The twentieth century has seen a massive increase in multilateral diplomacy and in my opinion this is one of the most significant developments in the contemporary diplomacy. As the number of actors involved in international relations grew and the complexity of issues confronting them multiplied, so the pace and structure of bilateral diplomacy turned out to be ineffective. Multilateral conferences and summits have an ability to improve this situation. They can serve as useful fora for state and increasingly also non-state actors to engage in international politics.
Negotiations on issues related to many areas, in particular those of so-called low politics that emerged in the wake of growing globalisation and interdependence challenged the effectiveness of bilateral diplomacy. Issues like environment or political economy affect larger number of states, therefore, it would be extremely difficult to debate them within the bilateral framework. Hence, multilateral negotiations can be crucial in terms of efficiency and speed of decision-making. This does not apply to all the conferences, or international institutions associating larger numbers of states. Standing multilateral conferences, like for example the UN, which are not time and issue-area limited tend to be less effective, than time-limited conferences called to debate one particular subject.
Globalization and interdependence brought states closer to each other as never before. As more states and non-state actors were getting engaged in the conduct of negotiations, it decreased the old-time levels of secrecy and made negotiations more transparent and opened them to a wider public. This, in turn, is a very positive occurrence.
Sources:
G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 3rd edition (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), chapter 7
Roberts, I. (ed.) (2009), Satow’s Diplomatic Practice, 6th edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
First of all, I must acknowledge the role of public diplomacy in changing the frames of traditional diplomacy by influencing foreign publics and policy implementations around the world. Furthermore, I would like to point out the significant role of NGO's as the most important aspect of the 'new diplomacy' because of their destabilizing and threatening character for the whole process of diplomatic service. When I say 'threatening' I mean the impact of NGO's on state sovereignty. Modern diplomacy is undertaken by a wide range of actors and this have been among the biggest changes that have taken place in diplomacy since the end of the IIWW. They include economic, environment, humanitarian and criminal interest groups, just to mention a few. The proliferation of non-state actors lead us to question the role of the state and its representatives as primary actors in IR. Do diplomats have the last say over the external actors say? Who is representing who?Power is shifting away from nation-states and in such an atmosphere diplomacy have become less effective and needed..
The aspect that I find the most important in what we call New Diplomacy is the emergence of the new actors. This includes NGOs and MNCs. But because the MNCs have been working alongside governments since the rise of liberalism in terms of economics, I would say that the most important aspect of the New Diplomacy is actually the rise of NGOs and their ability to have managed to reach the status of government partners. The reason for this I think it is simple: before the rise and victory of liberalism, which certainly has a role to play in the gap widening between poor and rich countries through exploitation, there was no such thing as globalization as we know it since the 1990’s – even if some scholars say that globalization is a long process that started at the time when European empires were enlarging through their thirst for discovery of the New World and get wealth from it. Indeed, before the 1990’s, the means of communication were not that wide as they are today, and as I said before, the gap wealth between rich and poor countries was not as evident as today – or at least people were not that aware of it; this obviously in disputable. But the point is that before the 19th century, the connection between people of different regions of the world was not as easy as it is since the 1970’s, 1990’s, and even as it is today, twenty, thirty, forty years later. As a result people nowadays are more aware of the disparities and injustice and that liberalisation victory brought new ideas such as human rights and legal justice. Therefore, people that had the capacity and the possibility to do something, started to create organisations to help those who they thought, right or wrong, needed their help. This is how, in my opinion, how the NGOs first really appeared. The reason for them to exist is to help and protect the people from the law, the society they live in, empower those people, and make their lives better, in comparison to governments who put those people in that situation and still let that happen. In other words, most of what people think is that governments are bad – due to corruption, dirty financial arrangements, crimes, and self-interested decisions, while the NGO’s are seen as altruists, way of improving people’s lives and the only ones helping them. Thus, they are in a sort of competing relation: NGOs are demanding and requesting important and significant changes from the government regarding the specific matter which that NGO will feel concern about. And the more NGOs they were, more powerful they got. It is even truer that nowadays governments let NGOs, the ‘other team’, be part of the negotiation process. This is when the characteristic of ‘openness’ in the New Diplomacy comes up. This aspect is also really important, but it is undermined by two things. Firstly, by the fact that as I tried to explain, the openness of the negotiations and conferences came from a need or perhaps an obligation from governments in order to ‘calm’ the NGOs. Actually, I think if a government always acts according to it self-interest, in letting this new and competitor actor enter their round table, that means that there was a reason for that. And for me the motivation for doing such thing is manipulation. Indeed, as the saying goes ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’. Secondly, the opening aspect of the negotiations is a less significant aspect in New Diplomacy, because other actors are kept apart from private and enclosed states negotiation. This challenges the idea of the New Diplomacy being ‘open’ but it does not change the fact that NGOs are still present, take action and influence governments decisions and bring new points to the international agenda.
