Study-Unit Description

Study-Unit Description


CODE IRL2088

 
TITLE Further Studies in Diplomacy

 
UM LEVEL 02 - Years 2, 3 in Modular Undergraduate Course

 
MQF LEVEL 5

 
ECTS CREDITS 8

 
DEPARTMENT International Relations

 
DESCRIPTION 1. DIPLOMACY – various Definitions of;
- As distinguished from Foreign Policy, International Relations and International Law but vitally inter-acting with them;
- Various Types of, including: Bilateral/Multilateral; Public/Confidential; E-Diplomacy; Symbolic: Ping-Pong/Earthquake; Multi-stakeholder Diplomacy;
- Various Themes handled, including: Security; Political; Trade; Economic; Health; Environment; Immigration; Culture; Sports;
- Various Changes highlighted throughout its History and evolution especially those innovations inspired by developments in information and communications technologies.

2. DIPLOMATIC ACTORS – old, new and emergent actors exponentially increasing the domain of ‘diplomatic relations’ between:
- States/States;
- States/sub-state jurisdictions – regional, provincial; the individual;
- States/Intergovernmental Organizations [Global/Regional]; the special case of the European Union [EU];
- States/International Institutions [Private/Public]; Multi-national Corporations (MNCs);
- States/International Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs);
- States/International Media Corporations;
- States/Individuals: Human Rights protection; Humanitarian Diplomacy.

3. DIPLOMATS - acquired skills and innate qualities of a 21st century diplomat: the Diplomatic Disposition;
- Generalists or Specialists: which are preferable?
- Testing the Diplomatic Disposition through a matrix of diplomatic skills/qualities with classical and modern diplomatic functions and each moment thereof;
- Training, pre- and post- recruitment,
- Criteria for promotions, postings;
- tapping institutional memory: oral and archival records;
- optimizing inter-departmental co-ordination.

4. THE DIPLOMATIC SYSTEM: - FOREIGN MINISTRIES and EMBASSIES.

4.1. Diplomatic Rights and Duties
- Rights and Duties of the Sending and Receiving States under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961.
- Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities;

4.2. The Foreign Ministry and Embassies: Organization and Management enabling/disabling Information Flows
- Various Models of Foreign Ministries’ Organization and Management:- Geographical, Thematic, Mixed, ‘flatter’ vs. ‘verticalized’ power structures;
- Management models of Knowledge and Information flows within Ministries/Embassies, top/down instructions and mandates distinct from bottom/up reporting, correcting, recommending – Information ‘filtering’, enabling/disabling factors; feedback and validation;
- Information officers and Chief Info Officer;
- Systemic double corroboration of information flows between Foreign Ministries; examples;

4.3. Diplomatic Documents
- Diplomatic Documents: spectrum of, to be selected according to diplomatic convenience and revocability; Dissection of Diplomatic Documents; Language and Diplomacy;
- Performance Management in Foreign Ministries;
- Blending classical with e-diplomacy.

5. DIPLOMATIC OBJECTIVES AND FUNCTIONS – beyond the Vienna Convention’s generic objective of merely ‘Promoting friendly relations’ with the receiving State,
and also beyond its outdated ‘Gatekeeper’ role for the Foreign Ministry by focusing on daily tasks of:
- Developing ‘Outreach’ within the receiving State to actively “ascertain the conditions and developments” in the receiving State; discerning political, security and economic trends, and identifying the respective personalities and interests involved; validating diplomatic reports;
- ‘Representing’ the sending State not just ceremonially but effectively with all diplomatic actors there, including the local media; lobbying, making representations also through Special Envoys; Back-channel, Dual-track and Multi-track diplomacy.
- ‘Protecting’ in the receiving State the interests of the sending State and of its nationals, no longer just defensively but pro-actively;
- Ensuring ‘Policy coherence’, ‘Policy cohesion’ and ‘Policy co-ordination’.

