Introduction

Our common picture of formal diplomatic relations between modern states is a historical abnormality. It is derived from a Eurocentric conception of formal and public interstate relations that has been built from the Westphalian myth. The popular imagining of diplomacy centers on negotiations between officials from foreign ministries, secretly discussing conflicts related to questions of sovereignty, the balance of power, and international order. In this chapter, I explore the emergence of diplomacy via economic consultancy. The chapter focuses on professionals who conduct what can be termed “political work” as third parties under an economic consultancy model of working – providing international best practice services for clients in return for fees to the arranging organization for profit and/or the costs of service provision. The emergence of these professionals is a response to the rigidities of the current international order, and how formal diplomacy is conducted within it. The entrepreneurs who have pushed forward diplomacy via economic consultancy both reinforce the current system while also seeking means to subvert it in many ways. Their role can be understood – in keeping with the editors’ emphasis on shifting authority claims – as “brokers” who are using their ideas about how to conduct diplomacy through forms of economic consultancies as filling “structural holes” within political networks in the current international order. These non-territorial transnational brokers conduct political work in that they actively seek to redistribute choices for identity formation and resource allocation, including who can make authoritative claims as legitimate territorial units in world politics. This work is also diplomatic in that it obeys the protocols of communication within the international system and relies heavily on tacit rather than known public information.

This chapter discusses how these brokers have emerged and what positions they occupy in formal and informal diplomacy, including public diplomacy. I contend that these professionals matter for the evolution of diplomacy because their claims to authority are chiefly non-territorial and embedded in norms associated with humanitarian values and/or professional services firms. The mix of humanitarian values and professional services firms will strike many as odd, but it is the combination of different forms of professional knowledge that permits these brokers to provide diplomacy as economic consultancy and occupy unique positions within political networks. This brokering role is often between established states and populations seeking recognition from the interstate system or mobility.