Diplomacy in the Digital Age
- By Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 26, 2015
• We can see three types of predictions regarding the impact of digital technologies, echoing responses to globalization from the 1980s onwards, but no single one is likely to dominate the diplomatic landscape in the future:
1. Digital technologies may herald the withering away or 'deliquescence' of diplomacy. The traditional forms and processes of diplomacy will become meshed into broader patterns of global interaction – such as those surrounding global governance.
2. Such technologies may reinforce the existing 'disintermediation' trend, whereby diplomats (and other agents) acting between the individual and policy arenas are challenged. The fragmenting information environment empowers non-diplomats claiming a role in complex policy milieus.
3. Digitalization may result in de-institutionalised diplomacy: diplomatic practice becomes a mode of behaviour rather than a set of institutional structures and processes. In a networked diplomacy environment, performing a diplomatic role is more related to knowledge, capacity and capabilities and less to formal status.
Digital disruption and the crisis of diplomacy
• Diplomacy is facing 'digital disruption' as new technologies and associated patterns of behaviour develop. These will percolate throughout diplomatic institutions, generating both acceptance and hostility.
• The conventional wisdom among diplomats is that digitalization does not change the fundamental objectives of diplomacy, but offers new ways through which these can be achieved. Governments need to take a more nuanced look, taking into account the different facets of diplomatic practice. Although digital diplomacy is for instance not synonymous with public diplomacy, it is obvious that the resources provided by big data and social media networks greatly enhance the strategies available here. And consular work and crisis management are increasingly impacted by digital technologies.
• Foreign ministries need to be aware of the fact that digitalization will put fundamental norms and rules of diplomacy to the test. The experience of public diplomacy over the last decade, for instance, is an indication of the points at which the 1961 Vienna Convention tested by the actions of diplomats on the ground.
Diplomacy will be simultaneously online and offline
• The interpretation that governments and other diplomatic actors will need to develop online and offline foreign policies is mistaken. It replicates the errors of earlier dichotomies – not least those which separate the domains of governmental and non-governmental actors. The reality is that diplomats of all types will need to function in both environments.
• Differing blends of 'hybrid' diplomacy are needed. The Iran nuclear negotiations, whilst utilising digital resources in the implementation phase particularly, illustrate the continuing importance of face-to-face negotiations. Experience demonstrates the limits of digital technology in negotiating environments, evidenced by negative responses to the use of smartphones to text and tweet during negotiations. On the other hand, the entire history of the Prevention of Sexual Violence Initiative is bound up with extensive use of digital resources. Diplomats will have to reconcile conflicting demands for online communication and physical presence. In the consular sphere, publics will expect both and MFAs will have to meet these demands.
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