Territory, Politics, Governance

ISSN: 2162-2671 (Print) 2162-268X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtep20

Political economies of transnational fields:

harmonization and differentiation in European
diplomacy

Merje Kuus

To cite this article: Merje Kuus (2016): Political economies of transnational fields:
harmonization and differentiation in European diplomacy, Territory, Politics, Governance, DOI:
10.1080/21622671.2016.1266960

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2016.1266960

Published online: 21 Dec 2016.

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TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2016.1266960

Political economies of transnational fields:

harmonization and differentiation in European
diplomacy
Merje Kuus

ABSTRACT
Political economies of transnational fields: harmonization and differentiation in European diplomacy.
Territory, Politics, Governance. Focusing on Europe, this paper analyses diplomacy as an uneven
transnational field. The field is uneven not only along the predictable lines of big and small states, but also
along the lines of wealth and tradition that are customarily overlooked in diplomatic studies. The political
economy of European diplomacy cannot be read off the map of states without considering cross-national
patterns of economic and symbolic capital. The field is transnational in the sense that national,
international and supranational elements blend in daily practice to create qualitatively new forms of
diplomatic knowledge production. By analysing such uneven transnationalism, the paper brings greater
empirical and conceptual specificity to our understanding of bureaucratic knowledge production. The
empirical material focuses on diplomatic training. It is drawn from web-based sources and over 100
interviews with the professionals of diplomacy in Brussels and five national capitals. This ‘peopled’ lens
enables a high-resolution analysis of diplomatic practice and thereby illuminates socio-spatial patterns that
remain invisible in traditional state-based accounts. By unpacking in concrete terms what the oft-used
phrase ‘beyond the state’ means in diplomatic training, the paper advances the study of bureaucratic
knowledge production in geography and cognate fields.
KEYWORDS
diplomacy, policy, organizations, bureaucratic fields, European Union, transnational networks

摘要
跨国领域的政治经济：欧洲外交中的调和与差异。Territory, Politics, Governance。本文聚焦欧洲，分析外
交作为不均的跨国领域。该领域不仅根据大国与小国之间的可预测路径而不均等，同时也根据外交研究
通常忽略的财富与传统而展现不均。若欲摒除国家来理解欧洲外交的政治经济的话，不能不考量经济与
象徵资本的跨国模式。该领域在国家、国际与超国家元素于每日实践中融合以创造外交知识生产在质量
上的新模式的意义上是跨国的。透过分析此般不均的跨国主义，本文将更佳的经验与概念特徵，带进我
们对于官僚知识生产的理解。本文的经验材料聚焦外交训练，并运用以互联网为基础的资源，以及在布
鲁塞尔与五个国家首都对外交专业者进行超过一百次的访谈。此一‘充满人’的视角，提供了对外交实践的
高辨识率分析，从而阐明在传统上以国家为基础的解释中无法看见的社会空间脉络。本文透过以坚实的
方式拆解外交训练中所谓‘超越国家’之经常用语的意义，推进地理学和同类领域中的官僚知识生产研究。
关键词
外交, 政策, 组织, 官僚领域, 欧盟, 跨国网络

CONTACT
merje.kuus@geog.ubc.ca
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

© 2016 Regional Studies Association

2 Merje Kuus

RÉSUMÉ
Les économies politiques des domaines transnationaux: l’harmonisation et la différenciation de la diplomatie
européenne. Territory, Politics, Governance. Mettant l’accent sur l’Europe, ce présent article analyse la
diplomatie comme un domaine transnational inégal. Le domaine est inégal non seulement du point de vue
de la prévisibilité, à savoir les grands états par rapport aux petits, mais aussi en fonction de la richesse et de
la tradition qui sont habituellement ignorées dans les études diplomatiques. On ne peut pas interpréter
l’économie politique de la diplomatie européenne à partir de la carte des états sans tenir compte des
tendances transnationales du capital économique et symbolique. Le domaine est transnational dans la
mesure où les éléments nationaux, internationaux et supranationaux s’harmonisent en pratique du jour au
lendemain afin de créer qualitativement de nouvelles formes de la production de la connaissance
diplomatique. En analysant un tel transnationalisme inégal, l’article apporte une plus grande spécificité
empirique et conceptuelle à la compréhension de la production de la connaissance bureaucratique. La
documentation empirique de l’article porte sur la formation diplomatique. Elle puise dans les sources web et
dans plus de 100 interviews auprès des diplomates de carrière à Bruxelles et dans cinq capitales nationales.
Abordant cette question dans l’optique du ‘peuple’ permet de fournir une analyse haute résolution de la
diplomatie en pratique et, par la suite, d’éclaircir les tendances socio-spatiales qui sont ignorées dans les
comptes-rendus traditionnels à l’échelle des états. En démystifiant concrètement ce que veut dire l’expression
souvent citée ‘au-delà de l’état’ dans le contexte de la formation diplomatique, cet article fait progresser dans
la géographie et dans des filières apparantées l’étude de la production de la connaissance bureaucratique.
MOTS-CLÉS
diplomatie, politique, organisations, domaines bureaucratiques, Union européenne, réseaux transnationaux

RESUMEN
Economías políticas de campos transnacionales: armonización y diferenciación en la diplomacia europea.
Territory, Politics, Governance. Desde una perspectiva europea, en este artículo se analiza la diplomacia
como un campo transnacional desigual. El campo es desigual no solo según los conceptos predecibles de
Estados grandes y pequeños, sino también con respecto a la riqueza y la tradición que se acostumbran a
ignorar en los estudios diplomáticos. La economía política de la diplomacia europea no se puede deducir
del mapa de los Estados sin considerar los patrones internacionales del capital económico y simbólico. El
campo es transnacional en el sentido en que los elementos nacionales, internacionales y supranacionales
se combinan en la actividad diaria creando cualitativamente nuevas formas de producción de
conocimiento diplomático. Mediante el análisis de este transnacionalismo desigual, en este artículo se
aporta una mayor especificidad empírica y conceptual para poder entender la producción de
conocimiento burocrático. El material empírico del artículo se centra en la formación diplomática. Se basa
en fuentes de la web y en más de 100 entrevistas con profesionales de la diplomacia en Bruselas y cinco
capitales nacionales. Este objetivo personalizado permite llevar a cabo un análisis de alta resolución de la
práctica diplomática reflejando así los patrones socio-espaciales que quedan invisibles en los informes
tradicionales basados en el Estado. Al realizar un análisis en términos concretos de lo que significa la
expresión tan utilizada ‘más allá del Estado’ en la formación diplomática, en el artículo se fomenta el
estudio de la producción de conocimiento burocrático en los campos geográficos y afines.
PALABRAS CLAVES
diplomacia, política, organizaciones, campos burocráticos, Unión Europea, redes transnacionales

HISTORY Received 26 February 2016; in revised form 7 November 2016

BOUNDARY WORK IN DIPLOMACY

Diplomacy is traditionally understood as a state-based business. The profession is centrally about

maintaining a political order based on sovereign states: diplomats are trained by states to advance

TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE

 Political economies of transnational fields 3

the interests of states. Although the proliferation of non-state actors and information technologies
has brought substantial change to diplomatic work, professional training has remained the realm
of nation-states. In Europe, the tentative character of the European Union’s (EU) external action
is cited as a prime example of the state-based tenor of diplomacy: the EU can act only in the space
given to it by the member states. Even in Europe, in the most supranationalized geopolitical space
today, the boundaries that matter seem to be mostly those of states.
In parallel, there is considerable evidence of new working environments for diplomats,
especially in Europe. Several states are revising the frames and contents of diplomatic training
in order to better compete in supranational as well as intergovernmental settings (Kuus,
2016a). The EU is strengthening its own diplomatic service – the European External Action Ser-
vice (EEAS) – and training staff to serve the union as a transnational political actor. There is a
growing international exchange of ideas. Diplomatic training today is ‘hundred percent’ different
from that five years ago, a person broadly familiar with the field in several European countries
remarks (in 2014), admittedly hyperbolically, to accentuate flux in the field. In that flux, the
boundaries between states as well as state and non-state actors seem increasingly amorphous
and permeable. Nominally governmental practices contain large doses of external influences
from other state and non-state actors.
In conceptual terms, European diplomacy is becoming simultaneously harmonized and differ-
entiated; the boundaries of states are being maintained as well as transformed. The task is to
account for both processes in one analytical frame. Given that diplomacy is the central integrative
mechanism of international politics, these processes of harmonization and differentiation can tell
us a great deal about the transformation of state power and political subjectivity in the inter-
national arena (Bachmann, 2016). Diplomatic training in Europe can furthermore illustrate the
diffuse and variegated operation of transnational bureaucratic fields (as social spaces that situate
their agents).
This article explores the uneven transnational character of European diplomacy. It accentuates
the ways in which diplomatic training intersects with broader processes of socio-spatial differen-
tiation in Europe. I concentrate on the differentiation that operates on the axis of societal wealth
and tends to remain invisible in a lens focused on state institutions. By blending Bourdieu-
inspired work on social fields with geographic work on diplomacy and socio-spatial relations,
the article foregrounds spatial and social dynamics beyond intergovernmental collaboration and
competition. It thereby clarifies the transnationalization of bureaucratic processes and contributes
to our thinking on how to locate and demarcate regulatory power today.
The argument proceeds in three steps. The next section first sketches the landscape of diplo-
matic training in Europe and then outlines my conceptual accent on the political economies of
transnational bureaucratic knowledge production. Synthesizing academic and grey literature as
well as interviews, I highlight the intertwining of national, intergovernmental, and transnational
patterns in diplomatic training in Europe, and I articulate what these processes can tell us about
the geographies of bureaucratic knowledge. The subsequent section links the field to long-term
processes of wealth accumulation in the EU. European diplomacy, understood here as the sum
total of all EU and national diplomatic practice in Europe, takes place not in Europe in general
but in particular places. These places are positioned in specific ways, and their positions affect
the processes of diplomatic knowledge creation. Ideas flow widely, but the production and control
of these ideas are not necessarily wide ranging. The field of European diplomacy is no longer
neatly state-based, but nor is it harmoniously ‘European’ in some generic idealized way. Rather,
the harmonization and differentiation of diplomatic knowledge operate along multiple axes of
economic and symbolic capital; any actor’s (or place’s) role in that production depends in part
on its position along these axes. The concluding section returns to the conceptual issues around
the political economies of transnational fields. The term political economy is used to foreground
processes of wealth accumulation and to link the structure of the diplomatic field to economic

TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE

4 Merje Kuus

relations on a continental scale. I argue that we must integrate the analysis of wealth and uneven
development into the study of such fields. Moreover, the intricately articulated character of trans-
national bureaucratic settings cannot be explained solely in economic terms; the explanation must
also include intangible symbolic resources as objects of analysis.
Methodologically, the article draws from two types of primary material. The first comes from
web searches on diplomatic training in all 28 EU member states. These searches are used to piece
together a preliminary sketch of who trains whom, where, and how. Most states have some infor-
mation on the web, but it is often minimal and sometimes available only in the national language.
Diplomatic careers are not marketed to foreigners and need no advertising to attract applicants.
We are looking at a highly specialized and selective field that operates to a large degree inside
the most opaque parts of the state apparatus.
In part because of that opacity, the second set of primary material comes from about one hun-
dred one-to-one loosely structured qualitative interviews with professionals of diplomacy. Such
interviews are necessary to obtain even a basic sense of how European diplomacy works. They
were conducted for two long-term studies on diplomatic knowledge production and carried out
in small batches – 10–15 at a time, mostly but not exclusively in Brussels – in 2007–2016. All
interviews were non-attributable and off the record, all interviewees spoke in a personal capacity,
and all material is used in a manner that preserves their anonymity. Many but not all of the unat-
tributed quotes in the text come from a smaller subset of the material – 52 interviews conducted in
Brussels and 7 other cities in 2014–2016, whereas the earlier evidence (2007–2013) figures as the
contextual background against which I interpret the newer interviews. Most of my interlocutors
(in the overall dataset) are diplomats who work in the foreign services of the EU or one of its mem-
ber states. I also spoke to professionals who interact with career diplomats on a daily basis but are
themselves based in other institutions, such as the European Commission or various think tanks
and research centres in Brussels and beyond.
The 48 professionals interviewed in 2014–2016 (8 interviews are follow-ups, but 2 interviews
involve 3 persons as my interlocutors) tend to be mid- to high-level diplomats. They have an aver-
age of over 20 years of professional experience; about a third have more than 25 years of experi-
ence. Those who are EU diplomats have in most cases worked in national settings too; those based
in national ministries know a great deal about EU-level work; those who are not career diplomats
(at the time of the interview) have a similar deep knowledge of the field. The individuals who work
in Brussels typically have well over 10 years of EU-specific experience. In all cases, the comments
quoted are transnational in scope: those located in Brussels regularly refer to their past work at a
national foreign ministry and those currently located in a national capital cite vignettes from Brus-
sels.1 The interviews thereby enable me to examine diplomatic training – a long-term process of
socialization rather than a one-off exercise of knowledge acquisition – as an internally variegated
transnational field of influences.

