Autor: Sascha Lohmann.
Edita: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)/ German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
Ressenya: The project Diplomacy in the 21st Century can be understood as a manifestation of the lingering crisis of traditional state-led diplomacy as well as a potential vehicle for designing effective remedies. These two different understandings, the notion of crisis symptom as well as crisis treatment, could serve as normative axes around which the project’s research agenda might rotate, respectively. With regards to the first normative axis, the analytical focus would be to formulate a precise crisis diagnosis. This could be achieved by analyzing the increasing social and political participation of diverse actors in international relations coupled with rapid technological advances in communication as well as infrastructure sectors that taken together decisively impact the traditional practice of state-led diplomacy. With respect to the second normative axis, the project’s agenda could focus on providing analytically-backed arguments for why state-led diplomacy could remain relevant despite the profound social and political transformation.