Call for Proposals | Forum: Diplomacy and Domestic Society
This HJD Forum will look at the implications for diplomacy of greater people involvement in diplomacy, as part of the wider governance process. The Forum will interrogate the functions and practices of varying modes of people engagement in external relations in terms of diplomatic innovation. Such participation or deliberation is generally framed in the context of democratic revitalization but could equally serve other and even opposite purposes.
Forum Editors: HwaJung Kim (Ewha Womans University) and Jan Melissen (Leiden University)
Length of proposals: approx. 200 words
Deadline: 31 January (CET) 2022
Publication: Volume 17 (2022)
Submission: hwajungkim@ewha.ac.kr and j.melissen@fgga.leidenuniv.nl
Background
Across the world governments pay more attention to their domestic environment. Changes in state-society relations have always impacted on state behaviour, foreign policy and the practice of diplomacy, and recently there is a trend towards increasing engagement with people or nationals, as distinct from civil society actors in multi-stakeholder diplomacy.
This HJD Forum will look at the implications for diplomacy of greater people or citizen involvement in diplomacy as part of the wider governance process involving different actors. The Forum will interrogate the functions and practices of varying modes of people engagement in external relations in terms of diplomatic innovation. Such participation or deliberation is generally framed in the context of democratic revitalization, complementing representative democracy, but could equally serve other and even opposite purposes. We propose to discuss the agency of domestic society in external relations processes and diplomatic practices that have become more inclusive, inter alia contributing to a greater density of the infrastructure of global governance, but we are also open to other perspectives.
The Forum aims to give an impetus to new thinking and research on the societization of diplomacy. We welcome theoretical, empirical, historical, and future-oriented essays on how diplomacy, as a practice on the interface of the system of states and transnational relations, is progressively enmeshed with society and in fact also with politics. In most scholarship on diplomacy, whether historical or contemporary, attention for society has been decidedly circumscribed and we would welcome more scholarly effort in the direction proposed here.
Style and content
Apart from being short (3.000 words), Forum Essays are typically more argumentative than original research articles. They are meant to be a source of inspiration for future academic research and debate. HJD Forums have also proven to be a stimulus for class discussion in graduate seminars. Contributions are usually informed by academic research, but we also welcome pieces by practitioners.