574913

research-article2015
CAC0010.1177/0010836715574913Cooperation and ConflictPouliot and Cornut

Article

Cooperation and Conflict

Practice theory and the

2015, Vol. 50(3) 297­–315
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836715574913
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Vincent Pouliot and Jérémie Cornut

Abstract
This introductory article explores the multiple synergies between international practice theory
and diplomatic studies. The timing for this cross-fertilizing exchange could not be better, as
the study of diplomacy enters a phase of theorization while practice scholars look to confront
the approach to new empirical and analytical challenges. The article first defines diplomacy as a
historically and culturally contingent bundle of practices that are analytically alike in their claim
to represent a given polity to the outside world. Then the key analytical wagers that practice
theory makes are introduced, and debates currently raging in the discipline are briefly reviewed.
Next, it is suggested what a practice theory of diplomacy may look like, discussing a variety of
existing works through their common objective to explain the constitution of world politics in
and through practice. Finally, a few research avenues to foster the dialogue between diplomatic
studies and practice theory are outlined, centered on the nexuses of transformation and
reproduction, rationality and know-how, and the technical vs. social dimensions of practices –
diplomatic or otherwise.

Keywords
Cross-fertilization, dialogue, diplomacy, diplomatic studies, practice theory

Introduction
Diplomatic studies have long been the poor child of International Relations (IR) theory.
Issues fundamental to the discipline, from power to order, are often considered to operate
separately from the ‘engine room’ of world politics, as Cohen (1998) characterizes diplo-
macy. Many an IR theorist has criticized the subfield of diplomatic studies for its focus on
apparently mundane and unimportant aspects of international life, arguing instead that more
fundamental mechanisms and structural forces are the actual determinants of the balance of
power, the creation of international institutions, and global governance more generally.

Corresponding author:
Jérémie Cornut, Political Science, University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall, 200 University Avenue West,
Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada.
Email: jeremie.cornut@uwaterloo.ca

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298 Cooperation and Conflict 50(3)

Diplomacy, according to much of IR theory, is epiphenomenal or redundant. This special

issue takes up the challenge and shows that seemingly anecdotal diplomatic practices actu-
ally play a fundamental – if oft overlooked – role in making the world go round.
More specifically, this special issue is a concerted effort to tap into the many synergies
between diplomatic studies and practice theory. In recent years, both bodies of literature
have made strides in IR. We believe that the time is ripe for a sustained mutual engage-
ment. As a practice, diplomacy exhibits peculiarities that are likely to help advance prac-
tice theorizing. For instance, it combines heavily path-dependent rituals with adaptive
responses to technological change. Reciprocally, as an analytical lens, practice theory is
perfectly suited for the study of diplomacy. To take but one example, it takes seriously
the notion that as purposive and strategic as diplomacy may be it rests on forms of practi-
cal knowledge that remain poorly understood in IR theory.
The rationale for this special issue is quite straightforward: there exists a strong elec-
tive affinity between the study of diplomacy and practice theory. Diplomatic studies have
a lot to learn from practice theory; so does practice theory from the study of diplomacy.
It seems like the timing for this cross-fertilizing exchange could not be better. On the one
hand, it is now argued that ‘overcoming the culture of theoretical resistance is important
for diplomatic studies if it wishes to continue its recent and impressive gains’ (Murray,
2011: 720). On the other, it is generally acknowledged that diplomacy ‘provides power-
ful metaphors not only for understanding what the professional diplomats do, but also for
understanding international relations in general’ (Sharp, 1999: 33; see also Cooper et al.,
2008; Sending et al., 2015).
In a certain way, students of diplomacy were precursors of the recent surge of
interest in international practices (e.g. Cohen, 1987; Hamilton and Langhorne, 1995).
The most famous classics on diplomacy, from De Callières to Nicholson through
Satow, are in fact handbooks, that is, practical guides to action that embody the expe-
rience-near spirit of practice theory. More recent seminal studies, such as Der Derian
(1987), reconstruct diplomacy through its manifold textual practices. In fact, it is a
paper about diplomacy by Neumann (2002) that formally introduced the ‘practice
turn’ vocabulary to IR. To this day, a significant proportion of practice–theoretical
studies have kept with this original focus on diplomacy. It should come as no surprise
then, that ‘practice-based theorizing’ is drawing increasing attention from scholars of
diplomacy (Wiseman, 2011).
This special issue intends to explore further the synergies between diplomatic stud-
ies and practice theory. On the face of it, these two bodies of literature share a number
of features: 1) a focus on concrete enactments of human performance; 2) a relational
or interactionist perspective on international politics; 3) a commitment to interdiscipli-
narity, in particular political science, history, anthropology, geography and sociology;
4) an ecumenical approach to paradigms; and 5) a desire to build bridges between
scholarship and actual practice. Building on these synergies, contributors to this spe-
cial issue use a variety of methods and concepts to chart innovative ways in which
practice theory can help understand diplomacy, and reciprocally. The questions guid-
ing their reflections are simple: what contributions can diplomatic studies make to the
theorization of practices? And what are the tools in practice theory that may shed new
light on diplomacy?

