Perforated Sovereignties, Agonistic Pluralism and the Durability of (Para)diplomacy

Abstract

The origins of diplomacy can be traced back to the multiple practices of communication among different social groups and political entities existing since time immemorial. These diplomatic practices underwent different transformations in history until their formalization and convenient representation as an exclusive attribute, a sort of monopoly, of modern sovereign nation states. This long process of centralization, which followed the functional and normative imperatives that shaped the modern system of states, was nonetheless a highly contentious one. The territorialization of diplomatic relations was largely achieved at the price of silencing the diversity of voices and practices that constituted a wider understanding of diplomacy as the experience of encountering and dealing with otherness. The result of these developments has been that the conventional meaning of diplomacy was emptied of any relevant social or non-technical content, treated as if it were nothing more than a formalized and rigid element of sovereign state’s machine-ries of foreign policy. Thus it became isolated from the everyday experience of a variety of social actors and individuals, and deprived of any conceptual relevance in understanding their relations. This was conspicuously expressed in the progressive codification of diplomatic law, not as a form of ius gentium, but as an exclusive brand of international law among states. Yet the formalization of diplomacy as state privilege was never complete and the old plurality of voices and practices reappeared periodically, sometimes forcefully.

Generally speaking, two types of federations may be distinguished with reference to the conduct of foreign relations: those which allow a degree of inter national intercourse to members of the union, and those which deny all such intercourse. The federations of the latter type are much more numerous than those of the former.

Stoke, 1931

The project is to generalize partiality for democracy and to infuse agonistic respect between diverse constituencies into the ethos of sovereignty.

Connolly, 2005