6. DIPLOMATIC SIMULATION OF BILATERAL NEGOTIATIONS.
- A fully fledged simulation of a bilateral set of negotiations will be held with supervision, guidance and commentary throughout.
- The students who will be divided into teams will be invited to follow and implement political instructions and compose written diplomatic communications in the form of a Note Verbale, Memorandum, Aide Memoire, etc.
- They will then simulate actual diplomatic encounters. This will show up their nascent talents at making oral representations, when they present written documents.
- They will also have to demonstrate how promptly and competently they can defend their country’s interests and their country’s position with and against oral demarches.
- Their grasp of diplomatic tactics will emerge in the ensuing negotiations where an agreement is being sought through compromise.
- The search for common ground is the essence of the exercise, whether either side decides to accept it or reject it anyway;
- Drafting Diplomatic Documents will be tested throughout the simulation.
- Diplomatic Notes, Reports, Agreed Minutes, or the text of an Agreement “ad referendum” will all be prepared with a keen awareness that this is all ‘for the Record’.

7. A CRITICAL SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE AND THEORIES ON DIPLOMACY.
- the limitations of the State-centric approach of the post-1648 Realists like De Callieres, Berridge, Satow, Nicolson, Rana, Kissinger;
- the limitations of the Declining State approach of the post-1918 Liberals like Jackson, Hoffman, Reychler, Langhorne;
- the limitations of the post-national approach of the post-1989 Internationalists like Sharp, Melissen, Lee, Cooper, Hocking;
- a comparative assessment of the three schools’ different Diplomatic weighting of Inter-Governmental Organizations, International Non-Governmental Organizations, and the Information Revolution.

8. DIPLOMACY AND THE PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES: - United Nations Charter, 1945, Chapter VI, Article 33 lists negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements
- Diplomacy and the use of force
- Mediation compared and contrasted with other means of peaceful settlement of disputes;
- Regional Arrangements.

9. MULTILATERAL DIPLOMACY
NATURE: Does multilateral diplomacy have a life of its own, even independently from its member states? With its own diplomatic initiatives and exerting its own diplomatic pressure, even ON states? Is it different from Bilateral diplomacy? Or, at the limit, is it merely the sum of bilateral relations in a given multilateral context? The enduring challenge to Multilateral Diplomacy of “Together if we can, alone if we must”.
- history and evolution, ups and downs of multilateral diplomacy;
- the United Nations Organization and its Agencies;
- the veto of the P5 and UN reform;
- increasing number of multilateral organizations;
- increasing thematic specialization;
- increasing number of experts;
- procedural strengths, weaknesses and eccentricities of multilateral diplomacy;
- choreography of multilateral diplomacy;
- corridor diplomacy;
- “Swing States’ Diplomacy”

THE MULTILATERAL DIPLOMATIC SYSTEM: managing diplomatic inter-relationships within multilateral organizations;
- designing and constructing lasting diplomatic alliances versus making do with ‘ad hoc’ diplomatic coalitions on the basis of defined commonalities:- personal, ethical, interest-based, ethnic, ideological, post-national;
- the increasing complexity of managing diplomatic inter-relationships between multilateral organizations;

10. DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS, REPRESENTATIONS and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969 – a counter-factual approach re-evaluating the Convention focusing on:-
- ‘Pacta sunt servanda’; ‘Res inter alios acta’; ‘rebus sic stantibus’;
- Signing, Interpretation,
- “travaux preparatoires”;
- Reservations;
- Error, Fraud, Corruption;
- Invalidation, Suspension, Withdrawal;
Thus Identifying the ‘other’s’ diplomatic vulnerabilities.

11. DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS:
- Pre-Negotiations: soundings and probings; preparing the diplomatic strategy domestically;
- Negotiations Theory, an update and a critique;
- Clinching a deal, formally/informally;
- Summit diplomacy;
- ‘Getting to Yes’ and ‘Beyond Intractability’; ‘Around the table negotiations’;
- Diplomatic leverage; Timing; Sequencing; the Ultimatum; Re-packaging; Fragmentation; Trade-offs and swaps; media strategies; Diplomatic Momentum;
- Post-Negotiations: Ratification;
- Post-Agreement or ‘Compliance’ Bargaining, particularly within Global/Regional Organizations and with special reference to the European Union.