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Pouliot and Cornut 299

Defining diplomacy
Diplomacy is both a category of practice and a category of analysis. It is a label that
practitioners use in order to describe an array of socially organized and meaningful ways
of doing things on the international stage. Holding a bracket is a diplomatic practice
consisting of deferring agreement on a particular language in a formal text. Alternatively,
banging one’s shoe on the table to interrupt a colleague’s speech is considered an undip-
lomatic pattern of action by practitioners. Diplomatic practices, in other words, embody
forms of know-how and competence that are socially meaningful and recognizable at the
level of action.
Diplomacy may also be conceived as a category of analysis, that is to say, as a concep-
tual building block of a theoretical system. In order to reach that level, we must climb the
so-called ‘ladder of abstraction’ and strip the concept of its deeply contextual elements. As
historically and culturally situated as specific diplomatic practices may be, still there must
be an analytical core that may be extracted from this diversity. Building on Sending,
Pouliot and Neumann, we define diplomacy as ‘a claim to represent a given polity to the
outside world.’ As a category of analysis, the concept of diplomacy then boils down to
three key components: ‘first, diplomacy is a process (of claiming authority and jurisdic-
tion); second, it is relational (it operates at the interface between one’s polity and others);
and third, it is political (involving both representation and governing)’ (Sending et al.,
2015). This definition builds on, but also departs from, earlier such attempts.
The traditional definition of diplomacy puts the emphasis on governmental agents (Bull,
1977: 156). Observing the changing nature of diplomacy, scholars have progressively
broadened this definition to include not only interactions between official agents, but also
between states and non-state representatives – what Wiseman calls ‘polylateralism’ (2004).
In addition, students of diplomacy have turned their attention to non-traditional activities
(public diplomacy, NGO diplomacy, digital diplomacy, economic diplomacy and so on).
By broadening the scope of diplomatic studies, this body of literature provides an invalu-
able contribution to the study of global governance (Cooper et al., 2008).
Melissen (2011: 723) labels this innovative focus on the various activities involved in
diplomacy a ‘relationalist’ perspective on world politics. Instead of looking into the
internal characteristics of international actors, their objectives or the context of their
interaction, Melissen argues, one should focus on the interactions or relations themselves
(see also Sending et al., 2015 on the relational study of diplomacy). Different scholars
study different kinds of interactions. Some consider negotiation as the basic activity of
diplomacy (e.g. Berridge, 2010; Watson, 1982), while others put the emphasis on com-
munication (e.g. Bjola and Kornprobst, 2013; Jönsson and Hall, 2005). Emblematic of
the relational perspective is Sharp’s (2009: 84) characterization of diplomacy as a rela-
tionship between groups that want to maintain a condition of ‘separateness.’ In other
words, diplomacy is a distinct form of social intercourse because the political groups that
enter in relation claim a distinct existence from one another.
The variety of diplomatic activities is quite amazing, especially over time and space
(Cohen, 2013). We propose to capture this diversity under the umbrella concept of prac-
tice. As will become clear in the next section, practice is a processual and relational
concept. It expresses movement and action – the doing, in a socially structured and

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300 Cooperation and Conflict 50(3)

recognizable way, of X, that is, X-ing. Practice invokes the gerund form, the flow or
movement of something being done. Practices are ways of doing things. Seen through
these lenses, diplomacy as a bundle of practices is a fundamentally dynamic process. It
is not an outcome, but an activity. Practices commonly studied by scholars in diplomatic
studies include, to name but a few, speech writing, conference negotiations, information
gathering, visa delivery, multilateral debate, cultural exchange, treaty signing, twitter
messaging, etc. This paper proposes to conceive of these very concrete social patterns as
the contingent enactments of a much broader and many-sided ‘claim to represent a given
polity to the outside world,’ as diplomacy is theorized above. Practice theory, it is argued,
helps capture both the specific instantiations and the analytically general dimension of
diplomacy – in a theoretically self-aware yet empirically exacting fashion. As the contri-
butions to this special issue demonstrate, this lens promises to further the study of diplo-
macy in rich and innovative ways.

