratic turf wars with the diplomacy of inter-state negotiations and coalition building. Empirically, the article provides the first systematic comparison of patterns of implementation in the two countries based on extensive fieldwork, contributing to debates about biotechnology regulation and the extent to which developing countries can exercise policy autonomy in a global environment of high commercial interest and aggressive political lobbying. Conceptually, the article develops thinking about the interaction and non-linear relationship between “domestic” and “international” policy-making arenas and does so in a way which is sensitive to the key role of non-state actors in this field.     

Soft Power and the Currency of Sports: (Re)imagining South Africa’s Rising Hegemony in Africa

Commenting on the utility of sports as a development facilitating instrument, Nelson Mandela, in 2000, remarked that it “has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else can. Sport can awaken hope where there was previously only despair”. Madiba’s iconic statement captures the changing reality of the international system wherein states appreciate the soft power potential of sports as a subtle alternative for gaining political advantage in the international arena. This also lends credence to the argument that politics permeates all elements of social existence, including sports. In view of the preceding, this paper interrogates the rising attractiveness of South Africa in Africa and perhaps globally through the lens of its sporting engagements. From the last decade of the 20th century, South Africa’s status in the sporting world has attracted much international and scholarly attention. The article examines how South Africa negotiates the overlapping arena of politics, sports and foreign policy to normatively secure a regional hegemonic posture through a blend of strategies. These include successful bidding and hosting of sporting mega-events; involvement in the development of sporting codes and local sports content across Africa and a positive cumulative ranking in international competitions vis-à-vis other contenders for regional powerhood. The analysis takes the position that South Africa’s strategy of sports diplomacy masks its aspiration for regional hegemony and this pattern is uniquely relevant for shaping empirical understanding of power politics in Africa as well as appreciating the ideational potency of soft power as a constitutive element of what makes a regional hegemon.     

For the Present and the Future: The Well-Conceived,Successful, and Farsighted Statecraft of President Theodore Roosevelt

“It is difficult to escape the conclusion,” this historian has claimed in previous writings, “that in the foreign policy arena [Theodore] Roosevelt was probably the greatest of all US presidents.” Such a laudatory interpretation is built on an assessment of both the record achieved by Rooseveltian diplomacy during the years of Roosevelt's presidency and the long-term significance of TR's statecraft. In its own time Roosevelt's foreign policy success grew out of a sophisticated understanding of a complex international environment, a well-conceived perspective on America's interests within that environment, and a multitude of attributes in the realm of execution that usually enabled Roosevelt, even in the most challenging cases, to attain the results he was seeking. As to its long-range importance, Rooseveltian statecraft was anchored to three precepts that might be labeled the “precept of broadly defined US interests,” the “precept of US power,” and the “precept of Anglo-American leadership.” By conducting a foreign policy grounded on these precepts, Roosevelt – certainly well ahead of the great majority of his contemporaries – anticipated the type of foreign policy approach that would become and has remained the foundation for the practice of statecraft by many Republican and Democratic presidents and their most influential advisers from 1939 to the present day.