DIPLOMATIC FIELDS BEYOND THE STATE

The shifts in diplomatic training relate to the entry of more actors and spheres into diplomatic
relations. Diplomats now work on a wider range of issues, interact with a more diverse group
of interlocutors, face more competition from other governmental and non-governmental actors,
and coordinate their activities with these other actors (Jones & Clark, 2015; Kuus, 2016a).
They have lost their primus inter pares status among civil servants and operate in the context of
tightening budgets and growing work pressures. Training has, to varying degrees in different
countries, responded to these changes.
Europe experiences the shifts particularly acutely. Given the importance of EU settings for the
member states, foreign ministries train diplomats specifically for these settings. Even those diplo-
mats whose careers unfold mostly in ‘traditional’ bilateral contexts are increasingly familiar with

TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE

 Political economies of transnational fields 5

EU institutions.2 The creation of the EEAS (in 2010) has intensified and accelerated the flows of
ideas and people as more individuals rotate between Brussels and the national capitals.
In broad terms, de facto diplomatic training happens in three types of settings: (1) graduate
programmes that accentuate international topics and are marketed as entry-points to diplomatic
careers, (2) diplomatic academies linked to foreign ministries, and (3) specialized courses and
workshops, often in the form of executive education, run in diverse institutional settings in
national and EU institutions (see also Berger, Humuza, & Janssens, 2013; Kuus, 2016b). The
growth of formal training has to some degree standardized diplomatic knowledge production in
the union. Most if not all EU member states train diplomats in international relations (IR),
law, and economy; bilateral, multilateral, and public diplomacy; technical and behavioural compe-
tencies like public speaking, protocol, negotiation, political reporting, and team cohesion. Man-
agers increasingly receive management training, especially in the larger foreign services as well as
the EEAS. In parallel, the pressures of time and resources (less of both) have in some cases accen-
tuated the difference between the relatively well-endowed foreign ministries and their more con-
strained counterparts. Although every sovereign state has a diplomatic service, the power to craft
and disseminate training models has in some ways concentrated, not diffused.
The spatial frames of the buzz are still mainly inter-national: much of the extra-national
activity is at heart about inter-governmental cooperation. For example, the big three of Germany,
France, and Britain run joint training courses to regularly bring together their diplomats (French
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development, 2015). Among the smaller states too,
national traditions blend and compete as foreign ministries try to export their know-how or import
someone else’s know-how. In parallel, diplomatic training has developed a strong transnational
dimension. None of the three settings cited above has an exclusively national focus and only dip-
lomatic academies remain markedly national in tenor. Most visibly, the member states train dip-
lomats for EU settings. They do so both to represent themselves in Brussels and to successfully
place nationals into EU structures. The competition for EU positions is intense: the knowledge
of place-specific context (of Brussels or the place of EU diplomatic posting) can make or break
an application. For smaller countries in particular – and most EU countries are relatively small –
national foreign policy is increasingly entangled with EU external relations and all diplomats
need to grasp EU-level decision-making processes. Nation-states also train diplomats for the six-
month period when they hold the Council of the European Union’s rotating presidency.3 Foreign
providers are sometimes brought in for such exercises as the demand is intense. EU-level training
institutions, such as the College of Europe and the European Institute of Public Administration
play a more prominent role in diplomatic training. Non-governmental and non-state actors, such
as institutes of international affairs, specific university programmes, and private consultancies, are
increasingly visible as well.

The ‘know-where’ of professional fields

Conceptually, this raises questions about the sociology and spatiality of geopolitical and bureau-
cratic knowledge and brings in two literatures in geography and related fields. The first is the pol-
itical geographic scholarship on the spaces of diplomatic knowledge. For geographers, diplomats
are interesting in part because they produce and negotiate geographical ideas on a daily basis. Dip-
lomats, Jones and Clark (2015, p. 3), point out, are ‘not merely apparachiks giving voice to a full-
throated state-centered vision of power’. Rather, they are individuals, with their own experiences
and subjectivities, whose practices cannot be neatly read off of formal governmental statements. In
counterpoint to the lingering state-centrism of traditional IR, political geographers are especially
interested in the practices, institutions, and identities that are not bound by the state system. They
foreground the uneven character of diplomatic practice: for example, the ways in which diplomacy
disciplines politics by excluding non-state actors (McConnell, 2016; McConnell, Moreau, &
Dittmer, 2012) and the effects that national wealth has on diplomatic representation (Kuus,

TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE

6 Merje Kuus

2014). They consistently emphasize the everyday, mundane, and interactional character of diplo-
matic work, and they increasingly examine the bureaucratic and place-based specificities of diplo-
matic decision-making (Bachmann, 2015; Dittmer, 2015; Jones & Clark, 2015; Kuus, 2016a;
Mamadouh, Meijer, Sidaway, & Van der Wusten, 2015). Geographic work on diplomacy thus
speaks directly on the broader body of geographical scholarship on socio-spatial relations and
transnational knowledge production (e.g., Agnew, 2007; Bachmann, 2015; Häkli & Kallio,
2014; Kuus, 2015a, 2016a).
From this geographic work, the present article takes the focus on spatial variegation that is not
contained within the patchwork or states. It also takes that literature’s interest in the political
economies of uneven development as constitutive of governance and knowledge production
today. The point is not that the unevenness can somehow be resolved; it is rather that we must
be aware of the unevenness to grasp how diplomatic knowledge is created and used. The concept
of ‘know-where’ (Agnew, 2007) highlights that where claims are made and where they travel is an
integral part of their effect. Much of what passes for ‘global’ expertise today involves a hefty dose of
projecting knowledge claims made in specific societal contexts to very different contexts. The
spatial origins and travels of ideas are therefore important foci for the study of international affairs
(ibid.). One task is to show in empirical texture how these travels take place in mundane daily
practice and how they affect different places.
The second literature that directly informs the present analysis is the interdisciplinary work on
transnational fields and diplomatic practice. Much of that scholarship is in the discipline of IR (see
Adler-Nissen, 2014; Bicchi & Bremberg, 2016; Neumann, 2012; Pouliot & Cornut, 2015; Send-
ing, Pouliot, & Neumann, 2015), but Bourdieu-inspired field theory in sociology is directly rel-
evant as well (e.g., Dezalay & Garth, 2002, 2011).4 That work enables me to analyse diplomacy as
one of the (increasingly transnational) professional fields of state-governing expertise (Dezalay &
Garth, 2002, 2011). The gap in the IR and sociological literature concerns the spatiality and pol-
itical economy of transnational fields: the ways in which struggles over expertise bring in places
and processes of wealth accumulation. Sociologists have written a great deal about the sociology
of professional fields, but they say rather less about the spatiality of these fields. For example,
Dezalay and Garth’s (1996) excellent book on international business arbitration shows that a
number of the most prominent arbitrators of the 1980s were not simply Western (not exceedingly
surprising for that time) or even European (somewhat surprising) but specifically Swiss (highly
surprising to most academics, I suspect). Dezalay and Garth give a fascinating account of the
tight–knit personal networks at the centre of a global professional field, but spend no time on
how the geographically specific centre of gravity shapes the field. The networks analysed in that
book are constituted in particular places in part because of the characteristics of these places.
The object of analysis is a set of socio-spatial (Jessop, Brenner, & Jones, 2008) and not simply
social relations; fields that have specific geographies as well as sociologies. In the context in
which the spatial is habitually omitted from the analyses of the social, geographic scholarship,
including this article, can add another dimension to our understanding of diplomacy and other
professional fields.
Combined, these bodies of scholarship help me to analyse the transnational linkages that are
not necessarily intergovernmental in roots or operation (Häkli & Kallio, 2014; Kuus, 2014). They
enable me to bring into view the differentiation that happens along the axes of cultural and sym-
bolic capital and remains out of view in a traditional inter-governmental lens. By synthesizing geo-
graphical work on diplomacy and socio-spatial relations with the politico-sociological work on
social fields, the article shows how the sociology of the field is integrally linked to its spatiality:
how social variegation is linked to spatial differentiation.
This article’s contribution to these literatures is at one level densely empirical: I add an account
of one transnational field (diplomatic training), one that has not yet received analytical scrutiny in
the social sciences. At another level, that empirical density itself makes a conceptual contribution.

TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE

 Political economies of transnational fields 7

It is through the empirical material, including place-specific material, that one can see transna-
tional patterns and relations in their particular geographical contexts. The empirical evidence clari-
fies what we mean when we talk about transnational bureaucratic fields and it thereby enables a
more substantiated theoretical discussion of the daily workings of such fields (see also Kuus,
2016b).

‘It’s more specific’: daily work in Brussels

In Brussels, diplomatic work unfolds in a diffuse and fragmented field of many conflicting and
overlapping interests and hierarchies. Even those with extensive diplomatic experience in strong
national systems recognize that Brussels places different demands on them. In Brussels, an inter-
viewee observes, ‘nobody’ continues as they did at home: diplomats from big and small countries
alike adjust to EU settings. The work is ‘more specific’, as per the quote in the section heading:
owing to the pooling of sovereignty among the member states, negotiations in Brussels depart
from the bilateral and the multilateral contexts for which diplomats are traditionally trained.
Those who work for EU institutions (rather than the member states) find themselves in insti-
tutions to which there are no clear equivalents nationally. In the national system, an interviewee
observes, there is one hierarchy; in Brussels, there are several. ‘The Brussels skill’, yet another inter-
locutor notes and pauses: ‘you cannot apply what you learned in your ministry’. National traditions
do pervade Brussels, but they get modified in the process. These modifications, in turn, can slowly
and imperceptibly alter the national in the national capitals too (Kuus, 2015b). Representing the
entire union abroad is likewise quite different from what a national diplomat is expected to
achieve. In the words of an interviewee: ‘An ambassador promotes trade. An EU ambassador cre-
ates the conditions in which trade can flourish’.5
Such transnationalism is the central ‘challenge and charm’ of working in Brussels. One is con-
stantly challenged to consider foreign approaches and habits in one’s formal and informal inter-
actions. There is a great deal of this in bilateral diplomacy too of course: creating trust across
difference is the mainstay of diplomatic work. In Brussels, that effort is more complicated by a
degree. Everyone feels pressured and no-one – not even the big three of Germany, France, and
Britain – feels in control of the process. It is fascinating to observe skilled diplomats iterate
their countries’ special weaknesses in the EU context. The small states fear that they lose out to
the bigger ones, the mid-sized states fear that they lose out to the big ones, and the big ones
fear that they could lose some of their power vis a vis everybody else. Those from the relatively
small rich countries say that they need to be especially smart because they are small; those from
the relatively poor countries say that they have to be especially clever because they are poor;
those from the smallest and poorest countries do not even mention the need for special craftiness
– they take it as an axiom.6
The interlocking processes of intergovernmental and inter-institutional collaboration have
received some coverage elsewhere (e.g., Balfour, Carta, & Raik, 2015; Batora & Spence, 2015;
Bicchi, 2014). When it comes to training, we know next to nothing beyond the descriptions
national systems (although see Duke, 2015). This article examines the differentiation that plays
out among the member states but is best viewed in terms of transnational rather than international
dynamics. It highlights the differentiation in economic and symbolic capital along lines other than
the usual story of inter-state struggles on an international chessboard.
The uneven character of European diplomacy refers to the variegation in economic and sym-
bolic capital among Europe’s diplomats. Even within that club of wealthy countries bound by
shared laws and committed to continuous cooperation, there are substantial discrepancies in influ-
ence among the participating states. That this is reflected in the states’ voting power, their share of
high-rank EU positions, and the attention and deference they receive from other member states is
well known. The relationship between a nation’s wealth and the strength of its diplomatic service
receives less notice. The relationship is by no means narrowly causal – every country has both

TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE

8 Merje Kuus

excellent and mediocre diplomats – but the dynamic is worth noting. The difference comes
through in intangible resources: connections, worldliness, and cultural awareness. The relation-
ship between intellectual and administrative aspects of diplomatic work likewise remains unexa-
mined in most accounts. It is related to wealth but not entirely isomorphic with it. Much is
said about the increasing speed of diplomatic work; some points are made about the declining
role of the foreign ministry in the diplomatic field; lip service is paid to the idea of creativity.
What we do not know in any detail is how that relationship is playing out in the practice of dip-
lomatic training today. I thus note the insidious effects of shoestring training on diplomacies, as
seen by practising diplomats from a range of states. In so doing, I foreground an axis of economic
differentiation and its attendant symbolic dimensions that is usually swept under the carpet. The
account is tentative by necessity as well as design: my goal is to pry open rather than sort out some
black boxes in the common sense view of diplomatic knowledge.

‘THE EUROPEAN SAUCE’: UNEVEN EUROPE

Rhetorically, European integration is all about cooperation and coordination – about forging and
maintaining common interests and actions. In practice, this is an uphill struggle. The greatest dif-
ficulty in EU-level decision-making, a national diplomat observes, is coordinating the underlying
approaches to issues: the ways of looking at problems, the methods of addressing them adminis-
tratively. You can develop procedures for communication, but the often unconscious lenses, deeply
rooted in national cultures, are hard to alter. The difficulty is often underestimated, the interviewee
observes. ‘There is a nice European sauce that someone has poured over the differences [a gesture
of pouring something over a dish carelessly and in copious quantities]’, but this just as often simply
coats rather than harmonizes the differences. One task is to delineate how this uneasy coating of
difference affects diplomatic practice.
Diplomatic protocol codifies the nominal parity of states and encourages the polite pretense of
it. The specialist literature customarily presents the profession in terms of national perspectives. It
implies that one can jump from power centres to power margins with examples; that the training
programmes, university research, or journalistic reporting generated in different countries are
usually on par. The little secret, well-known in practice but unaccounted in theory, is that diplo-
matic expertise is expensive. Its production requires long-term strategic spending much beyond
the foreign ministry. The rich countries, with better funded universities, tend to start with a better
prepared pool of applicants (more on this later). The analysis produced in their universities is gen-
erally (though not always) better crafted and marketed than the often ad-hoc outputs, frequently
foreign-funded, put together in the peripheries of wealth. The term ‘rich’ rather than ‘big’ is delib-
erate: several rich countries (e.g., all three Scandinavian ones in the EU context) are widely
acknowledged as having strong diplomacies despite their relatively small size. Although country
size matters greatly, the underlying issue concerns the capacity for action in a broader sense:
the capacity to generate knowledge about diverse places and processes and to operationalize it
in specific contexts (and this requires a good long-term knowledge of these contexts). ‘I don’t
think the real problem is the size’, a diplomat well acquainted with both EU and national systems
remarks when making this point: ‘it’s more a matter of how you organize your ministry’. Size may
sometimes correlate with effectiveness but this does not mean that it is the root cause of effective
diplomacy.
In EU settings, the multitude of disparities became more visible in the context of the three
enlargements of this century (in 2004, 2007, and 2013). Europe has always been uneven, but
the eastern enlargements brought in new member states that are both more numerous and less
affluent than the old timers. Multiple actors have sought to harmonize the field since. At the
national level, central European states have recruited and promoted individuals with Western edu-
cation. Some of these individuals come from the diaspora: they grew up in the West and function,