12. DIPLOMATIC SIMULATION OF MULTILATERAL NEGOTIATIONS.
- A fully fledged simulation of a multilateral negotiation will be held with supervision, guidance and commentary throughout.
- The students who will be divided into teams, usually in a United Nations Security Council format, will be invited to follow and implement political instructions and compose written diplomatic communications in the form of a defence or a critique of a Draft UN Resolution both orally and via Speeches as well as Note Verbale, Memorandum, Aide Memoire, etc.
- They will then simulate actual diplomatic encounters. This will show up their nascent talents at making oral representations, when they present written documents.
- They will also have to demonstrate how promptly and competently they can defend their country’s interests and their country’s position with and against oral demarches.
- Their grasp of diplomatic tactics will emerge in the ensuing negotiations where an international Resolution is being sought through compromise principally through corridor diplomacy and getting the swing states;
- Drafting UN Resolutions will be tested throughout the simulation;
- Drafting various versions of the proposed text of an Agreed Resolution or selected square brackets “ad referendum” will all be prepared ‘for the Record’.

13. SMALL STATE DIPLOMACY
- Small States’ foreign policies and diplomacies:- a particular case, a special case, or an exceptional example of diplomacy in an increasingly globalizing world?;
- the challenges facing small states in devising their Diplomatic strategies in a tight diplomatic context namely “while the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.” Thucydides
- “Lilliputians in Gulliver’s world” – a survey of the literature on small state diplomacy and international relations;
- Small states in the European Union;
- How Small states, mainly as norm-entrepreneurs or niche lobbyists, defy realists’ power analysis and exploit liberal/internationalist narratives to their diplomatic advantage.

14. CONSULAR DIPLOMACY – A sketch for improving its relevance.

Study-unit Aims:

The study-unit aims to make students understand the why, how, when, where, who, what, which in the Theory and Practice of Diplomacy.

The study-unit aims to analyse its links to International Relations, International Law, Foreign Policy, Civil Service co-ordination, Public Relations and Good Governance.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Knowledge & Understanding:

By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to:
- Grasp the ongoing relevance of Diplomacy and diplomatic intercourse in a globalized world where historic advances in information and communications technologies would appear to have made Diplomacy redundant.
- Increase his/her appreciation of the new range of diplomatic personae or actors and of the new themes on the diplomatic agenda.
- Comprehend the constraints faced by Foreign Ministries, particularly those of Small States, in handling the New Diplomacy.

2. Skills:

By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to:
- Handle diplomatic representations, negotiations and exchanges both oral as well as written, diplomatic reporting and public diplomacy.
- Analyse, compare and contrast reforms appropriate for 21st century Diplomacy.

Main Text/s and any supplementary readings:

Essential Readings:-
- United Nations Charter, 1945.
- Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961.
- Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969.

Books:-
- Berridge, G.R.: Diplomacy: Theory and Practice. Fourth Edition (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2010), ISBN 978-0-230-2296-0 (pbk), xviii 242pp.
- Barston R.P., “Modern diplomacy” Third Edition, Hoepli, May 2006.
- Boutros, Boutros-Ghali: Unvanquished.
- Gore-Booth (ed): Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice (Longman, London 1979).
- Kurbalija, Jovan (ed): Knowledge and Diplomacy (DiploProjects, Medac, Malta 1999).
- Melissen, Jan (ed): Innovation in Diplomatic Practice (Palgrave, New York, 1999).
- Nicolson, Sir Harold: Diplomacy (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Washington 1988).
- Nicolson, H: The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (University of Leicester 1954, reprinted 1998).
- Rana, Kishan: Inside Diplomacy and Rana, Kishan: Foreign Ministries (Diplo).

Internet:-
Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training
www.beyondintractability.org

 
STUDY-UNIT TYPE Lecture

 
METHOD OF ASSESSMENT
Assessment Component/s Assessment Due Sept. Asst Session Weighting
Assignment SEM2 Yes 20%
Examination (3 Hours) SEM2 Yes 80%

 
LECTURER/S Alex Sceberras Trigona

 

 
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