Diplomacy’s Paradox in the Law of State Awards

Summary Diplomatic gifts are deeply paradoxical: they signal ‘peace’ between polities constituted by ‘power’ (peace-and-power paradox); they are exchanged between rulers of contiguous territories so as to momentarily signal a merger of separate entities (para-dox of overlapping sovereignties). This essay uses a systems-theoretical approach to uncover this paradox in national laws of state awards. The analysis culminates in a conjectural legal norm prohibiting states to use diplomatic gifts or, to the extreme, a paradoxical norm containing the self-negation and self-prohibition of diplomacy. The essay finally discusses how the peace-and-power paradox and its invisibilisation per-meates the whole system of diplomacy.


Introduction
All operations within the diplomatic system communicate sovereignty as nonsovereignty, power as non-power, threat as non-threat. This paradox reflects diplomacy's societal function; namely, the function of enabling friendly relations ('peace') between actors defined by centralised capacities of physical violence ('power'). From a semiotic viewpoint, this peace-and-power interplay finds its operationalisation in the paradox of overlapping sovereignties: the movement of a diplomatic object (e.g., ambassador, panda bear, gift) across 1 Premising that the diplomatic system reduces the world's complexity via a filter of sovereign semiotics, this essay does not distinguish between diplomacy and public diplomacy. If individual citizens are semiotic signifiers of sovereign polities, then public diplomacy is not about state-to-public relations anymore but remains on the state-to-state level; cf. which the highest political level bestows on domestic and foreign citizens for meritorious deeds. In the case of foreign recipients, the state award becomes a diplomatic tool. It is here that the diplomatic system's deep structure becomes visible, for the national laws of state awards contain both the component of power and the contrasting one of peace. The legal embodiment of this peaceand-power paradox culminates in the observation that national laws stipulate both the use and the prohibition of honorific orders: polities use state awards and simultaneously problematise them by prohibiting their citizens to accept foreign state awards. Pushed to the extreme, the ultimate end of this norm equals diplomacy's self-elimination. This essay describes oft-recurring legal norms about state awards, and discusses how they positivise the peace-and-power paradox. It then doctrinally traces how these laws ultimately contain diplomacy's self-negation, a paradox invisibilised in various ways. The essay concludes with a call for diplomatic studies to face, rather than to avoid, the systemic paradox.

Legal Norms on State Awards
Almost every state possesses the official honorific tool of state award (usually called 'Order').11 The majority of countries convey the legal existence of state awards in their constitutions, usually in a catalogue of the Head of State's prerogatives. The polities have also enacted detailed regulations about their awards in dedicated legal acts. These national laws are globally of a similar structure, containing the following oft-recurring rules: 1. The state award is a tool exclusively reserved for the Head of State. In republics, this is usually the President. In monarchies, the grand master behind the awards is a dynastic ruler (e.g., the Japanese Emperor, the Kuwaiti Amir, the Spanish King polity, it is always the highest political level who serves as the ultimate authority behind every conferral, or as the fons honoris. 2. The award exhibits an iconography of official state symbols. 3. The Head of State retains the right to withdraw a conferred award in case the recipient acts against the interests of the giving state. For instance, the law on honorific orders in Fiji states that the President may at any time 'cancel and annul the award' .14 Likewise, the Namibian Head of State enjoys the right to revoke any honour once a decorated person 'shows disaffection towards or acts contrary to the national interest' .15 Other countries' laws contain a similarly broad prerogative of the Head of State to revoke awards at any time. 4. The recipient does not acquire full property rights over the state award.
In Austria, for example, 'the decoration remains the property of the federal state, and it shall be returned to the Chancellery of Honorific Orders after the decorated person passes away' .16 Property rights over the award are also limited when the medal is exempted from market exchanges: Turkish law bars the award from being 'sold, transferred, donated or reshaped';17 and in the United Arab Emirates, while heirs may retain the orders in their possession, 'none of them shall have the right to wear them' .18 5. The legally defined reasons for award conferrals are highly contingent.
They are usually phrased in vague terms of extraordinary deeds in the interest of the state. The wording in the United States, for instance, is that the President may bestow a medal 'to any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3)  Head of State allows the acceptance as an exception). A usual wording in this direction is, to take one example, 'except with the prior approval of the President in writing, no … citizen of Zambia shall accept a title of honour, decoration or other dignity from any foreign state' .26 In Singapore, an unauthorised wearing of foreign insignia makes one 'guilty of an offence' and punishable.27 In Portugal, citizens shall request to their Head of State the authorisation of the acceptance of foreign awards, which is to be published in the Official Gazette.28 The list generically outlines the most frequent types of recurrent norms as found in national laws on state awards; the exact wording varies from state to state, and not all polities exhibit all of these norms. But together, the catalogue summarises common rules on honorific orders around the world.

