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Diplomatic Cultures Project, Workshop 3
Alternatives Cultures of Diplomacy8-9 November 2013UNPO Secretariat, The Hague
(Para)Diplomatic Cultures: Old and New
Noé CornagoAssociate Professor of International Relations
University of the Basque CountryBilbao
Outline:
•Conceptual (im)precisions
•Diplomacy and pluralism
•Historical precedents
•Structural dimensions
•Logics of action
•Morphologies
•Normalization attempts
•(Para)diplomatic incidents
•Diplomacies of agonistic respect
1. Conceptual (im)precisions
•Paradiplomacy?
Despite attempts to clarify its content, paradiplomacy remains a particularly elusive concept given that it seems to suggests a desire to emulate official diplomacy whilst simultaneously affirming a distinctive will of political autonomy…
•Protodiplomacy?
•Federative diplomacy?
•Constituent diplomacy?
•External action?
•Foreign action?
•Sub-state?
•Sub-national?
•Post-Diplomacy?
More a ‘sore’ than a ‘core’ concept, conceptual controversies surrounding the notion of ‘paradiplomacy’ reveal tensions between those that consider optimal the centralization of diplomacy, and those who oppose it: therein lies the ultimate meaning of this concept and the rationale behind both its refusal and acceptance, and that of its possible alternatives
•Paradiplomacy?
•(Para)diplomacy?
•Diplomacy?
Critical examination of the history of diplomacy reveals that those expressions of pluralism in the diplomatic realm that we use to label as paradiplomatic are far from being new. Quite the opposite they were crucial in the formative processes of modern diplomacy
2. Diplomacy and pluralism
1. The notion of diplomatic culture is generally presented as something belonging exclusively to the semantic field of international relations, completely isolated to the complexities of political life within the contours of specific states.
2. In so doing, scholars and practitioners tend to reproduce the fiction of the existence of a perfect political community –the state- as the foundational assumption that gives sense to the whole system of diplomatic recognition, representation and negotiation amongst states.
3. There is a mutual historical co-determination between changing forms of international order and the evolving domestic order within States. Institutionalization of modern diplomacy and the rise of modern nation-state were simultaneous and related, and so are they current transformations.
4. The advent of modern ‘diplomacy’ was not only crucial for the shaping of an inter-state system, but also for the territorialisation and centralization of politics within each and one of those States, through the consequent deployment of an ensemble of diplomatic, legal, administrative, and security mechanisms of government.
4. Participation of the most diverse constituencies in foreign trade, management of resources, cultural exchanges, or political negotiations beyond the contours of their hosting states –or empires- has been nonetheless a durable and widespread feature of diplomacy across history.
5. More importantly, those old constituent diplomacies were not only a common practice in the past: they were crucial in the shaping of the same modern sovereign States which later sought to suppress its plurality of voices, depicting it as mere cacophony or diplomatic liability.
6. That long process of centralization, which followed the functional and normative imperatives that shaped the modern system of states, was nonetheless a highly contentious one. Yet the formalization of diplomacy as State privilege was never complete and the old plurality of voices and practices reappeared, once and again periodically, in the most unexpected places, sometimes forcefully.
3. Historical precedents
Diplomacy
•Peace of Westphalia 1648
•Congress of Vienna 1815
•Treaty of Versailles 1919
•United Nations 1948
•Vienna Convention 1961
•…
(Para)Diplomacies
•Original indigenous diplomacies (XV-XVII)
•European early-modern composite kingdoms (XV-XVI)
•African Christian Kingdoms missions to Rome (XV-XVI)
•C
hinese provincial mandarins (XVI-XIX)
•American constituent diplomacies (XVIII-XIX)
•Experimental states in early twentieh century (XX)
•Commonwealth’s internal diplomacy (XX)
•…
4. Structural dinamics
In the new global context, new economic, socio-cultural, environmental and technological imperatives appear that impose the diffusion of power and a new era of pluralism. It is in that context the so-called paradiplomacy may be understood as the return of the repressed.
Functional imperatives
Paradiplomatic interventions aim to tackle a variety of problems affecting sub-state governance (trade, production, investment, financing, unemployment, transportation, migration, environmental and macroeconomic risks, transnational crime...) which are crucial for the optimal positioning the constituencies they represent in the current processes of global systemic restructuring.
Normative imperatives
Paradiplomatic interventions serves also as a venue to respond to diverse social expectations and political demands (culture, language, justice, recognition, equality, dignity, identity, hope, solidarity, welfare, territorial alienation, social perceptions of political responsibility, institutional legitimacy and trust), which are key for the for the necessary normative foundations of local and regional politics, creating new forms of political pressure.
-The growing tension between the territorial foundations of global state’s system and the pervasive influence of diverse deterritorializing forces –economic, technological, environmental, demographic- operating at a global scale
-The multiplication of political demands for cultural recognition and social justice, combined with the contestation and collapse of formal hierarchies, and the intermingling of public and private bodies of authority.
- The presence of competing legitimacies operating simultaneously, through a combination of formal and informal institutional mediations in what following Tully, can be called a ‘strange multiplicity’
5. Logics of action
Despite of the importance of structural aspects, regional governments involvement in global affairs is never simply an spontaneous outcome structurally determined…
…It is always a form of reflexive political agency which can be read as both instrumental and/or communicative action…
Instrumental
e.g. promotion of trade and investment, mobilization of resources and funds, critical infrastructures and technology, environmental sustainability, energy security, tourism
Communicative
e.g. cultural and educational links, promotion of collective identity abroad, mutual trust and confidence building, reconciliation…
Criteria for evaluating these two dimensions of sub-state foreign policy are nonetheless completely different. While instrumental action is easily evaluable in terms of cost-benefit analysis and efficiency, communicative action is open submitted to constant re-interpretation and much more elusive to evaluation through empirical research.
