Diplomacy and Statecraft, 16: 331–339, 2005
Copyright © Taylor & Francis, Inc.
ISSN 0959-2296 print / 0000-0000 online
DOI: 10.1080/09592290590948388
Diplomacy and Statecraft162Taylor & FrancisTaylor and Francis 325 Chestnut StreetPhiladelphiaPA191060959-2296FDPSTaylor & Francis, Inc.5846710.1080/09592290590948388200519The Diplomacy of Non-State ActorsRichard Langhorne
THE DIPLOMACY OF NON-STATE ACTORS
Richard Langhorne
After nearly a century in gestation, the diplomatic system developed by,
and for, states since the seventeenth century was crowned and codified by
the international convention on Diplomatic Relations signed at Vienna in
1961. It is an irony that its making marked both the culmination and the
beginning of the end of classical diplomacy. Thirty years later, the global
bipolar system collapsed. With it went the last stage of what was still
essentially a version of classical diplomacy in which the bulk of international
transactions remained international, that is to say they passed
between states and between entities created by states. In truth, the collapse
of the USSR and consequential termination of a US/USSR dominated
international system was not the cause of contemporary changes so much
as its occasion. The underlying condition had been changing for some time
but had been largely hidden behind the apparently solid edifice which the
cold war had created. When the veil was ripped away, the degree to which
things had changed was revealed. The main lines of change can be quickly
summarized: there has been a sharp increase in the number and activity of
global actors who are not states; the information revolution has changed
the playing field as far as information gathering is concerned; diplomacy
now involves many more participants who are experts in matters other
than diplomacy and hold their positions outside foreign ministries; it is no
longer possible or rational to try to determine what any particular national
interest is and pursue it; there has been a vast increase in the importance of
economic diplomacy, particularly where governments are seeking inward
investment flows or giving development assistance; and the sudden rise in
the number of states has brought an end to the idea that representation
among states should be broadly universal. The net effect of all this has
been to threaten the continuing role of both foreign ministries and overseas
I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Jonathan Bach and James Muldron; and to express
thanks for the support given by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to the study of diplomacy
and non-state actors.
332 Richard Langhorne
missions and relatively speaking to raise the profile of heads of government
and other parts of the government machine domestically. Externally it has
similarly increased the significance of global institutions and globally
operating private entities, both public and commercial.
THE END OF THE DIPLOMATIC PRIMACY OF STATES
The strategic weapons and administrative demands of the cold war had
developed a communications revolution of such power that it escaped the
control of its makers and began to create an independent, self-generating,
life of its own. The result of that has been the emergence of a wide range of
human activities which owe little or nothing to geographical location, time
of day and, most important of all, to government permission or regulation.
Much of this activity has little direct political or diplomatic significance
except in so far as it weakens government authority in a general way,
diminishes its role and thus loosens the bonds of loyalty between populations
and their governments. This can have indirect but significant results in
the sense that weakening state structures lead to state collapses and thence
to domestic political violence. These episodes have proved to be very difficult
for the traditional international and diplomatic machinery to deal with.
The result has been that other non-state organizations have adopted much
higher profile roles, particularly humanitarian and human rights entities.
This in turn has meant that the mix of groups at very different levels of
competence operating within the general global system has become much
more complex with corresponding consequences for diplomacy. There is
therefore a logical if indirect link between the communications revolution
which underpins the processes of globalization and a contemporary evolution
in diplomacy. This evolution is ending the principle that only states and
their creations have the right to diplomatic representation and bringing
inexperienced, uncertain and sometimes reluctant actors onto the
diplomatic stage.
This is why the management of global issues increasingly involves
new actors beyond the state. When crises seem to lie beyond the control
of governments or the relevant intergovernmental organizations, “nonstate”
actors come to play significant roles. They appear in the familiar
guises of non-governmental organizations, corporations, and intergovernmental
organizations and they promise levels of efficiency and
responsiveness that transcend the constraints of the state. At the same
time, the category of “non-state” actors often seems little more than a
cacophony of forms and interests with no clear means of articulating
their respective roles vis à vis each other or the state. The ensuing proliferation
of new actors has begun a significant period of reorganization
of the mechanisms and actors that make up the international system.