The main example for this could be the Copenhagen Summit on environmental issues in December 2009.environmental topic was addressed by head of states because it was brought in the agenda by many NGOs that are very much environmentally active (e.g.Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth) or by NGOs which first concern was not the environment but nonetheless, the deterioration of it makes their work less effective and environmental issues have become stronger and certainly paramount for those NGOs as well, because everything is linked to the environment. And most importantly because the first victims of the climate change are the people who are actually protected and represented by those NGOs before governments (e.g. Oxfam, Survival). Thus this is the ‘bringing NGOs concerns to the international agenda’ step. This, in my opinion, is a very positive achievement, and certainly a great change.
Nonetheless, why the Copenhagen Summit did failed and states did not come to any agreement, despite the fact that they were all driven by their self-interest and that they did not want to make any compromise while meeting altogether, I think it might be the fact that there were secret meetings held by the developed countries, letting on a side the poorer countries, those who are demanded to do all the efforts but also suffer the most.
Finally, the most important aspect of the New Diplomacy is the emergence of new actors in the international system and little by little in the negotiation process, especially the NGOs, which, even if they are not always present physically in the discussion, do play their part by taking action and changing, bringing new topics in the international agenda, making governments and NGOs sort of partners.
One of the key manifestations of the new diplomacy is emergening of organisations outside the state sector. For example, in the United Kingdom there are around 200,000 NGOs. NGO have played an increasingly influential role in world affairs, particularly issues such as climate change, human rights organisations and poverty eradication, etc. NGOs represent civil societies which actively participates in international affairs and influences a policy making process which was not possible before. In the other words, diplomats no longer have the monopoly in carrying out diplomatist task.
Even the most powerful nations are no longer the only significant international actors. bilateral state to state diplomacy has been increasingly supplemented by multilateral form of diplomacy, international organisation, both inter - governmental and nongovernmental organisation have become significant diplomatic actors, with at least a rudimentary diplomatic machinery, they can communicate their interest and deploy their resource to influence the outcome of negotiations. For example, NGO such as human rights watch, their role involves by challenging the states which they consider to carry out human rights abuses
The changing interests of states as international actors and the growing number of non state actors involves changed the nature of the new diplomacy as a process of negotiation. Most obvious, it made diplomacy a more complex activity involving more and different actors. States continue to negotiate bilaterally with each other on a state to state basis, but groups of states typically negotiated multilaterally through the auspices of intergovernmental organisations like United Nations and increasingly with the growing range of nongovernmental organisations which sought to influence inter-state behaviour to achieve their objectives. For example NGOs are pushing for the implementations of the global environmental agreements and are trying to tackle the roots of the problems
Finally, Increasingly NGO scrutinise and critise the performance of governments, and indeed few NGOs will be active in diplomatic field, often monitory, the performance of governments, and international or national organisations. ICG is good example in this area. And for that, I would probably argue that the most important aspects of the new diplomacy are the rise of non state actors such as NGO and intergovernmental organisations in the international system.
Multilaterall diplomacy can be argued to be the most important aspect of new diplomacy. The outcome of multilateral diplomacy tends to be fair and largely benefitial to many unlike bilateral diplomacy.