The Peace-and-Power Paradox behind the Laws of State Awards
What inferences do these recurrent legal norms allow for? With a view towards whether a rule accentuates, on the one hand, the semantics of sovereign what happens after it, and certainly no enforceable catalogue of conditions that are to be met before one 'earns' the reward. In the end, 'amity' (or, in more political semantics, 'raison d'état') suffices as a reason behind any bestowal. 22 LT -2002 stateness and exclusive power claims, or, on the other hand, the semantics of interstate togetherness dispensing with sovereign pretensions, one may structure the norms into three clusters. One of the clusters condenses a focus on political power, another one on diplomatic peace, and a final one inextricably entangles both peace and power. The first four legal norms -that is, the prerogative of the Head of State, the official iconography, the giving state's right to withdraw the award at any time and the limitation of property rights over the award -can be summed up under the cluster of power. This power-centred cluster contains semantic variants of sovereignty and statehood. It emphasises the sole authority of the ruler behind every bestowal and revocation; it reproduces official state symbols and spreads them in material-visual dimensions; it imposes on the subjects restrictive rules on treatment of the benevolent gift. These norms underline that the state award is an artefact of power-constituted sovereignty and sacrosanct statehood.
The legal rules numbered 5 to 7 -that is, the wide scope of discretion for award bestowals, the solemn ceremony and the granting of privilegestogether build a cluster of peace. The state can observe the diplomatic system's dynamics and decide spontaneously when and to whom an honorific conferral seems appropriate. The state award is so contingent that it can be used spontaneously to fuel a relation with a further signal of peace and friendship,29 without hindrance from cumbersome domestic-legal processes (as opposed to the case of international treaty ratifications, for instance). The signal of having closely observed the foreign, of having valued their deeds highly, of having cherished them so much that one decided to honour them officially is already structurally counterintuitive for a sovereign entity. The actual ceremony underlines this improbably benign diplomatic character even more, for it ritually generates a symbol of shared togetherness, of momentarily merged sovereignties, if not of a (structurally improbable) debasement of the self, conjoined with the (structurally improbable) elevation of the other.30 The conferral of additional privileges, often lasting for a lifetime, emphasises the giving state's commitment towards its peace-loving behaviour even beyond the unique moment. All these norms signal peace while invisibilising power -for they invisibilise the 29 Cf. Bjola and Kornprobst 2013, 123; Söderström, Åkebo, and Jarstad 2020. Some bestowals may not seem to signal amity but rather enmity (e.g., when they honour dissidents), which illustrates the indeterminacy behind the peace-and-power paradox. 30 Pacher 2018; Neumann 1996; but see Nordin and Smith 2018. world political structure of separateness and estrangement,31 they invisibilise that both the giver and the recipient semiotically equal hermetically shut sovereign entities.
In the first cluster of legal norms, the state award appeared as a 'form' for the 'medium' of power, while in the second cluster, the state award appeared as a 'form' for the 'medium' of peace.32 The final legal rule (number 8) combines the two preceding clusters: a state prohibits its citizens to accept foreign state awards unless the Head of State allows it under exceptional circumstances. This norm is subsumable under neither purely peace nor purely power, but rather comprise both aspects inextricably. It first conforms to the structure of sovereignty because it bars a semiotic signifier of a foreign polity (the foreign award) from entering the country. But in a second step, it relativises this power-conforming rule by allowing the semiotic entrance of foreign awards if the Head of State grants an exemption.
Moreover, this norm not only reflects, but also invisibilises, the diplomatic peace-and-power paradox: it hides the paradox behind a sequence of 'powerfirst' (starting with a general prohibition of foreign signifiers) and 'peace-later' (proceeding with the allowance of selected signifiers). The norm thus conceals the paradox through a temporal device (prior vs. posterior) and a social device (all countries vs. selected countries) but it cannot fully eliminate diplomacy's structural indeterminacy, an indeterminacy oscillating between the sovereign apprehension of a foreign threat and the display of interstate friendship.33