The Diplomacy of Non-State Actors 333
One of the clearest manifestations of the change lies in the changing
character of diplomacy. States, the venerable managers of the system,
now incontrovertibly share the global stage with public and private
entities, with whom they must also share the machinery of global
politics. Some of the newly powerful non-state actors are developing
formal means of participating in the system, others do so more or less
accidentally, some do not do so at all. The cumulative effect is an
important evolution in the practice of representation.
This crisis of representation emerges most clearly when the finelytuned
diplomatic system of the traditional state confronts the ad hoc
emergence of globalized networks of authorities and entities. These latter
are just beginning to appoint representatives in the face of necessity. Past
experience demonstrates the need for an accepted system of representation
and the emergence of credible representatives. In the contemporary
situation, this has yet to happen in any complete way; nonetheless
evolving methods for routing and validating communication between
actors are developing into recognizable patterns, and in this can be seen
the germination of a new diplomatic system.
As we have seen, diplomacy is a necessary and natural part of the
international order, though it need not be limited to nation-states, as it
was not prior to the seventeenth century. It is supported by all the
reciprocal necessities that underlie the idea of raison de système and
thus it shapes the system even as it is shaped by it. This symbiotic
character of diplomacy is epitomized by the process of representation,
understood as the reciprocal recognition of an actor as a legitimate
party with the power to influence the both the flow of affairs and the
functioning of a given system. Recognition of a state by other states is
the holy grail of legitimacy. But although states today are richly
equipped with a highly developed method of representing themselves
to each other or to associations of states, their governments and taxpaying
constituents are no longer certain that they need the services,
particularly the information supplying services, that the traditional
diplomatic machine delivered. Nor are governments sure that the
essentially inter-state structure which history imposed upon the practice
of diplomacy quite fits the contemporary, globalizing world. Thus they
face a crisis because they do not wish to pay for a complex machine
which they no longer quite believe does the job they want done. Moreover
the situation is worsened by the fact that they are also not sure
what job it is that they do want done. New actors partly fill, and partly
exacerbate, this discrepancy. But these new actors similarly face a crisis
of representation because it is unclear who is to represent them,
what sort of representation is meaningful, and how their role is to be
made credible. Moreover, these new actors face problems that are more
334 Richard Langhorne
fundamental in that they are unsure of the source of their authority and
are plagued by doubts and questions about their legitimacy as full participants
in contemporary international relations.
CHANGING FORMS OF REPRESENTATION
Thus the changing practices of representation today are both reactions to
and harbingers of new diplomatic forms that mark wider changes in the
global political system. Just as diplomatic immunity evolved when it
became clear to an early society that it might be better to hear the message
than reject the messenger, in a similar fashion, new customary rules of the
game are emerging to allow the international system to function securely
and efficiently. The difficult task at this historical juncture is to identify
and describe them accurately.
The desire for recognition is driven by five familiar core needs,
common to all actors. All of these are interlocked, yet require somewhat
different methods of pursuit. When a form of representation emerges that
can satisfy at least most of these core needs it achieves customary status.
The modern circumstances under which such forms can emerge are
becoming clear enough. The new forms of representation are being moulded
during the growing humanitarian, environmental, economic and social
crises that elicit intervention from old and new actors. It is the interactions
of these actors in response to crises that force the issue of representation.
Intervention used to be carried out primarily by the old actors in the
system—national states and their organizations. As many states have
been reducing their global networks, new actors, such as humanitarian
and human rights NGOs, have begun to (re)create them, but in an ad hoc
manner. Other new actors—the global markets in capital, stocks and
currencies, for example—are steadily entering the field. The diverse
actors that are increasingly involved in interventions can be divided into
broad, though by no means exhaustive, categories.
