Symbolic Power in European Diplomacy: The Struggle Between National Foreign Services and the EU's External Action Service
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Standard
Symbolic Power in European Diplomacy: The Struggle Between National Foreign Services and the EU's External Action Service. / Adler-Nissen, Rebecca.
I: Review of International Studies, Bind 40, Nr. 4, 2014, s. 657-681.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Symbolic Power in European Diplomacy: The Struggle Between National Foreign Services and the EU's External Action Service
AU - Adler-Nissen, Rebecca
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - National diplomacy is challenged by the rise of non-state actors from transnational companies to non-governmental organisations. In trying to explain these challenges, scholars tend to either focus on a specific new actor or argue that states will remain the dominant diplomatic players. This article develops an alternative Bourdieu-inspired framework addressing symbolic power. It conceptualises diplomacy in terms of a social field with agents (field incumbents and newcomers alike) who co-construct and reproduce the field by struggling for dominant positions. The framework is applied to the EU's new diplomatic service (the European External Action Service, EEAS), which is one of the most important foreign policy inventions in Europe to date. I show that the EEAS does not challenge national diplomacy in a material sense – but at a symbolic level. The EEAS questions the state's meta-capital, that is, its monopoly of symbolic power and this explains the counter-strategies adopted by national foreign services. The struggles to define the ‘genuine’ diplomat reveal a rupture in the European diplomatic field, pointing towards a transformation of European statehood and the emergence of a hybrid form of diplomacy. A focus on symbolic power opens up new avenues for the study of transformations of authority in world politics.
AB - National diplomacy is challenged by the rise of non-state actors from transnational companies to non-governmental organisations. In trying to explain these challenges, scholars tend to either focus on a specific new actor or argue that states will remain the dominant diplomatic players. This article develops an alternative Bourdieu-inspired framework addressing symbolic power. It conceptualises diplomacy in terms of a social field with agents (field incumbents and newcomers alike) who co-construct and reproduce the field by struggling for dominant positions. The framework is applied to the EU's new diplomatic service (the European External Action Service, EEAS), which is one of the most important foreign policy inventions in Europe to date. I show that the EEAS does not challenge national diplomacy in a material sense – but at a symbolic level. The EEAS questions the state's meta-capital, that is, its monopoly of symbolic power and this explains the counter-strategies adopted by national foreign services. The struggles to define the ‘genuine’ diplomat reveal a rupture in the European diplomatic field, pointing towards a transformation of European statehood and the emergence of a hybrid form of diplomacy. A focus on symbolic power opens up new avenues for the study of transformations of authority in world politics.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - diplomati
KW - EU
KW - Udenrigspolitik
KW - bourdieu
KW - FUT
KW - EEAS
KW - udenrigstjenesten
KW - udenrigsministerier
KW - symbolsk magt
KW - symbolic power
KW - felt-teori
KW - Ashton
KW - ambassader
KW - Lissabon-traktaten
U2 - /10.1017/S0260210513000326
DO - /10.1017/S0260210513000326
M3 - Journal article
VL - 40
SP - 657
EP - 681
JO - Review of International Studies
JF - Review of International Studies
SN - 0260-2105
IS - 4
ER -
ID: 63048931