But same as it happens with State diplomacy, the rationale of paradiplomacy cannot be neither reduced to the logic of utilitarian policy design nor be evaluated completely ignoring the ultimate rationale of its design.
6. Morphologies
1. Paradiplomacy with their corresponding administrative and budgetary provisions, is becoming common practice for sub-state governments worldwide, forging a dense network practices, institutions and discourses easily recognizable across the world
2. Although constitutional frameworks are of crucial importance in structuring the opportunities and choices for paradiplomacy, the final profile that these initiatives acquire have frequently a distinctive marco-regional profile (EU, NAFTA, Mercosur, APEC, SADC). This reveals the structural link between macro-regionalism and micro-regionalism
3. But beyond these structural dimensions the reality of paradiplomacy also reveal an innovative network of transnational policy learning and diffusion across the globe, in which local and regional entities with very different level constitutional and economic resources actively participate, deploying a wide variety of innovative initiatives.
•Opening and maintenance of permanent delegations abroad, and international missions for trade, investments and other issues
•Extension of international agreements through diverse soft-law mechanisms both with other sub-state entities and States
•Limited participation in global law-making processes when that is constitutionally established, and direct relationships with international organizations through innovative cooperation schemes
•Intensive participation in multilateral negotiation schemes on a geographical or functional basis.
•Launching of occasional political statements on international issues
•Place branding and public diplomacy campaigns, foreign aid programmes and cross-national environmental cooperation schemes
Sustainability?
Contextual (changing political and legal structures of opportunity, evolving institutional economic and societal perceptions and expectations, changing availability of resources, evolving macroeconomic context, political climate…)
Actor related (political will and commitment, administrative capability, political dexterity, communication skills, expectations of reciprocity, feasibility of public and private partnerships…)
Policy specific (technical viability, more or less controversial agenda, quality of policy design and implementation, adequate risk assessment, feasibility of result based management, adequate monitoring and control…)
7. Normalization
•Drawing on Foucault normalization can be defined as a mode of institutional control that recognizes as valid — albeit reluctantly — an otherwise deviant practice, whilst the limits of that practice are immediately fixed and carefully monitored. In the diplomatic realm, normalization enables the diplomatic system to operate in an increasingly complex environment, facilitating its own adaptation and durability.
•Normalization allows the selective incorporation into the diplomatic field of important innovations that are produced by the pluralization of global life, simply because they are — both for functional and normative reasons — too relevant to be ignored. But it simultaneously reaffirms the hierarchical structure of the diplomatic system.
•States all over the world have adopted a variety of legal and institutional mechanisms in order to keep paradiplomacy under control. As with the heterogeneous practice that they try to regulate, these mechanisms are not completely uniform. Rather, they are widely extended with important implications, for…
• Sooner or later, all states need to consider the treatment that they are expected to offer foreign constituent units, as well as the treatment that they understand other states should offer their own constituencies.
•But domestic implications of paradiplomacy cannot be addressed adequately with merely legal or intergovernmental mechanisms of control, mutual consultation, or coordination. As suggested, quite surprisingly, by some specialists in intergovernmental relations (Simeon, 1972; Horgan, 2004) it requires perhaps the adoption of a sort of ‘diplomacy within States’, in order to recognize the new ‘strange multiplicity’ of the diplomatic realm (Tully 1995)
•Paradiplomacy reveals, in sum, the often unexplored process of mutual estrangement –both horizontal and vertical within States themselves. That estrangement can be read as a form of political contestation, exposing the central government pretension to truly and completely represent and always complex political community in the global sphere.
8. (Para)diplomatic incidents
•UK complains to US because agreement with Bermuda with regard to Guantanamo Detainees
•US complains to UK because Scottish release of Al-Megrahi convicted of Lockerbee terrorist attack
•Turkish complain to Spain because of Basque’s invitation to Kurdish Assembly in exile to gather in their parliament
•Russian complain to Turkey for sponsoring paradiplomatic recognition of TRNC by the side of Russian Republics of Turkish Ascent
9. Concluding remarks
1. Paradiplomacy shall be read as a form of reflective political assertion, which exposes –with a variety of arguments- central governments usual pretension to truly, completely and effectively represent their always complex ‘political communities’ in the global sphere.
2. In the current context it requires however a self-critical examination of both its potential and limits, and its necessary rationalization in terms of both its ultimate political ambitions and goals, administrative dimensions, and strategic allocation of resources.
3. Implications of paradiplomacy cannot be addressed adequately with merely legal or intergovernmental mechanisms of control, consultation, or coordination. It requires not only the creation of multilevel structures of governance but also the adoption of a sort of diplomacy ‘within and across’ States, as an increasingly important complement to diplomacy ‘between’ States.
•Paradiplomacy can be also understood as the symptom of a new era of agonistic pluralism in the diplomatic milieu. One in which conflicts and disagreements, particularly those difficult to resolve, are considered not as forms of nonconformity to be suppressed, but as expressions of a dynamic political agency driving an inevitable but extremely complex move towards a truly transnational democratic polis -albeit surely still imperfect- and complex citizenship, where the sites of diplomacy trespass both the boundaries of nations and those of States.