The first consists of the traditional elements of the international system:
states, governments, and associations of states. States function as the
legal successors of the earlier European version of the concept of supreme
sovereign territorial power with attendant rights and duties. Governments
are the executors of a state’s rights, and can exist even when the state
itself is absent, nascent or otherwise unrealized. The most well-known
example of this today concerns the Palestinian Authority, but the so far
unique continued cyber existence of Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation is
another interesting example. Finally there is the more complicated matter
of associations of states, such as the United Nations, the IMF and the
WTO. The European Union is a separate case because of the uncertainty
about whether it is a proto-state or an association of states. Clearly these
The Diplomacy of Non-State Actors 335
“intergovernmental” organizations have a dynamic of their own that
exceeds their original mandate of representing member-states interests,
and that dynamic increases as contemporary conditions conspire to adapt
the roles of the IMF and the WTO. Yet their legitimacy and funding still
rests with their member-states. For the sake of clarity it is convenient to
define an association of states as three or more states that consult
regularly in a formal fashion requiring membership.
The second includes that all-purpose term, non-governmental organizations,
whose negative definition robs the term of its dynamic connotations.
A better term is Transnational Social Movement Organizations (TSMOs)
to describe a wide swathe of voluntary and charitable organizations, but
restricted to those whose membership comprises, and whose operational
sphere includes, different states. Clearly not all NGOs are social movements
in the strict sense, but their normative intentions and their cross-border
activities make them stand out. Transnational Commercial Organizations
(TCOs) make up the last category, including corporations and business
groups whose operations, staff and infrastructure are located in different
states. It is also necessary to include self-organizing phenomena that defy
easy classification, such as financial markets and stock exchanges.
These actors find themselves intertwined in unexpected ways by the
exigencies of crises from droughts to war, from bursting financial bubbles
to the disintegration of the state apparatus. The interventions that arise
around these new crises determine the type of interaction crucial to
emerging forms of representation. These interventions fall into three
broad categories: immediate crisis, the threat of social and administrative
collapse, and regulation.
Crisis intervention is the most familiar in response to an immediate outbreak
of violence or armed conflict, such as Bosnia, Kosovo, or Rwanda.
While intra- and inter-state conflict is the most prominent, other forms
include economic crises, as in the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis and the
1995 Mexican Peso crisis. Additionally, there are complex humanitarian
emergencies, such as combating the AIDS epidemic in Africa, or environmental
catastrophes often compounded by chaos or war, as in Somalia. A
step removed from the immediacy of crises is intervention where social
and administrative weakness threatens stability—long-term efforts to
shape development, prevent crises and institutionalize networks and cooperation.
Here intergovernmental agencies, states and TSMOs work on poverty
reduction, public health issues, conflict prevention, and a myriad of
other important but less media-attractive essentially humanitarian undertakings.
“Development” projects, both traditional and entrepreneurial,
such as private–public partnerships, fall into this category.
In a broader sense, we find regulatory intervention, a category that
includes efforts by non-state actors of all types (including business, labor,
336 Richard Langhorne
and consumer groups) to influence standard setting and maintain a voice
on the floor or at the table. Examples include demands by TSMOs for an
enhanced role in the World Bank or business lobbying that nears the
appearance of a continuous representation of interests.
When actors engage each other in versions of the above interventions
they face a paradox: they are propelled into action by the lack of clarity
about who provides public and private goods in the international system,
and are thus forced to clarify their individual roles as best they can. This
tension is one of the pressures leading to the emergence of new forms. Its
first effect enables the transfer of functions either formerly (and formally)
ascribed to other actors or the creation of entirely new functions relevant
to the crises and forms of intervention. The second effect allows for institutionalization
and formalized means of communication necessary for
consistency and effectiveness. What emerges are practices which create
precedent and new forms of representation.