Practice theories: wagers and debates

Practice theory is not a singular framework, but rather encompasses a fairly wide variety
of approaches ranging from Foucauldian post-structuralism to Goffman-style symbolic
interactionism, through Latour’s actor-network theory and Bourdieu’s field analysis –to
name but a few. As Nicolini (2012: 1) puts it, ‘a unified theory of practice does not exist.
Practice theories constitute, in fact, a rather broad family of theoretical approaches con-
nected by a web of historical and conceptual similarities’ (see also Adler and Pouliot,
2011; Bueger and Gadinger, 2014). The diversity of practice approaches also shows in
the various ‘isms’ that they mobilize in terms of IR theories. Indeed, applications in con-
structivism (e.g. Adler, 2008), poststructuralism (e.g. Doty, 1996), the English School
(e.g. Navari, 2011), rational choice institutionalism (e.g. Voeten, 2011), and so on and so
forth may be found. In this context, in this introduction it would be remiss to impose
uniformity on a plural and diverse body of literature. Instead, the basic ontological, epis-
temological and methodological wagers that practice theorists usually agree on are pre-
sented, followed with some of the main axes of contention that they have so far generated
among IR scholars.
At the ontological level, practice scholars converge on using practices as main units
of analysis. The ways in which people typically do things is essential to understanding
both macro-phenomena such as order, institutions and norms, as well as micro-processes
of rational calculations and meaning making. As essential units of analysis, then, prac-
tices show up at both ends of the research design: as generative forces (or explanans) and
as outcome (or explanandum).
There is much debate around the definition of practice in IR. Kratochwil (2011)
opposes a unifying notion, preferring to let usage decide. This view is certainly in line
with pragmatism as an epistemology. Others, however, warn against ‘the risk of falling
back into a trivial, simplistic understanding of practice as synonymous to political action
or “what practitioners do”’ (Bueger and Gadinger, 2015: 3). For his part, Ringmar (2014:
6) criticizes Adler and Pouliot (2011) for offering too broad a conceptualization (practice
as ‘competent performance’): ‘By meaning everything, practices come to mean nothing.
Practices, as a result, is not a powerful concept but an exceedingly weak one.’ In his

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Pouliot and Cornut 301

view, ‘there is no definition of practices that can command broad assent and yet retain
sufficient explanatory power’ (2014: 4). Despite their differences, though, it is useful for
students of international practices to be able to talk to one another – lest they end up in
entrenched and isolated camps. This article suggests that conceiving of practices as
socially meaningful patterns of activities provides such minimal common ground.
According to one prominent practice theorist, by putting socially meaningful patterns
of activities in the driver’s seat ‘practice approaches promulgate a distinct social ontol-
ogy’ (Schatzki, 2001: 3). The implications of this claim, however, are controversial
among IR scholars. For some, practice theory offers a ‘broader ontology,’ at the intersec-
tion of several metaphysical divides: ‘as soon as one looks into practices it becomes
difficult, and even impossible, to ignore structures (or agency), ideas (or matter), ration-
ality (or practicality), stability (or change): one becomes ontologically compelled to
reach beyond traditional levels and units of analysis’ (Adler and Pouliot, 2011: 5). For
others, though, the ontology of practice is in fact narrower or, at least, as specific as its
alternatives. In Mattern’s (2011: 64) words: ‘I take practice as offering IR not a broader
ontology but one that is at least as restrictive – albeit more complex – than the various
ontologies that currently pepper the field.’ From this perspective, ‘practice-ism’ is a
‘post-Cartesian, post-individualist ontology of human being.’
In terms of epistemology, practice theorists tend to espouse a pragmatist view of
knowledge development (Bauer and Brighi, 2011; Cornut, 2014, 2015; Friedrichs and
Kratochwil, 2009; Haas and Haas, 2002; Hellmann, 2009; Kaag and Kreps, 2012; Sil,
2009). Working truths, not universal laws, are what social scientists are after. Admittedly,
some practice scholars come closer to a correspondence theory of truth, while others fall
in the postmodern epistemological camp. Most, however, would agree on the importance
of developing concepts and categories that can travel across cases, without presuming
that such knowledge should ‘mirror’ practices. Striking a balance between thick contex-
tual understanding and conceptual abstraction is a common objective of practice
approaches (see Pouliot, 2014a).
Practice theorists generally agree that scholars ought to be reflexive in the study of
practice, for instance by subjecting their own research to the same sociological analysis
that they perform (e.g. Bourdieu, 2004; see also the debate around ‘autoethnography’).
However, when it comes to the role that such deliberative thought processes play at the
level of practice, views differ. Some students of international practices emphasize the
role of knowledge and learning in the evolution of practices (e.g. Adler, 2005; Onuf,
2010; Stein, 2011). Navari (2011: 626), for instance, insists that diplomacy involves not
habits but ‘acts of judgment.’ Schmidt (2014), for his part, suggests that normative
change works through Deweyian reflection prompted by environmental stimuli. At the
other end of the spectrum, Hopf (2010) emphasizes the power of habit in international
practices, while Pouliot (2008) looks into the tacit know-how that makes acting possible
in the first place. These contrasting views generate alternative theories of social change
and evolution.
In more normative terms, some scholars conceive of the practice approach as inher-
ently critical. The goal of scholarly knowledge should be to unsettle the world and make
it strange, and even to help emancipate the more dispossessed practitioners. By contrast,
Brown (2012: 455) interrogates the possibly conservative normative implications of the