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 Political economies of transnational fields 9

as a high-level commission official puts it, ‘essentially Westerners’, just with central European
passports. Others have done degree programmes, exchanges, or training courses in prestigious
Western universities. So keen are these so-called newer states on Ivy League or Oxbridge creden-
tials that, numerous interviewees observe, their diplomats are more likely than Westerners to have
such credentials. The degree is not enough though, a Council official comments: what plays is not
simply a skill set but ‘the whole education, background, whole upbringing’. Western experience
does not come in one size either: a training course may brighten a resume, but its substance
does not compare to a multi-year residential graduate degree.
In the early 2000s, in preparation for the Big Bang enlargement in 2004, the member states
and the European Council (an intergovernmental EU institution), set up the European Diplo-
matic Programme to ‘foster a European identity in foreign policy’, ‘raise awareness among national
diplomats with regard to the specifically European dimension of diplomacy’, and ‘provide a teach-
ing environment whose framework transcends the strictly national’ (European External Action
Service, n.d.). An intergovernmental programme, its participants – about 20 junior diplomats
annually – come from the diplomatic services of the member states as well as the EEAS, the Euro-
pean Commission (the union’s permanent civil service), and the Council Secretariat. The pro-
gramme has continued but not grown. In that same decade, the Commission as well as the
European Parliament initiated several proposals for diplomatic training for the new foreign
service7 (Gstöhl, 2012, p. 8).
In the context of budget cuts, inter-institutional and intergovernmental tensions, and the over-
all sputter in the integration process, little of these initiatives have materialized. Not all countries
are enthusiastic about increased EU-level training. The intergovernmental tenor of EU external
action means that union-level training plays to the lowest common denominator: it emphasizes
current needs and regulations over long-term visions and ambitions. The effect is that pre-Brussels
(national) preparation matters greatly. As EU-level training is slim, it cannot compensate for any-
one’s underlying weakness in knowledge and awareness.
In interviews, this is a sensitive issue: diplomats are not the ones to accentuate inequality
among states. Virtually everyone stresses the pivotal role of specific bureaucratic structures, insti-
tutional cultures, and personalities. There are plenty of brilliant diplomats in Brussels and they
come from across Europe. For many if not most member states, the representation in Brussels
is its most important de facto embassy: this is reflected in the calibre of the professionals sent
there. When both France and Germany appointed highly experienced and EU-seasoned diplo-
mats to serve as Permanent Representatives to the European Union in June 2014, The European
Voice (2014) remarked: ‘Neither Paris nor Berlin thinks that this is any time for novices in Brus-
sels’. Those who obtain permanent EU positions are usually impressive as well.
Many (though not all) of the experienced players nonetheless note a certain nebulous infinitely
decreasing differentiation between the more affluent (usually ‘old’) states and the less affluent
(often ‘new’) states. When asked about this decade, some say that the gap has closed, others
note a ‘diminishing’ difference and speak of the ‘convergence’ of skills, yet others evade my invita-
tions to assess the present situation by citing the poor generalizability of their observations. Some
observe a ‘huge’, even ‘growing’, gap between the quality of diplomatic training among the mem-
ber states. ‘Some countries do the diplomacy of the nineteenth century’, an interviewee familiar
with several systems comments: ‘Limited infrastructure, practically no training. […] There is a
gulf, widening’. Those who see graduate-level training (in multiple multicultural settings) observe
the varying quality of university education in Europe: students from the wealthy states of northern
and western Europe tend to do better than graduates from the eastern and southern parts of the
union.8
Any remaining imparity, when observed, is not about core competencies. ‘At my level’, a high-
ranking national diplomat in Brussels comments, ‘I do not assume that people make mistakes’. If
they slip in an odd remark, the action usually has a specific rationale and is no mistake at all. If a

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10 Merje Kuus

systematic weakness is observed, it is in the intangible resources that take a long time (and a lot of
money) to acquire: deep contextual knowledge of Brussels, cultivated awareness of other actors and
their long-term interests, and good knowledge of distant parts of the world. Diplomats working in
Brussels routinely deal with issues in which ‘their’ countries have little expertise, and this is true
especially in external relations. A Brussels-based diplomat must know a great deal about issues
that may seem obscure in her national capital. An EU official presciently links countries’ success
in EU settings to something more abstract than size – the power of conceptualization. In EU set-
tings, the person says (speaking early in this decade):

[T]he one who can conceptualize can exercise power. Only few have the capability to present alternative
concepts. […] Who in Finland cares about Mediterranean farming, Mediterranean agriculture? Nobody.
[…] There is not a government that has everything because it’s a country, not a government, that produces
the concepts: the government, the business, the universities. The new states are inward-looking. They want
to use the EU to solve their problems. Not EU’s problems. It takes big member states to say: ‘Europe is our
battlefield.’ The commission is able to develop concepts but they are limited by the council. The council is
dominated by the big states.

The capacity to generate sophisticated reflection on global issues varies considerably among the
member states. The issue is about wealth as well as size. Small states have few dealings with distant
places and their diplomats often know little about these places, whether it be Latvia (a relatively
poor member state) on Malaysia or Denmark (a rich one) on Colombia. They therefore tend to
keep quiet about these regions. A diplomat from a newer state observed, late last decade: ‘the
new member states do not know much about places outside Europe and they keep their mouths
shut … and this is essentially silent consent [to whatever the old states decide]’. Diplomats from
smaller states, even wealthy ones, mention the better language training for their colleagues from
the big states, especially the two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. If
one diplomat receives two months of training, including language instruction, in the home capital
prior to her posting, whereas another receives six months of language training alone, some of
which is in the linguistic environment of the host country, ‘guess who is better prepared’, a diplo-
mat from a relatively small rich country remarks with a smile. True, the wider sphere of respon-
sibility for people in the smaller systems can make them broader in outlook. ‘The breadth of people
from the small countries is often better’, a diplomat working for a large foreign service observes:
‘They see connections’ because they deal with wide areas. A diplomat from a big country has a
‘narrow lane’ in which to operate and this can make her narrow in outlook. On the other hand,
sometimes people in small countries cover so much that they lose depth.
When it comes to detailed knowledge of distant places, diplomats from big countries have an
advantage, several interviewees observe. If you need expertise on, say, Africa in EU settings, you
will get a person from a big member state, observes a person who hails from one such state. ‘By
chance you can get a Finn’, but ‘it’s a chance, a fluke’: structurally, the big countries are advantaged
into the foreseeable future. The point appears common sense to a person from a big country, I
respond: someone from a small state might see a problem with such reproduction of a tilted play-
ing field. My interlocutor has no such concern: the tilt appears natural to him – as it does to many
who originate from big countries.
At one level, this privileges those who come from countries with large foreign services and sub-
stantial bases of nationally generated knowledge. In Council settings, an EU diplomat comments,
big countries speak on every issue; small countries speak on few issues. Give me a topic, she con-
tinues, and I can predict what countries speak (at Council meetings on external action) and what
they say. Yesterday, for example, the diplomat continues, glancing at her notes: ‘Yes, the big three.
… Ahh, I see, [a relatively poor new member state] spoke – they just wanted to say something’.
Rebecca Adler-Nissen (personal communication, 2013) makes a similar point in her study of