ASSOCIATIONS OF STATES
Associations of states have a long history of struggling with this problem
and the emerging practices are many. The UN is perhaps the furthest
along in this regard due to the frequency and scope of the interventions it
has undertaken. Among the practices that have been developed, the most
visible is the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG).
The dispatching of a SRSG to a conflict zone was at first rather rare and
largely ad hoc. But almost any type of intervention by the UN now
involves the assignment of a Special Representative or Envoy to represent
the organization to any and all other actors involved in the situation. So
not only are there SRSGs for specific conflicts like Kosovo or East
Timor, but also “thematic” Special Representatives, such as the Special
Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.
This practice is now being replicated by other organizations in the UN
system, like the World Health Organization who, for example, recently
appointed the president of the Nippon Foundation as WHO’s special
ambassador of its Global Alliance for the Elimination of Hansen’s
Disease (also known as leprosy), as well as other intergovernmental
organizations on the regional level. It is worth noting that the European
Union is trying to develop more conventional mechanisms of representation
as compared to other intergovernmental organizations. The role of
the European Commission has been steadily broadened from its primary
function of regulating and managing the European common market to
encompass executive “powers” in political and foreign affairs. The EU
demonstrates acute difficulties in finding the political will to make a reality
of common policies, and never more so than during the crisis over
The Diplomacy of Non-State Actors 337
disarming Iraq; but the fact that a quasi-foreign ministry for the EU has
been instituted in the last few years, with Chris Patten and Javier Solana
acting as the EU’s foreign policy ministers, indicates that the EU may be
starting to move down a similar path to that which states took earlier
rather than developing “new” forms of representation.
THE DIPLOMACY OF GLOBAL BUSINESS
Global businesses such as Microsoft, BPAmoco, Philips, Sony, Mitsubishi,
and General Motors have increasingly found themselves intervening in a
variety of crises around the world either to protect their investments or
buttress the integration of emerging and transitioning economies into the
global economy. As the process of industry consolidation continues it
further concentrates resources and assets of whole industries into fewer
firms. The power and reach of transnational corporations and the global
strategic alliances they are building now rival that of states. The prominence
of corporations and their expanding interests within the global
political economy has catapulted many corporate executives onto the
global political stage and into some very unconventional situations. An
indication of the changing relationship between the private and public
sectors is the treatment accorded CEOs of the largest transnational corporations
by governments and IGOs. During the heyday of the economic boom
of the 1990s, it was common for CEOs like Microsoft founder, Bill Gates,
to be given “head of state” treatment by governments of countries they
visit. Ostensibly, meetings between private sector leaders and public officials
at the highest level are not out of the ordinary and have been going on
for many years, but today the practice is different in that such meetings are
not strictly confined to discussions about business ventures and investment.
Indeed, the conversation between business and governments is much more
far reaching and involves issues of social and political development. Similarly,
global commercial enterprises have started to develop more elaborate
collective instruments, such as the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development and the Intellectual Property Committee, to represent their
common interests within intergovernmental deliberations and to be more
effective when interacting or engaging states and TSMOs, particularly on
environmental, economic and social policy questions.
Companies have had to build an organizational capacity to represent
themselves effectively to organizations and communities that were not
among the company’s traditional stakeholders. The normal mechanisms
of large transnational corporations—namely, corporate communications,
marketing or advertising departments—were not equipped to be an in-house
“foreign ministry” and this function could not be outsourced to a public
relations agency. Increasingly corporations are hiring retired diplomats to
338 Richard Langhorne
advise the CEO and senior management or to lead an international affairs
division as a way to manage the increasingly complex relations of the
company with other firms in the industry, states and intergovernmental
organizations, and the ever changing networks of non-governmental
organizations. As more and more companies acquire talent and experience
in this area, the forms of representation for transnational commercial
organizations will become more formalized and uniform, thus expanding
corporate representation within the existing state diplomatic system.
