Diplomacy in the Digital Age
- By Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 26, 2015
The long-standing debate between technological determinist and social constructivist interpretations of change is not simply an academic matter, but significant to our understanding of the environment in which diplomacy is functioning. Those seeking to manage international policy need to appreciate how and why the digital communications revolution is significant and how and why human agency remains of prime importance.
Learning from history
Looking at past experiences of communications 'revolutions' such as the electric telegraph in the nineteenth century, whilst time bound, can provide clues as to how diplomatic process and structures responded to change in an earlier era. Telegraphy, of course, was a very different form of communications revolution. Compared with the age of the Internet, the telegraph's impact was of limited scope and it hardly ranks as a form of 'mass media' in the sense that the term was to acquire in the 20th century. But there are lessons to be learned from the impact of the telegraph on government and society, and the relationship between them. Nickles' penetrating analysis suggests that the effect of the telegraph on diplomacy raises four questions.
First, is a new technology likely to alter human behaviour? The experience of the telegraph reveals the significance of diplomatic agency here. At the individual level, existing diplomatic culture frequently clashed with the imperatives of speed. Patterns of work changed in response to the demands of virtually instantaneous communication but these were not uniformly standardised. Two of the great contrasts with the nineteenth century are of course the impact of parliamentary democracy on diplomatic practice and the 'embeddedness' in society of the institutions of diplomacy and people on their payroll, i.e. the way in which its 'societization' places constraints on diplomacy.
Second, does a technology act as a tool or constraint? Here, a critical effect of telegraphy was to greatly enhance the speed of events – particularly during crises. Governments came under greater pressure to respond to the quickening pace of events and to the demands of public opinion and the press at home, echoing the 'total diplomacy' of the second half of the twentieth century and after. At the same time, the telegraph could provide information much faster – if not always in a totally reliable form – reflected in today's 'virtual diplomacy'.
Third, does a technology produce authoritarian or democratic power structures? The effect of the telegraph was to reinforce authoritarian power structures in which vertical linkages were strengthened rather than the horizontal social networks associated with democratic technologies. The general feeling expressed by many, but not all, ambassadors was that the new technology had reduced their scope for action and their overall importance. By contrast, the digital age and new modes of communication facilitate a dual network dynamic. It is more likely than not, that foreign ministries will progressively service diplomatic missions that are becoming an increasingly important part of the decentralized, internal MFA network; and external MFA partners are increasingly important for policy success. They resist the imposition of the age-old rulebook of diplomacy on an expanding network environment in which government is only one player.
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