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302 Cooperation and Conflict 50(3)

practice framework: ‘Both the “practice turn” and the idea of practical reason rest on
notions of knowing how to go on in the world, and whether this ability is seen as resting
on acquired dispositions or the ability to reason from experience, it cannot be learnt only
from books.’ Skeptical of using experience as a superior form of authority, he concludes
on ‘the importance of acknowledging the limits of our knowledge of international prac-
tices, of avoiding the making of hubristic claims’ (2012: 465; on phronesis in IR, see also
McCourt, 2012). For many scholars, though, practice theory is first and foremost an
analytical framework that seeks to explain and understand the social world.
As units of analysis, international practices usually constitute the object of the knowl-
edge that scholars develop – what it is about. Through a double hermeneutics that inevi-
tably suppress the divide between the mind and the world, the analyst seeks to capture
the practical logics at work. For Andersen and Neumann, though, a fully ‘analyticist’
epistemology requires to go farther; they propose to ‘make the concept of practice an
analytical one, rather than a hermeneutic one’ (2012: 458; see Jackson, 2011 on analyti-
cism). Put differently: ‘Practices should not be what is represented by the model. Practice
should be the representation’ (Andersen and Neumann, 2012: 466). To be sure, as
Nicolini (2012: 10) puts it, ‘[n]aming, defining, and exemplifying practices is already
theorizing them.’ Yet this monist understanding of knowledge does not preclude prac-
tices to exist both as ways to cope with the world at the level of practice, and objects of
interpretation and analysis in scholarly narratives.
This discussion leads, finally, to issues of methodology. At the most basic level, prac-
tice theory contains a simple indictment: start with practices! The amount of fine-grained,
detailed work that this methodology entails, however, is certainly no shortcut. As Bueger
and Gadinger (2015: 13) put it, practice approaches inevitably ‘upscale empirical and
descriptive work.’ In a way reminiscent of ‘grounded theory’, this methodology gives
pride of place to induction and the bottom-up reconstruction of micro-processes – the
everyday, the mundane, the anecdotal – out of which the social emerges. In that sense,
the practice lens forms what Nicolini (2012: 8) calls a ‘theory–methods package’ (in IR
see also Adler-Nissen, 2012).
Although some practice scholars disagree, many others emphasize the interpretive
nature of practice methodology. Ways of doing things are socially meaningful, a trait that
requires paying attention to sense making. As Mattern (2011: 82) nicely puts it, investi-
gating practices ‘demands a method that reads the social world through real human
beings, interpreting their doings not in reference to abstract criteria, but in reference to
the local criteria of the social environment in which they are positioned.’ As such, prac-
tice methodology is very far from the kind of brute empiricism that behaviouralism
entails. To use Geertz’s metaphor, scholars should be recording not any and all eyelid
movements, but winks as opposed to twitches. This requires a hermeneutical moment.
The danger inherent in this move, though, is to lose sight of the broader social structures
that enable and constrain practices (Duvall and Chowdhury, 2011). So-called reduction-
ism, according to some, problematically privileges the parts despite the fact that macro-
phenomena are multiply realizable.
Yet practice methodology entails much more than reconstructing the practitioners’
point of view and everyday whereabouts. Subjective experiences form the starting point
of the analysis – not its final destination. In Nicolini’s (2012: 13) words: ‘The mere

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Pouliot and Cornut 303

“a-theoretical” cataloguing of what practitioners do […] sheds little light on the meaning
of the work that goes into it, what makes it possible, why it is the what it is, and how it
contributes to, or interferes with, the production of organizational life.’ Practice theories
are just that – theories. As such, they mobilize concepts and analytical categories in order
to make sense – understand and explain – key facets of world politics, including
diplomacy.

