TY - JOUR
T1 - Track-change diplomacy: Technology, affordances and the practice of international negotiations
AU - Adler-Nissen, Rebecca
AU - Drieschova, Alena
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - How does technology influence international negotiations? This article explores "track-change diplomacy," that is, how diplomats use information and communication technology (ICT) such as word processing software and mobile devices to collaboratively edit and negotiate documents. To analyze the widespread but understudied phenomenon of track-change diplomacy, the article adopts a practice-oriented approach to technology, developing the concept of affordance: the way a tool or technology simultaneously enables and constrains the tasks users can possibly perform with it. The article shows how digital ICT affords shareability, visualization, and immediacy of information, thus shaping the temporality and power dynamics of international negotiations. These three affordances have significant consequences for how states construct and promote national interests; how diplomats reach compromises among a large number of states (as text edits in collective drafting exercises); and how power plays out in international negotiations. Drawing on ethnographic methods, including participant observation of negotiations between the European Union's member states, as well as in-depth interviews, the analysis casts new light on these negotiations, where documents become the site of both semantic and political struggle. Rather than delivering on the technology's promise of keeping track and reinforcing national oversight in negotiations, we argue that track-change diplomacy can in fact lead to a loss of control, challenging existing understandings of diplomacy.
AB - How does technology influence international negotiations? This article explores "track-change diplomacy," that is, how diplomats use information and communication technology (ICT) such as word processing software and mobile devices to collaboratively edit and negotiate documents. To analyze the widespread but understudied phenomenon of track-change diplomacy, the article adopts a practice-oriented approach to technology, developing the concept of affordance: the way a tool or technology simultaneously enables and constrains the tasks users can possibly perform with it. The article shows how digital ICT affords shareability, visualization, and immediacy of information, thus shaping the temporality and power dynamics of international negotiations. These three affordances have significant consequences for how states construct and promote national interests; how diplomats reach compromises among a large number of states (as text edits in collective drafting exercises); and how power plays out in international negotiations. Drawing on ethnographic methods, including participant observation of negotiations between the European Union's member states, as well as in-depth interviews, the analysis casts new light on these negotiations, where documents become the site of both semantic and political struggle. Rather than delivering on the technology's promise of keeping track and reinforcing national oversight in negotiations, we argue that track-change diplomacy can in fact lead to a loss of control, challenging existing understandings of diplomacy.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - Practice Theory
KW - International Relations Theory
KW - Diplomacy
KW - Negotiations
KW - Power
KW - STS
KW - ANT
KW - Affordance
KW - European Union
KW - participant observation
KW - Interviews
KW - interpretive studies
KW - Documents
KW - International relations
KW - Technology
KW - ICT
KW - Information and communication technologies (ICTs)
KW - Digital Data
KW - social data science
KW - Digital technologies
KW - anthropological method
KW - Ethnography
KW - Qualitative case study
KW - diplomats
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0020-8833
JO - International Studies Quarterly
JF - International Studies Quarterly
ER -