4
Diplomacy's Self-negation The paradox lies even deeper. It is not merely about state awards but, rather, reflects the deep structure of the diplomatic system. Behind the indeterminacy of the paradox hides diplomacy's self-negation. This becomes visible once the domestic legal norm that prohibits citizens to accept foreign state awards is translated into the higher abstraction of the international sphere. With this doctrinal step, the addressee of the prohibition changes from a polity's subjects to the totality of sovereign states. The norm 31 Der Derian 1987; Sharp 2009. 32 On the systems-theoretical notion of (an abstract, invisible) 'medium' that attaches itself onto (concrete, visible) 'forms' , see Luhmann 2012, 113-120;Albert 2016, 57. 33 Bjola 2013.
would thus be read not as a prohibition of individuals to accept foreign state awards, but as a prohibition of states to give state awards to foreign subjects. With greater abstraction, the consequence becomes even more far-reaching, for if one categorised the state award as a gift exchanged between sovereigns, then the principle would be one prohibiting states to exchange diplomatic gifts. But if diplomatic gifts signal peace between sovereigns, and if signals of peace between sovereign power holders are the sole domain of diplomacy, then the (mutated) norm equals, to the extreme, a prohibition of states to use diplomacy. But where would such a prohibition of diplomacy come from? As all international norms are made by the states themselves through interstate relational practices that aim to foster peace -that is, through diplomacythat conjectural norm would itself draw from diplomatic practices of peace. The norm that prohibits diplomacy thus arises from diplomacy itself; it is a peace-generated norm that prohibits peace. And this self-negation is the ultimate end of the paradox, an end hidden in simple domestic rules about honorific orders.

5
The Invisibilisation of the Paradox All systems are grounded in a paradox which they invisibilise.34 This is why it requires theoretical labour (here: legal-doctrinal efforts) to uncover this fundamental indeterminacy. With regards to state award laws, the diplomatic system knows of various layers of invisibilisation. The case of state awards exhibits at least three such 'tricks' . One is variation: there is a plurality of states with a plurality of diplomatic tools and a plurality of state award laws and thus a plurality of combinations of legal norms, some of which may contain the peace-and-power paradox visibly while others hide it more effectively.35 Another device to invisibilise the paradox occurs through a temporal unfolding: a sequence of general prohibition first (power), followed by a selected allowance later (peace). For example, at time t 1 , countries enact a law prohibiting citizens to accept foreign awards, but allow an exception under certain conditions at time t 2 -as if what they first apprehended as enmity turns later out to be amity. Cases when 'any citizen … shall obtain permission of the Government' prior to 'receiving 34 Luhmann 1995a, 33;1995b. 35 Luhmann 2012 any honours or decorations from a foreign country'36 belong to this category. In other words, the two opposing values of amity and enmity are identical -and herein lies the paradox; but by claiming the foreign award to signify enmity at t 1 but amity under certain conditions at t 2 , the paradox becomes invisibilised. A third device uses a social unfolding of the paradox; that is, the prohibition to accept foreign state awards from most countries but not from some other ones. For instance, Australia bans the acceptance of honours from other sovereigns (for they may signify foreign power) unless the honorific order comes from a list of countries specified in a regulation (as if they then ceased to signify foreign power).37 These are mere assumptions about how the diplomatic system invisibilises38 the simultaneous presence of power (enmity, threat) and peace (amity, cooperation). There may be other devices of invisibilisation such as the strategic elicitation of positive emotions39 -which is especially pertinent in the case of state awards. A more systematic approach to such de-paradoxification techniques, and the question why scholars of diplomacy often fall into the trap of this invisibilisation, must remain open issues for future research.

Conclusion: The Paradox Is Everywhere
There is a structural, ineliminable indeterminacy behind state awards, an indeterminacy pointing to the diplomatic system's paradoxical function of enabling 'peace' between holders of 'power' . It is for this reason that 'the aim of peace [cannot] be enforced … without the threat of war' .40 As a consequence, in any diplomatic gift exchange, there will always be mistrust, always an apprehension of a foreign animus dominandi, always a parasitic trace of power and centralised capacities of physical violence. War is the ultimate constituent of diplomatic gifts, for war looms behind all diplomacy. There is a temptation for diplomatic theories to avoid this paradox simply because the diplomatic system itself conceals it. It would be more fruitful not to circumvent the paradox but, rather, to uncover it and its invisibilisation in every single diplomatic communication. In the accreditation of an ambassador, in a conflictual argument in multilateral organisations, in the negotiation 36 A wording from a Nepalese law (cf. NP -2007, Art. 19 in the dataset mentioned in footnote 14). 37 Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia 2019. 38 Or 'reconciles' , 'harmonises' , 'exceptionalises' , to use terms from Kornprobst 2019, 30. 39 McConnell 2018; Wong 2020, 84. 40 Hippler and Vec 2015, 15.