Practice theories of diplomacy

What may a practice theory of diplomacy look like? Iver Neumann’s abundant works
probably offer the best starting point (e.g. Neumann, 2012, 2013). Given his ethno-
graphic and deeply interpretive methods, Neumann provides a very close look at minute
diplomatic practices, telling rich stories about the everyday lives of diplomats. But this
fascinating empirical narrative is only a means to an end. His broad analytical objective
is to theorize how diplomatic practices actually ‘make’ the state as much as states make
diplomacy (Neumann, 2012). For instance, the patterned ways in which a foreign policy
speech is actually produced by policymakers at home, goes a long way to explain how
the state becomes the unitary placeholder of the so-called national interest (Neumann,
2007). Disaggregating the practices of the state, including diplomacy, is essential to
understanding how it actually holds together.
Another interesting practice theory of diplomacy is Adler-Nissen’s (2014).
Counterintuitively, she argues that exclusionary diplomatic practices, such as ‘opt-outs’
in the European Union (EU), actually foster supranational integration. ‘By stigmatizing
the norm-breakers,’ she writes, ‘“normality” is reinforced among the national representa-
tives from the member states that participate fully in the Union’ (2014: 176). Diplomatic
patterns of activities are thus key forces behind the phenomenon of European integration.
Interestingly, so far in the application of practice theories to diplomacy, international
organizations have been particularly recurring locales, including the EU of course
(Adler-Nissen, 2014; Bicchi, 2014; Cross, 2011; Forget and Rayroux, 2012; Kuus, 2014;
Lachmann, 2012; Lavallée, 2011; Mérand, 2010; Zaiotti, 2012; Zwolski, 2014) but also
the United Nations (Ambrosetti, 2012; Bueger, 2015a, 2015b; Pouliot, 2014b; Schia,
2013), NATO (Adler, 2008; Berling, 2012; Græger and Haugevik, 2011; Pouliot, 2010)
as well as the World Trade Organization (Eagleton-Pierce, 2013) and the World Bank
(Sending and Neumann, 2011).
A practice theory of diplomacy, thus, inquires into the constitutive effects of diplo-
matic practices, whether on international law (Brunnée and Toope, 2011; Hurd, 2015),
multilateral cooperation (Badie and Devin, 2007; Mitzen, 2015), North–South politics
(Barkawi, 2015), or humanitarianism (Sending, 2015), to take but a few examples. The
gist of these various works holds in a relatively simple idea: what diplomats of all stripes
do, and the ways in which they perform their trade, is taken to be basis for explaining
world politics. This line of argument, it should be noted, is far from antithetical to those
rationalist works that grant some explanatory significance to the diplomatic process itself
(e.g. Putnam, 1988; Schelling, 1960).
The confluence of practice theory and diplomatic studies did not happen overnight,
however, but rather through a long series of seemingly unrelated advances in both

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304 Cooperation and Conflict 50(3)

diplomatic studies and IR theory. Several of the path-breaking works at the root of this
research program, in fact, do not even mention the word diplomacy; while others draw
on theoretical frameworks that are only indirectly focused on practices. This should
come as no surprise; after all, diplomacy is but a small piece of global governance, and
practices are part of broader social forces. In the view of this paper, the diverse and plural
sources upon which practice theories of diplomacy may draw must not only be acknowl-
edged, but also exploited.
In diplomatic studies, post-structuralism has played a particularly prominent role in
fostering theorization. Der Derian’s (1987) seminal definition of diplomacy as the
‘mediation of estrangement’ helps in understanding its social and symbolic politics,
including its exclusionary effects (see also Doty, 1996). The English School, of course,
has long conceived of diplomacy as a key institution in international society (Sharp
and Wiseman, 2007; Watson, 1982). On the other side of the English Channel, the
French sociology of diplomacy has produced a wealth of sophisticated analyses on
international negotiations (Ambrosetti, 2009; Buchet de Neuilly, 2009; Petiteville and
Placidi-Frot, 2013).
More phenomenological inquiries into the forms of knowledge upon which diplo-
macy is premised also produced significant insights (Constantinou, 2013; Neumann,
2005). Faizullaev’s (2006, 2013) efforts at theorizing the practice through a symbolic
interactionist lens shed new light on the dynamics of state embodiment. A number of
studies drawing from semiotics illustrate the centrality of communication in diplomacy
(Jönsson and Hall, 2005), while others build on the work of Habermas to theorize it as a
form of communicative action (Bjola and Kornprobst, 2013; Lose, 2001; Mitzen, 2015).
At the individual level, scholars draw attention to the neuro-cognitive processes that
render face-to-face diplomacy different (Holmes, 2013), while others explore the social–
psychological roots of variation in diplomatic attitudes (Rathbun, 2014). Beyond IR per
se, the rich contributions of historians (e.g. Hamilton and Langhorne, 1995; Jackson,
2008), geographers (e.g. Kuus, 2014), and anthropologists (e.g. Shore et al., 2011), also
helped develop new research avenues in the study of diplomacy. Finally, handbooks by
practitioners, including the classics of course (e.g. Satow, Nicolson, Callières) but also
more recent ones (e.g. Ross, 2007), have long combined a focus on practices and the
study of diplomacy.
Beyond diplomatic studies per se, a number of IR works help in understanding how
key facets of world politics emerge out of bottom-up social processes related to diplo-
macy. Some of these do not invoke practice theories explicitly, but this in no way dimin-
ishes the importance of their findings. Classical realists such as Morgenthau and
Kissinger, for instance, understood fully well the importance of diplomatic practices in
the conduct of international politics. Closer to the present, constructivists have also illu-
minated various social processes on the world stage, including socialization (Checkel,
2005), social influence (Johnston, 2001), rhetorical entrapment (Schimmelfennig, 2001)
or organizational cultures (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004). In a recent book Avant et al.
(2010: 359) focus on ‘global governors’ to show that ‘much of the structure of governing
globally is informal.’ These various studies come together in emphasizing the prime
importance of the actors that are playing on the world stage.

