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Abstract
The European Union (EU) and Taiwan (officially the Republic of China) are both non-conventional polities in international relations and the study of diplomacy. On the one hand, the EU is a ‘unique economic and political union between 27 European countries’. On the other hand, Taiwan is able to concurrently carry out two distinct forms of foreign relations. First, diplomacy as a sovereign country with states that it maintains formal diplomatic relations. Second, in the relations with states and other polities without diplomatic ties, and under their divergent ‘One China’ policies, Taiwan operates as a paradiplomatic actor or one that is within the intervals of diplomacy and paradiplomacy. Observing such a phenomenon, this article proposes the notion of ‘amphibious diplomacy’ and empirically studies the notion through how, in practice, the EU and Taiwan have been carrying out their negotiation of the Bilateral Investment Agreement (bia) given the constraints of an absence of diplomatic relations and the EU’s ‘One China’ policy. The article incorporates first-hand material from semi-structured interviews with interlocutors whose work allows them to obtain practical knowledge about the EU-Taiwan bia.
Abstract
After almost 30 years from the Dayton Agreement of 1995, time has come to appraise the successes and failures of interventionism in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). By drawing on insights from a practitioner’s perspective, the article explores the dynamic of diplomatic action and offers a template to assess its (in)effectiveness. With time, rifts have emerged in the international community both in messaging and operational terms, which have reduced, rather than increased, the positive effects of concerted action. Moreover, whilst the Office of the High Representative (ohr) has been an important tool for reconstruction and peace-making, its role remains incompatible with the prospect of full European Union (EU) membership, thus becoming a divisive actor. At the same time the US and UK have come to see the ohr and other non-EU organisations, such as nato and the osce, as the main tools for a continued presence in the country, making overall cooperation more complicated. A “grand plan” is therefore needed to reunite the forces of the players of good will. This will require an arrangement for the winding up of the ohr, coupled with constitutional reform. To this end a new vision for BiH is necessary, both at the international and local level, to better spell out what a “European BiH” should really look like.