Foreign Policy in an Age of Globalization

Abstract

Foreign policy as we know it today emerged with the ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) in the 18th century. Although factors such as the merging of the diplomatic and consular corps with the MFA from the first decades of the 20th century onwards, the growth in the number and size of state agencies and the proliferation of international organizations have changed foreign policy-making, foreign policy has kept its coherence as an object of study. The goal of this chapter is to think through the extent to which globalization is changing foreign policy. In order to do so, I draw on literatures on the state and on diplomacy. Globalization is understood as an intensification of relations between an increasing number of polities, both in the sense that relations become denser and in the sense that the speed of interaction increases. As with internationalization before it, this process cannot fail to challenge the importance of foreign ministries. The chapter ends with a discussion of how foreign ministries strike back by orchestrating the action of other types of entities. What takes place in the area of foreign policy is part of a wider shift in state practices, away from governing directly towards governing from afar. Foreign ministries join other parts of the state apparatus in governing through other state and also non-state entities.¹