New Realities in Foreign Affairs: Diplomacy in the 21st Century

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The most profound effect on the actual character of diplomacy of 21st century global changes is that public spheres are multiplying in modern states, especially in Western democracies, leading international academics, practitioners and observers stress in a new report.
“The fracturing of our societies, a process which is accelerating this century, has given rise to this fragmentation. Our homes, professional worlds, education, interests, experiences, and ideological orientations are increasingly differentiated,” according to the report titled New Realities in Foreign Affairs: Diplomacy in the 21st Century, published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
“Therefore in diplomacy we are engaging with and responding to an increasing variety of actors that span many different and coexisting public spheres. These diverse public spheres exist side by side, some­times without touching; they can also work together or collide and split into new particles of publics."
This process of pluralization is likely to intensify, stresses the report, edited by Volker Stanzel. It adds that the process affects a society not only from the inside, but also works inter-societally – that is, cross-border. “Consequently, foreign policy developments naturally become topics within the new publics. This is of course the case when foreign policy problems are simultaneously domestic concerns, but it can also happen if a public has an interest in events outside their country’s borders.”
The new publics therefore want to influence the implementation of foreign policy through diplomacy according to their topics of interest. “Thus, diplomacy no longer only acts purely intergovernmentally for the national goals of a country. Diplomacy must now explain and justify itself domestically and mediate between a state’s goals and the public’s perspectives.”
Publics may claim that a government should behave differently from what the political leadership wants; meanwhile, the government claims to represent the interests of the public properly. Even in autocratically ruled states, the disparity between governmental decisions and public values can be observed. These conflicts shatter the confidence of the public in their political leadership and can tear a society apart.
The report recommends that Ministries of Foreign Affairs, diplomats and governments in general should be proactive in four areas:
1. Diplomats must understand the tension between individual needs and state requirements, and engage with that tension without detriment to the state.
2. Digitization must be employed in such a way that gains in efficiency are not at the expense of efficacy.
3. Forms of mediation should be developed that reconcile the interests of all sides allowing governments to operate as sovereign states, and yet simul- taneously use the influence and potential of other actors.
4. New and more open state activities need to be advanced that respond to the ways in which emotionalized publics who wish to participate in governance express themselves.