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 Political economies of transnational fields 11

‘track-changes diplomacy’ – the editing of EU-level proposals that happens via e-mail as docu-
ments are circulated among the member states. ‘Did you see the eleven changes Romania
wants?!’, a bemused colleague asks Adler-Nissen at the Danish Foreign Ministry. The surprise
in that exclamation is not about the 11 proposed amendments but the fact that Romania wants
them. There is a tacit understanding about the number of changes that a country is allotted by
its peers. Overstepping the allotment prompts raised eyebrows from these peers. Although the
pursuit of national interest is the name of the game, there are informal boundaries within the for-
mal ones as to how this ought to be done (see also Adler-Nissen, 2014, pp. 60–62).
Given that diplomatic work is based on networks, cultivating international contacts is a stra-
tegic imperative for states and individuals alike. Much of diplomatic work, an experienced prac-
titioner comments, ‘is practice: lunch diplomacy, coffee diplomacy’. The size and sophistication of
the country’s network depends in part on the specifics of its foreign ministry: the institutional set-
up, the bureaucratic culture, and the inclinations of the top brass there. Some depends on the
broader national systems of universities, think tanks, and the media. Some of the influences of
wealth become visible only in a comparative framework, when the situation in one member
state is viewed in relation to other states. For example, some member states give scholarships to
their nationals to study at the College of Europe, a postgraduate institution which Master’s
degrees are designed to facilitate entry into EU institutions.9 They do so in the hope that these
graduates subsequently rise in EU institutions and bring their national perspectives to bear in
EU decision-making. This is a long-term structural influence that takes time to build: it cannot
be pinpointed, much less measured, at any one point in time. Poorer states give fewer scholarships
and some states give none. Secondment is another long-term structural issue. National ministries
across the EU try to second officials to Brussels: these officials too are invisible when one glances at
national capitals, but they a part of a nation’s power. The more affluent countries second more
than the less affluent ones (Kuus, 2014, p. 72). They host more conferences (with higher profile
delegate lists) and their diplomats and commentators have wider international contacts. The influ-
ence of any one scholarship or event is negligible, but the combined effect of such factors is to tilt
the field in particular ways.
In Brussels, the alumni networks of certain training centres – widely recognized as career boos-
ters – include many more individuals from the wealthy countries of western Europe than the rela-
tively poorer member states. The most prominent networks operate around the College of Europe,
the Johns Hopkins University Centre in Bologna, the European University Institute Florence, and
major American universities, especially their schools or business, law, and international affairs.
These are in addition to national networks around ENA (Ecole nationale d’administration),
Oxford, and other prestigious outfits in the wealthier states of Europe. The alumni networks
are in addition to the links that relate to people’s current and past postings. Personal networks
are vital in Brussels. When you have a problem, an interviewee explains, you need to know
whom to call up and say:

If I do this according to the rules, it will take me three months. If you help me, it will take me three weeks. If
you trust me [a gesture of entre nous, between you and me], you do it.

It is not simply about knowing of people; it is about having their trust in the ‘particularly non-
transparent’ context of Brussels.
Size does not determine the quality of any foreign service. Diplomats from big countries can be
excessively habituated to their national culture and less aware of other perspectives, several inter-
viewees remark. ‘It’s the big countries that need to train’ (and not just the small ones), one such
person insists – and he comes from a big country himself. I pose the comment to another person
from a big state. That interviewee pauses for quite some time. ‘I don’t have specific examples that I
could use’, he then says. It remains unclear – and I decide to not dwell on this – whether my

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12 Merje Kuus

question is unfair or whether it is better left unexamined. It is true, the interviewee then offers, that
‘the French and the British have the issue of being arrogant’. They do indeed: when colleagues
compliment a British or French diplomat, they noticeably often do so by remarking that the per-
son is not arrogant. The smaller (or poorer) states can be more nimble at using EU policy-pro-
cesses to add value to their own efforts, whereas the big states are more likely to overlook, even
dismiss, these processes. When you weigh the Brussels skill holistically, an interviewee notes, con-
sidering broad knowledge, technical skill, as well as Brussels-specific dexterity: ‘whether it is an
inexperienced easterner or a know-it-all westerner, […] it’s a toss-up’.

‘The important word there is “relaxed”’

Diplomats administer the foreign policies of states. As administrators, they navigate increasingly
complex coordination, accounting, and audit procedures. Across Europe, professional preparation
places less weight on ‘traditional’ knowledge acquisition – reading, for example – and instead
emphasizes practical skills. There are more tests and benchmarks: of financial and project manage-
ment, digital networking and media, team work, leadership, and behavioural competencies.10 The
distinction between knowledge and skill is analytically false of course, but practically, a senior
manager remarks, some of the brilliant thinkers and communicators are ‘disastrous’ managers, par-
ticularly in the context of the increasingly diverse diplomatic services run at high speed on tight
budgets. This is especially true is EU settings, as the union’s embassies are bigger (larger and
more diverse staff to manage therefore) and its ambassadors bear direct personal responsibility
for budgetary decisions. It is well and good to appreciate creative thought, but try this when deal-
ing with embassies that are ‘falling apart’ because of incompetent management.
In parallel, a sophisticated understanding of different places and cultures is highly esteemed in
the profession. Trained as generalists, many diplomats value broad-based knowledge as the basis
for context-sensitive thinking. Although diplomats are not instructed to be curious, many are
socialized to value intellectual curiosity. It is interesting, a high-level EU official remarks, that
although everyone speaks of the importance of being smooth in Brussels, the legendary revered
diplomats are the edgy ones. ‘Sometimes you need the edges’, he remarks – several others make
similar comments. You can administer competently without much reflection, but ‘if you [i.e. a
country] want to do something [new, creative], you need ideas’, another adds. Too many ‘smooth
stones’ can inhibit the generation of ideas. ‘If a diplomat’s job is making people say more than they
normally would’, yet another remarks, ‘it is an intellectual effort’ (see also Kuus, 2016a).
The relationship between administrative and intellectual facets of diplomatic work (and train-
ing) varies across the continent. Some of that variegation runs along national lines. Some systems
give considerable leverage to human resources departments while others leave substantial discre-
tion to senior practitioners (outside such departments); some are more hierarchical than others;
some have pulled organizational and staffing ideas from the private sector more than others.11
To deal with speed, some systems experiment with a greater separation between planning units
and geographical desks. Some see this as the only way to create space for ideas. ‘I sometimes
think that there should be ideally two people for each desk: one who does the reacting and the
other who does the thinking’, an interviewee highlights the detrimental effects of speed on the
quality of work (aware, it seems, of the irony of the proposition). Many others observe the creation
of silos and the burnout of officials. Desk officers can be very good, a senior diplomat comments,
but they are overworked and cannot be tasked with creative thinking. Ask them to consider some-
thing new and they say ‘I write fifteen briefs a week; don’t bother me with this’. It is not the
amount of work as such, a third interviewee comments on burnout, in a different system: it is
that people produce documents that everyone knows will not be read, much less considered.
Papers are written because the boss requires them, and the boss does this because he is afraid
of his boss, and so on. A reaction has to be prepared for everything and a growing number of dip-
lomats do mainly that – they react in standardized ways. The growth of standardized busywork is a