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Pouliot and Cornut 305

A number of recent works have also helped shed light on world politics by looking at
various international practices that are, in one way or another, related to diplomacy.
Thanks to this burgeoning literature, we now much better understand a wide variety of
global issues, including, for instance:

•• How the field of international security has transformed since the end of the Cold
War through regional politics and practices (Adler and Greve, 2009; Gheciu,
2008; Williams, 2007);
•• How peacekeeping practices explain the success or failure of international inter-
ventions (Autesserre, 2014);
•• How culturally-specific practices are transforming the public in global govern-
ance (Best and Gheciu, 2014; also Neumann and Sending, 2010);
•• How international orders evolve through changing liberal practices (Adler, 2013;
Dunne and Flockhart, 2013; Koivisto and Dunne, 2010);
•• How the action of networks of lawyers and jurists foster a European transnational
field (Madsen, 2014; Vauchez, 2008);
•• How global public policies are shaped through practices of ‘epistemic arbitrage’
between professional networks (Seabrooke, 2014);
•• How business practices create global networks of finance (Kim and Sharman,
2014; McKeen-Edwards and Porter, 2013);
•• How terrorism becomes a salient threat in and through national political struggles
(Neal, 2012);
•• How individual rights practices shape the form of international institutions
(Ainley, 2010; Karp, 2013; Reus-Smit, 2013);
•• How the hybrid practices of multinational corporations shape both the develop-
ment and the security of the post-colonial world (Hönke, 2013);
•• How border-control practices generate the infrastructures of international security
(Bigo, 2002; Côté-Boucher et al., 2014);
•• As well as how practices such as carbon pricing transform climate change politics
(Lederer, 2012).

This partial list, which is far from exhaustive, illustrates the potential that taking inter-
national practices seriously holds in making sense of world politics. Diplomacy takes
place in a complex web of relations, and as such it cannot be studied in isolation from the
many faces of contemporary global governance.

Practice theory and diplomatic studies: avenues for cross-

fertilization
In order to lend structure and coherence to this special issue, three points of intersection
between practice theory and diplomatic studies were laid out to the contributors. The ensu-
ing articles, which are briefly described in this section, will give substance to these syner-
gies. This research agenda is, obviously, strictly meant to be suggestive. There clearly are
many other ways in which combining the practice lens with the study of diplomatic

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306 Cooperation and Conflict 50(3)

practices could enhance our knowledge about world affairs. Indeed, toward the end of the
section, three further nexuses between practice theory and diplomatic studies are also
inductively inferred, which the contributors helped identify along the way.
The first avenue for cross-fertilization regards the study of continuity and change. On
the one hand, diplomacy and practice more generally tend to reproduce themselves,
largely thanks to the power of precedent. Customs are the ‘done things’ and they instill
much stability in social life and politics. They may transform over time, but only at the
margins and evolutionarily. That said, diplomacy and practice are also subject to innova-
tion. These more sudden changes are usually associated with reflexivity and the prob-
lematization of established ways of doing things. For instance, open diplomacy was
proposed in response to First World War failures. But the simple equation of practice
with stability, and reflexivity with change, neglects the many subtle processes by which
practice also breeds transformation while reflexivity serves conservative purposes.
Practices evolve constantly and in increments. The same goes for diplomacy – ‘an old-
fashioned tradition coexisting with far-reaching innovation’ (Cohen, 2013: 30; also see
Sending et al., 2011). New configurations of actors, new information technologies and
new political functions are, indeed, transforming diplomacy, but in ways that prolong
established ways of doing things.
In this vein, the papers in this special issue shed a new light on the dialectics of stabil-
ity and change in the world order. Patricia Goff focuses on an unprecedented form of
multilateral grouping, the Alliance of Civilizations, to analyze the changing interfaces of
public diplomacy. Her main argument is that the Alliance of Civilization (AoC) consti-
tutes a community of practice specializing in global-level public diplomacy. A non-tradi-
tional actor in the world of diplomacy, the AoC defies categorization as a political object.
Focusing on the various practices enacted by the AoC since its creation ten years ago,
Goff seeks to characterize the many ways in which this new, hybrid social form both
transforms, and builds on, public diplomacy. Speaking on behalf of ‘world civilizations,’
the AoC represents the very same constituents that form its audience – an intriguing
novelty for students of diplomacy.
For their part, Cooper and Pouliot contend that the G20, as a bundle of diplomatic
practices, exhibit an odd combination of transformation and reproduction of the Western-
dominated global order. On the one hand, self-appointed rulers, arbitrary rules of mem-
bership, and cooption and discipline contribute to reinforce the oligarchic nature of global
governance. On the other hand, the presence of new inductees, the revision of certain rules
of the game, and a changing club ethos suggest a trend toward more inclusiveness. In
other words, innovative practices at the G20 rest on older diplomatic forms, creating an
interesting tension in the politics of global governance and the evolution of world order.
This illustrates how practice theory provides the analytical granularity needed to
capture the dual dynamics of stability and change in world politics. The study of inno-
vation starts from what practitioners actually do, by looking at the ways in which they
create functional patterns of action out of established ways of doing things. Practices
are processes, and as such they always involve a flow or dynamics. That said, practices
are also iterative and help stabilize meanings and action. For that reason, emerging
practices stem from existing practices, in dialectic of recombination, hybridization and
adaptation, on the one hand, and reproduction and repetition, on the other. When change

