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Abstract
This article offers a critical perspective of the discourse of deep engagement that portrays the United States as the world’s necessary or indispensable power. It describes deep engagement as a social narrative that, like literary narratives, has a story, a plot and an argument. This narrative has persisted in a time of waning hegemony because it makes an apparently appealing moral case for American global leadership. Yet deep engagement remains flawed from a strategic perspective and disregards the history of great-power rise and decline. From a strategic perspective, while hegemons describe their leadership in moral terms, their rhetoric is often betrayed by their actions. From a historical perspective, while hegemons regard their own efforts and values as instrumental to their status, their rise can be credited to a wave of economic and political forces the state cannot control.
Abstract
How are states using cultural diplomacy on social media to expand their power? This research analyses over 67,000 tweets from the French and Chinese Ministries of Foreign Affairs (mfa s) as well as their respective state-sponsored cultural networks including Institut Français, Alliance Française, and the Confucius Institutes. Stephen Lukes’ three-dimensional power framework, where cultural authority legitimizes power over others, provides the study’s theoretical basis. In analysing the tweets, I employ a mixed methods approach including vader sentiment analysis, word frequency analysis, and thematic analysis. While both states aim to present their cultures as high-value cultures, the similarities end there. As a liberal democracy, France encourages open expression through its cultural institutions, including discourse critical of France. In contrast, China’s cultural diplomatic messaging is precisely controlled and speaks about China in invariably exalting terms. This study offers evidence that regime type has a powerful effect on cultural diplomatic messaging on social media.
Abstract
Challenging assumptions about diplomacy as a self-effacing practice of collective governance, this article searches for leadership in a system that conventionally leaves no room for it.
Drawing on interviews and a Leadership Trait Analysis (lta), it advances an original conceptual framework for identifying and analysing diplomatic leadership in crisis. The cases of Ukraine’s current Ambassador to Germany and his predecessor illustrate the empirical application. The study finds that, under conditions of disrupted routine and increasing public visibility, not only political figures, but also diplomats posted abroad are able to practice a type of leadership. It concludes that eventually personality traits decide whether or not leadership is exercised. Expanding the sparse knowledge about psychological variables in diplomacy, my work finally calls for a more thorough exploration of the synthesis between research on leadership and diplomacy.
Abstract
This article is a re-examination of cooperation in international relations through the example of Franco-Syrian relations between 2001 and 2004. I explore how cooperation fulfils – or not – a function of recognition, especially in the case of countries under unequal terms. Based on archival research and interviews, the article analyses three concrete moments of cooperation between Syria and France during this time. While traditional Franco-Syrian cooperation, prior to 2000, was based on a mutual recognition of partners, in the aftermath of presidential change in Syria in 2000 and within the shifting regional context, the Franco-Syrian relationship seemed to be marked by an inequality. Therefore, the article aims to capture the symbols of this recognition between France and Syria, and to study the role of cooperation not only in deepening a bilateral relationship, but – in a new perspective in international relations – in undermining it.
Abstract
The United States boasts the largest Nigerian diaspora, a group reputed to be among the most educated and highest achieving diasporans in that country. In explaining the Nigerian successes in the US, this article identifies Nigerian exceptionalism as a key factor, here framed around the concept of national narcissistic grandiosity. Although Nigeria is not a nation-state but a state of many nations, Nigerians in the US are constructing the nearest thing to an ideational national identity outside Nigeria. This identity formation is based on the idea that diaspora, which means dispersing or scattering, often undergoes a three-way evolutionary process of shedding, retaining and acquiring identity, which creates interstitial spaces for the emergence of new identities. The discussion draws mainly on secondary literature to support the thesis and the arguments presented.