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 Political economies of transnational fields 13

pan-European trend, but its effects on specific diplomatic services depend in part on the resources
available to these services.
In Brussels, diplomatic work revolves around the notoriously complicated EU regulations. In
some ways, it is more technical than traditional bilateral diplomacy. Even in intergovernmental
settings, an experienced diplomat explains, your colleagues do not want a ‘UN speech’ (a codeword
for an overly general and long intervention): they expect you to know the specific issues discussed.
In other ways, work in Brussels is more ‘sociological’, another such interviewee explains. To
advance the interests of ‘her’ state in Brussels, a diplomat must do more than articulate and defend
the national position. She must also understand the positions, interests, and contexts of multiple
other countries. To do that, she needs to know a great deal about these countries: their history,
politics, and culture. A diplomat must be able to play in both technical and sociological registers.12
Several interviewees, in different EU and national institutions, instinctively reach for tactile ges-
tures to characterize the production of EU-level consensuses: gestures of feeling a fabric between
their fingers to test its quality, feeling a handful of sand pass through their fingers, or feeling the
contours of something amorphous and hard to grasp. As my work progressed, notes about such
‘cloth gestures’ increasingly appeared in my notes as I learned to notice the gestures. EU settings
may accentuate the ambiguity conveyed by these gestures, but the feel is sensed in diplomatic work
more broadly. The production of such feel for the game, in its multiple and contested forms, is
therefore an important analytical issue.
That feel does not come cheaply. The richer countries can contemplate the creation of plan-
ning and advisory roles; the poorer ones do what they can with existing staff. The more affluent
systems can weigh the importance of thematic, regional, or other forms of expertise; the less well-
to-do ones focus on the skills that they can train quickly and cheaply. The richer countries can
rotate diplomats more widely and benefit from the diverse networks forged in the process. The
kind of personal familiarity and trust generated through long-term socialization cannot be
acquired by being on the same mailing list. For some EU member states, seconding junior diplo-
mats to the EEAS as desk officers (i.e., low-level appointments) at geographical units is their best
chance to give these professionals some exposure to distant places. Without continuous exposure
to the region (and to other experts on the region) in the home capital as well, the long-term effect
is uncertain. The impact of such long-term exposure is difficult to assess; qualitatively, it plays.
One can see, a council official speaks of the intergovernmental negotiations there, the formerly
colonial ties of the big countries: their diplomats’ knowledge of, say, Africa, is qualitatively better
from what those from small central European countries can muster. The small countries are
understandably sensitive to their immediate neighbourhood. In EU settings though, the game
is often bigger and Eurocentric knowledge is insufficient. True, if the diplomat from central
Europe was trained in Moscow – as many were during the Cold War – he (it is usually a man)
is better at grasping the global implications of issues. It is also true though that ‘those who
have been to Moscow do not end up here’, the person adds with a slight wry smile. What plays
is not only the instructions and negotiation skills in Brussels, but, more broadly, the pre-Brussels
training and socialization.
The relatively weaker actors sometimes try to patch things up by pretending parity (in the
intellectual sphere that interests me here). They occasionally overpromote their national think
tanks and universities, not always mindful of the comparative weakness of these outfits in the glo-
bal context. Other times they grab whatever seems current in powerful capitals. They too often
lapse into a circle of defensive insularity and a narrow push of national interest: pulling in rather
than reaching out, closing ranks rather than opening up. In wealthier countries, foreign services are
often, though not always, less politicized. Alliance-building requires reflexivity, which requires
autonomy and space for improvisation. Such space is in short supply in a politicized foreign min-
istry. As the Brussels scene is difficult to learn, long experience is an asset. A foreign service that
frequently rotates people in and out of Brussels risks trading away insight. Although rotation

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14 Merje Kuus

practices vary, the richer countries tend to keep people in Brussels longer, several interviewees
observe. In Brussels, the old hand who does not always follow his instructions (from the home
capital) may be more effective than the representative who does. When a diplomat in Brussels
wears her national agenda on the sleeve, she is usually less rather than more effective in advancing
her national interest.
The differences in wealth should not be overplayed: they constitute an addition to and not a
substitute for the international picture of European diplomatic practice. The uneveneness cannot
be captured by gross domestic product (GDP) figures and generalizations must be done tenta-
tively. ‘It seems to me’, I solicit feedback from a senior diplomat, that if someone comes from a
relatively rich diplomatic service in which there is some space for a certain – relaxed – exploration
of complex social issues, that person is better prepared for Brussels than someone who comes from
a shoestring ministry, equipped with unrealistic instructions and little else. ‘The important word
there is “relaxed”, not “rich”’, the person responds. Stable ministries with long traditions, not least
the traditions of mentoring, fare better, but it is the tradition rather than the budget that plays.
People from newer systems cannot draw on existing institutional expertise. This can make
them more creative in some cases. It can also make them overstretched and insufficiently relaxed
for the exploration of multiple options. There are examples, the interviewee continues – and others
concur – of relatively poor countries with strong diplomatic services owing to that benefit of tra-
dition. Nobody cites a rich country without a strong tradition.
As always, we must distinguish between what is supposed to happen according to instructions
and what actually happens in practice. Although diplomacy is becoming more standardized and
less individualized, high-ranking persons can strongly influence the tenor of training and sociali-
zation in a foreign service. The methods of modern management do feel ‘disconnected from the
diplomatic milieu’, an experienced practitioner notes, ‘but my impression is that in personnel
decisions, these modern management methods are generally ignored’. The single most frequent
qualifier in my interview material concerns the contingency of interests, alliances, priorities, pol-
icies, and outcomes. The more experienced the diplomat, the more likely she is to cite contingency
and context specificity. True, such performative production of contingency is partly a habit of
negotiation: to cite contingency is to guard your cards. The category is not entirely devoid of sub-
stance though: alert openness to context and contingency is central to diplomatic skill.