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Pouliot and Cornut 307

occurs, new and innovative practices need to be synchronous with the past in order to
resonate in the present.
A second avenue for cross-fertilization is the relationship between rationality and
practicality. Students of diplomacy generally acknowledge that ‘diplomacy is both an art
and a science’ (Kissinger, 1957). In other words, as purposive and strategizing as diplo-
macy may be, it rests on a huge stock of practical knowledge that cannot be learned from
books. ‘Two-level games’ and bargaining around ‘focal points’ (Putnam, 1988; Schelling,
1960) involve skills and background knowledge that serve as the seat of rationality. By
implication, the opposition between cognition and habit that pervades social scientific
literatures needs to be problematized. This is something that practice theory can help do.
For instance, Merje Kuus’ paper shows that members of the Brussels diplomatic corps
cannot acquire the ‘feel for the game’ necessary to be a successful negotiator without
first developing a set of extensive and profound social ties and competences. Symbolic
struggles and superiority in style parallels an unequal distribution of power between
diplomats coming from different countries. The internalization of dominant rules by dip-
lomats from new-member states mirrors the process of European integration in which
Eastern countries, like Eastern diplomats, had to submit to other’s rules.
In a related vein, Cornut’s paper demonstrates that the production of diplomatic
reports by practitioners posted in embassies abroad, as rational as its standard process
may be, was significantly constrained by routine practices during the Egyptian uprising
of 2011. By reconstructing the practitioners’ point of view, Cornut casts new light on the
background assumptions that helped foreign diplomats posted in Egypt to make sense of
the crisis. Overall, the paper shows that when diplomats report to headquarters, rational-
ity and habits work hand in hand, not against each other.
Finally, a third locus for mutual engagement between practice theory and diplomatic
studies has to do with the balance between the social (or relational) and the technical
aspects of practices. Practices are interventions in and on the world. As such, they seek
to solve problems and advance each practitioner’s way, often making use of various
skills. Diplomacy is no different in its purposiveness and attachment to defending the
national interest. That said, practices also necessarily invoke communities that are larger
than singular practitioners. Diplomacy is all about human intercourse. And yet, in social
science practices of negotiation have sometimes been reduced to technical issues of bar-
gaining and utility-maximization. Even among policymakers, the onus placed on devel-
oping human ties and trust has significantly decreased since Metternich’s time. Most of
the attention is rather devoted to state interests and their maximization. The papers that
follow show that the ways in which problem solving and socializing are intertwined are
reflected in the rules that structure and bind the diplomatic community.
Along these lines, Geoffrey Wiseman argues that the evolution of the United Nations
system primarily works through changing informal practices, instead of Charter-based
reform. More specifically, he shows how diplomatic ways of doing things have trans-
formed the political role and appointment process of the Secretary-General, as well as
the composition and process of the New York-based diplomatic corps. Core dynamics in
the United Nations system directly flow from the daily practices of the New York-based
diplomatic community. Wiseman’s paper illustrates that daily practices matter just as
much as the formal agreements that states negotiate at an intergovernmental level.

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308 Cooperation and Conflict 50(3)

