ABSTRACT
No matter what kind of diplomatic actor and no matter what kind of issue area this actor addresses, it is possible to identify key tasks of diplomacy. This chapter refers to these as messaging, negotiation, mediation and talk. Not every kind of diplomat engages in these tasks in the same way. At the risk of oversimplification, traditional diplomats representing states tend to perform all four tasks whereas non-traditional diplomats representing international governmental or NGOs oftentimes do more messaging and talking than negotiation and mediation. The category of talk may come as a surprise to the reader. Yet, in our view, this is a key category in the age of global diplomacy. Persuasion, for instance, which is a distinct form of talk, is omnipresent in diplomacy. The power of the word is not to be underestimated. Without it, nontraditional diplomats would have precious little means of influencing. The tasks we discuss may best be summarised under the heading of communication. Diplomacy is about communication. Messaging, negotiation, mediation and talk – along with the sub-categories we identify – are different modes of communication. Above everything else, the diplomat is a communicator. Inventing messages to communicate as well as understanding these messages and generating convergences around some of them across different diplomatic actors are made possible by the contexts in which these actors are embedded. To put this differently, the contexts make it possible for actors to come to imagine a message they seek to send in the first place. It also makes it possible for them to make sense of the messages sent by others. Furthermore, it delineates the possibilities for different actors to converge on an agreement – however tentative this convergence may be in many cases. Being a diplomat, therefore, has a lot to do with putting contexts to use in order to perform communicative tasks. This putting backgrounds to use, in turn, produces and
reproduces the contexts. Figure 6.1 summarises the interplay of backgrounds and tasks. The grey area in between law and deeper backgrounds indicates the overlap between them, as discussed in Chapter 5. This chapter is organised into four parts. We start with the task of messaging, which may very well be the oldest function of the diplomat. We continue with discussing negotiation and then mediation, including track-two and back-channel diplomacy, in some depth. Finally, we focus on the category of talk, emphasising that we consider it much more consequential than the everyday usage of the term may suggest.
