Just Greasing the Wheels?: Mediating Difference or the Evasion of Power and Responsibility in Diplomacy

Rebecca Adler-Nissen

doi:10.1163/1871191X-12341303

Just Greasing the Wheels? Mediating Difference or the Evasion of Power and Responsibility in Diplomacy

Rebecca Adler-Nissen

Centre for European Politics

4 Citations (Scopus)

1247 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We traditionally see diplomats as mediators.They build bridges between nations and they repair them when they break. During a crisis, diplomats ‘keep it cool’ and try to prevent the crisis from worsening into armed conflict. Diplomats are the men and women who keep the international system running despite its fundamentally conflictual nature. At least, this is how diplomats have portrayed their profession for hundreds of years. However,the focus of this contribution is how diplomacy in general is seen as mediating among states, peoples and ideas — and why this is an incomplete view. This short contribution is therefore concerned with the way in which scholarly understandings of diplomacy as the mediation of estrangement raise — but also evade — questions of power and responsibility.

Original language	English
Article number	5
Journal	The Hague Journal of Diplomacy
Volume	10
Issue number	1
Pages (from-to)	22-28
Number of pages	7
ISSN	1871-1901
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-12341303
Publication status	Published - 27 Jan 2015

Keywords

Faculty of Social Sciences

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1163/1871191X-12341303

Just Greasing the Wheels

Cite this

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AB - We traditionally see diplomats as mediators.They build bridges between nations and they repair them when they break. During a crisis, diplomats ‘keep it cool’ and try to prevent the crisis from worsening into armed conflict. Diplomats are the men and women who keep the international system running despite its fundamentally conflictual nature. At least, this is how diplomats have portrayed their profession for hundreds of years. However,the focus of this contribution is how diplomacy in general is seen as mediating among states, peoples and ideas — and why this is an incomplete view. This short contribution is therefore concerned with the way in which scholarly understandings of diplomacy as the mediation of estrangement raise — but also evade — questions of power and responsibility.

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