For his part, Christian Lequesne demonstrates how the creation of the European
External Action Service (EEAS), a particularly innovative form of regional diplomacy,
emerged out of existing practices of national decision-making and bureaucratic turf wars.
In order for the newly created EEAS to fulfill its functions (e.g., horizontal and vertical
coordination, information sharing and production of new ideas for the EU diplomacy),
diplomats from different national and bureaucratic origins seek to establish new common
rules that comprise both technical and relational dimensions.
Working toward this special issue, in close cooperation with contributors, also helped
identify three further intersections between diplomatic studies and practice theory:
First is the issue of method and data, which tends to grant much value to the practition-
ers’ point of view in both traditions. For example, the majority of the papers in this special
issue use qualitative interview data to support their claims. Beyond the use of interviews,
though, studying practices is no easy task (see Adler-Nissen, 2014: 198–217; Bueger and
Gadinger, 2014; Leander, 2008; Pouliot, 2012, 2014a). As mundane activities, practices
often remain unnoticed as the natural order of things and are thus difficult to grasp. As
competent performances, practices require a deep understanding of the social context in
which actors are caught, and this context is often impenetrable to an external observer. As
regular patterns of action, practices must be studied through observations over prolonged
periods of time, which is often difficult to do for scholars. Although imperfect, interview
data help reconstruct patterned rules of the game and practices. As socially recognizable
patterns of activities, practices exist, first and foremost, in the eyes of practitioners. They
are real-world experience, where social meaning emerges, gets contested, and sometimes
stabilizes. By reaching out to practitioners, practices become empirically traceable objects,
if not directly (i.e. ‘in action’), then indirectly, through the artifacts they rest on, the traces
they leave behind, and the effects they generate.
Second, the papers in this special issue illustrate similarities and differences between
practice theory and the organizational process model of analysis (Allison and Zelikow,
1999; see also the application of organization theory in Barnett and Finnemore, 2004).
There are undoubtedly some convergences between the two frameworks, including an
interest in cultural dispositions (whether in the form of habitus or organizational rou-
tines) and ritualized activity. That said, practice theory promises three distinctive contri-
butions. First, while in the organizational model the bureaucracy is considered more or
less homogeneous, practice theory accounts for variation in individual strategies and
interests thanks to the notion of field and positional struggles. Second, in the bureaucracy
framework, humans are constrained by organizational rules, whereas practice theory
considers these processes to be not only constraining, but also enabling, in providing
potential resources for action. Third, organizational analysis faces limits in explaining
the origins of bureaucratic culture. For Allison and Zelikow, organizational culture is
‘the set of beliefs the members of an organization hold about their organization, beliefs
they have inherited and pass on to their successors’ (1999: 153). Practice theory, for its
part, takes very seriously the personal and social trajectories that operate beyond the
organization in constituting background dispositions.
Third, the papers in this special issue show that the geography of practices often mat-
ters as much as their history. As Neumann put it, ‘diplomacy is sited’: ‘a site may be
physical or virtual, but in both cases, it is where diplomacy actually takes place and

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Pouliot and Cornut 309

where it can be captured analytically’ (2013: 147). For example, the symbolic struggles
that Kuus describe in her paper in this special issue take place in a particular space, the
‘European Quarter’ of Brussels, where diplomats from all over Europe converge. The
same goes for Wiseman’s New York or Cornut’s Cairo diplomatic corps. Spatial conver-
gence is a key material structure in shaping diplomatic practice. In her study of style,
Kuus further shows that ‘appearance is located geographically.’ In other words, there is
a hierarchy in national ways of doing things, which helps situate power relations in
space. This line of research sounds very promising, both for practice theory and diplo-
matic studies, and points to the interdisciplinary potential of this research program.

Conclusion
Diplomacy matters to IR theory because, as a bundle of practices, it constitutes the key
elements of world politics, from multilateral governance through international law to
war, etc. (Sending et al., 2015). Most facets of world politics ultimately rest on practices
that have diffused more successfully than others. Even international order transforma-
tion, were it to happen, would likely take place through the diffusion of new diplomatic
practices, involving new kinds of social relations.
Practices generate effects that, put together, form the big picture of social life. As
Cooper and Pouliot put it in their contribution to this special issue, diplomatic practices
are a ‘generative force’ that produces ‘very concrete effects.’ But, strictly speaking, dip-
lomatic practices do not ‘cause’ specific outcomes. As Kuus explains in this special
issue, ‘[t]he task is not to construct checklists of actors or causes – states, ranks, styles,
whatever – but to think about diplomacy as a structured terrain of practice’ which ‘make
certain practices more likely.’ This very nice formulation succinctly captures the promise
of developing practice theories of diplomacy. Along the lines previously identified, the
rest of the special issue seeks to develop further the exciting research agenda that the
study of diplomacy, on the one hand, and the practice lens on the other, holds in advanc-
ing our understanding of world politics. Using subtle case studies, our contributors hope
to contribute, if only at the margins, to the theorization of some of the most complex and
important social processes of our time.
It is sometimes argued that practice theory is an oxymoron. By that standard, diplo-
matic studies verges on being one as well. The practice of theory and the theory of prac-
tice are two sides of the same coin; and the same goes for the study and practice of
diplomacy. The wager made in this special issue is that these labels actually reflect pro-
ductive tensions, out of which real possibilities emerge for advancing our understanding
of world politics.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

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Author biographies
Vincent Pouliot (PhD University of Toronto, 2008) is an Associate Professor and William Dawson
Scholar in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. He is also the Director of the
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS) and a Research Fellow at CERI-
Sciences Po. Pouliot’s research interests include the political sociology of international organiza-
tions, the politics of multilateral diplomacy, and the global governance of international security.
Jérémie Cornut is a visiting scholar at the School of International Relations (University of Southern
California) and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo. He obtained his PhD in
Political Science from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France in 2012. Cornut’s
research interests include diplomatic practice and culture, crisis diplomacy and eclecticism and
paradigmatism in IR theory. His current research is funded by a fellowship from the Canadian
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC, 2014-2016). His article titled
‘Analytic eclecticism in practice: A method for combining international relations theories’ has
recently been published in International Studies Perspectives.

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