Multilateral diplomacy enables actors to deal with common global concerns more effectively. In recent years the success of six party talks on North Korean nuclear issue, leading to Pyongyang's agreement to abandon nuclear weapon program, is argued by many as a shining example of the effectiveness of multilateral diplomacy.
It can be argued that some times multilateral diplomacy may be the only way available to deal with some of the common global concerns. For example, environmental concerns relating to global warming are concerns that need attention of many different actors. There seem to be a concensus that problems of global warming can not be resolved by any single nation.
Perhaps more credible reasons, for arguing multilateral diplomacy to be the most important aspect of new diplomacy, are the increased transparency it provides to the process and the increased legitimacy it provides to the outcome. That is possibley why United Nations is still largely trusted and primarily responsible for ensuring international peace and security.
But is multilateral diplomacy a diplomacy without any faults ? Critiques may highlight some of its limitations. But Multilateral diplomacy that is essentially a 20th century phenomenon, is the most important aspect of new diplomacy with some room for improvement.
The main contribution of new diplomacy, in my opinion, is that it has brought the diplomatic sector closer to the general population rather than a small elite. This change has happened because of several reasons, however, in a globalized age symbolized by the evolution of communication through internet and other forms of mass media, people feel closer to each other than ever before and are generally aware of what is happening in other regions of the world.
Diplomacy therefore needed to adapt from its old form adapted to bilateral agreements between states to a new form that could survive in a very interconnected and multilateral world. Since diplomacy has without a doubt become more accessible to people generally, the most important aspects within new diplomacy would then be people-to-people /government-to-people relations (concept by Jarol Manheim), or public diplomacy. Because as Nye stated, "information is power" (Nye, 2004:1) and people are globally more and more informed, governments need to give more importance to public relations and improve their image around the globe. Lee argued that "people-to-people dialogues have become more important than communicating between governments because governments, and especially democracies, are frequently obliged to abide by public opinions". http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdfs/Stacy_Literature.pdf
Public diplomacy can also be considered as the most important factor within the new diplomacy because it can raise awareness in support of different causes such as terrorism, poverty or environment throughout the world by either states or multilateral organizations. Many blamed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on the fact that the foreign policy of the United-States in the 1990's was almost non existing thus sending a false (arrogant and hypocrite) image of the nation to other parts of the world resulting in incomprehension and hatred. Thus a successful public diplomacy, without falling into propaganda, can avoid conflicts around the globe because of its capacity to inform.
Finally, global issues such as poverty, racial or sexual discrimination and the degradation of the environment can only be fought internationally. Thus, public diplomacy is once again the solution because it touches nations from all around the world and is not limited to state boundaries (see the United Nations Development Programme [http://www.undp.org/]).
For all those reasons, the most important factor of new diplomacy has to be its public diplomacy. In an intertwined international system, problems tend to become global and can only be fought globally which makes public diplomacy its only remedy.
According to my readings, the importance of the new diplomacy is that it does unite nations to come into an understanding negotiating matters of common interest and also at the same time it creates interaction and cooperation between nation states.
With the introduction of new technology, has made communication much easier in that with the use of emails, satellite phones, the media like CNN, and travel in that through these methods, information can easily be communicated to different parties and at the same time due to cheap travel, delegates or foreign ministers can easily travel from one place to the other for negotiation.
The new diplomacy has also made it possible for developing countries to air their views in that these countries might lack embassies or missions and are too poor to afford communicating machineries like the internet thus through conference meetings gives them a chance to negotiate.
Another aspect is that the new diplomacy is that it does involve third parties thus this is important in the sense that when two warring parties fail to come to understanding, the third party will act as an intermediary; example the UN or the EU in conflict solving like in the case of a country that is at war between the government and opposition, the UN or the EU will intervene negotiating on behave of both parties.
The last point I want to make is that the new diplomacy creates skills. In this I mean that personnel working in the foreign office, embassies or consulates are usually trained to represent their countries in particular negotiations like trade, crisis, or security and at the same time, the new diplomacy has created representatives like civil societies that will act on behalf of a particular state to represent in terms of negotiation.