CONCLUSION: UNEVEN TRANSNATIONALISM

This article conceptualizes European diplomacy as an uneven transnational field and foregrounds
the simultaneous processes of harmonization and differentiation in that field. Drawing on political
geography, IR, and political sociology, I bring into view some hitherto overlooked axes within
these processes. My question is not who is good in diplomacy but how, that is, through what
socio-spatial processes, are the criteria for quality constituted in the diplomatic field. Beyond
diplomacy or Europe, the article adds empirical substance and conceptual specificity to the
study of transnational knowledge production.
In more pointed terms, there are two contributions here. First, by unpacking in concrete ways
what the oft-used phrase ‘beyond the state’ might mean in European diplomacy, the article
advances the study of diplomacy as a professional sphere that is at once intensely national and fun-
damentally transnational. The spatial variegation at play is partly but not entirely national: differ-
ences are institutionalized and perceived in national terms (e.g., ‘the Italians train this way, but the
Finns train that way’), but this does not mean that the patterns should be analysed in those terms
as well. Nationality is the central category of practice in diplomacy, but it is not always the best
category for analysing the field. Nation-states are integrally involved in all transformations, but
they are not in full control of these transformations. The task is to elucidate the imbrication of
national and transnational practices in governance processes today.

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 Political economies of transnational fields 15

Second, in order to grasp the intertwining of national and transnational dynamics, we must
consider cross-national patterns of wealth accumulation in addition to the commonsense factors
like the set-up of governmental structures. To speak of political economy is not to create neat dis-
tinctions between ‘richer’ or ‘poorer’ countries – the patterns are clearly not so dichotomous – but
to bring into view the processes of uneven development that have hitherto received little attention
in diplomatic studies, EU studies, or the geographic literature on diplomacy. The processes are
variegated or articulated in spatial as well as social terms: they are linked not only to the present
efforts of diplomatic training but also to longer term patterns of wealth accumulation on a con-
tinental scale. Just like the map of nation-states is insufficient to understand the spatial patterns
of the diplomatic field, a table of GDP numbers is inadequate to grasp the symbolic struggles
in that field. Closer attention to symbolic resources would improve our understanding of Euro-
pean diplomacy and the course of European integration more broadly.
There is also a methodological argument here. It is one thing to discuss networks and fields,
rather than states, in general terms; it is another to show empirically the often imperceptible
entanglement of national and transnational dynamics along multiple axes of capital. A conceptual
argument about a social field relies fundamentally on detailed empirical material about that field.
To understand diplomatic training, for example, we need to know something about the insti-
tutional set-up of governmental institutions, the cross-border influence of specific administrative
models, and the material as well as symbolic landscape of Europe’s universities, think tanks, and
media outlets. To advance comparative study, we must decidedly depart from the familiar national
matrix of analysis (i.e., ‘the Italians do it this way but the Finns do it that way’ narrative) and dis-
cern patterns that are not necessarily national in origin or operation. Only by examining the con-
crete mix of state, quasi-state (e.g., universities), and non-state actors can we discern the multiple
axes of transnational collaboration and competition for resources both material and symbolic.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the persons who took time from their tight schedules, sometimes several times, to be inter-
viewed for this study. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the American Association of
Geographers annual meeting in San Francisco (April 2016) and the European Consortium of Pol-
itical Research Standing Group on the European Union conference in Trento (June 2016): Jason
Dittmer and Federica Bicchi generously served as discussants at these events. Constructive com-
ments from two anonymous reviewers of this journal and from Walter Nicholls as the adjudicating
editor are greatly appreciated. Genevieve Parente provided research assistance.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

FUNDING

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

NOTES

1. The total number of interviews is 162 so far, conducted with over one hundred individuals
(many persons have been interviewed several times) since 2007. The conservative phrase ‘over
100’ indicates the approximate number of interviews with individuals who are trained as national
or EU diplomats or move in diplomatic circles on a daily basis, as these interviews feed directly
into the present article (the remaining few dozen interviews are with foreign policy professionals

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16 Merje Kuus

whose daily work is more distant from diplomacy). Although many national diplomats uphold the
idea that nation-states do ‘proper’ diplomacy – while EU officials suggest that they do ‘proper’
Europe – the distinction between ‘proper’ and ‘EU’ diplomacy is of limited use analytically (see
also Kuus, 2015b; Lequesne, 2015). The diplomatic relations of EU member states are increas-
ingly linked to EU decision-making, and EU-level diplomacy operates centrally through the
member states. All EU settings are quasi-diplomatic as all involve intergovernmental and transna-
tional negotiation (Kuus, 2014). When drawing on the 52 interviews from which most of the
unattributed quotes are drawn, I do not list the capitals where the interviews took place because
the number of interviewees in any one place is small – usually two to three persons involved in
diplomatic training – and citing the location would jeopardize the anonymity of the speakers.
Only the points that are valid beyond one setting (national or EU) are quoted here. The quotes
are used to illustrate widely shared sentiments: no quote represents a view held only by the speaker.
The 48 individuals behind the 52 interviews in 2014–2016 (again, the numbers are confusing as 8
interviews are follow-ups but some are with a group of persons) come from 15 EU member states
(including all of the big states as well as countries from different regions of the union). References
to their nationality are omitted in the text: such references would jeopardize anonymity and unduly
nationalize the material that is better conceptualized in terms of a transnational field (see also
Kuus, 2016b).
2. Long-term cordial relationships with foreign officials are a cornerstone of diplomatic work and
nation-states promote such relationships. When diplomatic academies market their training
courses to (government-sponsored) diplomats from other states, they do so in part to build net-
works. The foreign alumni, it is hoped, make brilliant careers in other foreign services and thereby
enhance the diplomatic network of the host country.
3. The Presidency of the Council of the European Union (colloquially known as EU presidency)
rotates among the member states twice annually. The state holding the six-month presidency has
some power over the course of intergovernmental negotiations because its officials coordinate and
chair some of these negotiations. The persons who do the coordination need to know a great deal
about EU-level decision-making in order to do their work well (see Kuus, 2014).
4. The field of diplomatic studies is outside the scope of this article, but the research cited herein
includes extensive reviews of that field as well as the relevant work on international organizations
and EU institutions.
5. The comment comes from a long-time EU official: some national diplomats would dispute
the formulation as a symbolic power grab by EU institutions.
6. For national diplomats, there are two paths to Brussels: into the national representations (on
the basis of rotation) or into EU institutions (usually on secondment, sometimes permanently).
Those who join the EEAS from national diplomatic services must learn to represent the EU rather
than ‘their’ state.
7. Diplomatic training for EU civil servants (i.e. officials of the commission) started years before
the Lisbon Treaty took effect.
8. The widening rather than narrowing of the gap between the larger and wealthier diplomacies
on the one hand and the poorer and smaller ones on the other is observed beyond Europe as well.
This article looks only at the differentiation within Europe.
9. College of Europe has two campuses, one in Bruges, Belgium and the other in Natolin, a sub-
urb of Warsaw. Not all of its graduates obtain attractive jobs in EU institutions, but the image of
the College as a launch-pad for brilliant Brussels careers persists.
10. National training traditions vary considerably as they are linked to national education tra-
ditions (see Berger et al., 2013; Baylon, 2016).
11. The EU system is particularly complicated because of de facto national quotas, especially for
high-level positions. The EU system is also peculiar for its strong middle management layer com-
pared to many national institutions.

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 Political economies of transnational fields 17

12. Many gravitate to EU institutions for the intellectual challenge that comes with this terrain.
‘A lot of people in EEAS are semi-academics’ an interviewee outside that institution says: ‘they
want to be academics, but they don’t like the money’.

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