THE ENTRY OF PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS
Finally, the most complicated practices are those of transnational social
movement organizations. This is in part due to the immense diversity of
actors and their rapid rise to prominence in global affairs. The traditional
roles of TSMOs and private voluntary organizations have been dramatically
altered in recent years. They are no longer on the margins of the
international system. Organizations like the International Rescue Committee,
Médecins Sans Frontières, Amnesty International, and Greenpeace have
started to develop a range of mechanisms to communicate their views, to
coordinate their actions and to clarify their roles vis-à-vis states, intergovernmental
organizations, and transnational corporations. The different
complex humanitarian emergencies that have brought these organizations
together with the other international actors have pushed many TSMOs to
build or expand the “diplomatic” capacity within their organizations. For
example, the bigger and better endowed TSMOs, like Amnesty International
or Save the Children International, have upgraded their organization’s
representation to the United Nations system, expanding their
office(s) at the UN in New York or Geneva with more professional staff.
Other organizations have taken steps to professionalize their representation
to the UN, a function that had been primarily covered by volunteers—
a practice that is still very common among smaller TSMOs who cannot
afford to set up an office or have paid staff dedicated to its representation at
the UN. Yet, it must be acknowledged that most TSMOs do not have the
resources to build such capacities and many are still experimenting with
alternative methods and practices that are less costly and leverage existing
capabilities through applications of modern telecommunications. It is most
likely that transnational social movement organizations will produce the
more innovative and novel forms of representation in the years ahead.
Already the old dynamics that characterize TSMO relations with the public
and private sectors—largely confrontational—is shifting and new patterns
of interaction, which are clearly less contentious, are starting to surface. It
is still too early to tell how enduring this shift in interaction is and how
much it will change the international diplomatic system.
The Diplomacy of Non-State Actors 339
However much the first stages of the Iraq crisis during 2003 emphasized
the continuing significance of traditional state-based diplomatic behaviour,
these examples demonstrate that since the end of the Cold War a convergence
of circumstance, opportunity, and necessity has provoked a reconfiguration
of the way state and non-state actors interact and deal with each
other; and that faint outlines of a new international diplomatic system
beyond the traditional diplomatic practices of states can be discerned.
With business and non-governmental organizations on near equal footing
with states and associations of states within the international system,
a triangular arrangement appears to be emerging, though it is not clear
how stable this arrangement is or how long it will last under the pressures
of globalization.
The finely honed traditional machinery of inter-state diplomacy is
coming to seem increasingly like an antiquated machine of almost
baroque refinement. The methods which secure reciprocal recognition
and allow actors to exert influence—the mechanism of representation
itself—has become hazy as the ascendant actors fit uneasily with conventional
notions of representation. This is not only because these actors
are ‘not states,’ but because they tend to be self-organizing—growing and
mutating through informal communication networks which cut across the
already thickly-textured traditional international system. The irony is that
the very elements that allow for their rapid growth also mitigate against
their congealing into clearly representable units. The properties of globalization
make a neat progression from diverse to unitary actors unlikely.
Accordingly, focussing on new types of actors calls into question the
traditionally conceived functions of diplomacy. Here we encounter the
constraints of existing vocabulary: the very term “non-state actors” implies,
by negative definition, that such organizations can only be conceptualized
within the general scheme as defined by states. This may prove to be
severely misleading in the long run. Nonetheless “non-state actors” do
seek representation within intergovernmental organizations and influence
among states with the explicit purpose of affecting state practices. Is this
evidence of the resilience of the state system or evidence of its fundamental
transformation? Are state governments fighting a rear-guard action or
spurring on these changes by “outsourcing” touchy or costly tasks to the
murky non-governmental realm? The answer is both, and the challenge
for policy-makers and scholars is to not to be too eager to proclaim the
stabilization of a new formal international order, for as its groundwork is
being laid, the ground itself is shifting. Rather, the challenge is to chart
the emerging forms of representation. We are likely see a shift from the
economic logic of comparative advantage to a logic of collaborative
advantage, where power lies in the ability to work with and through new
constellations of actors.