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 g.r.berridge

DIPLO M A CY
theory and practice
 Diplomacy

“Probably the most prolific contemporary writer on diplomacy is Professor Geoff

R. Berridge. Each of his many books is impeccably well written and full of insights
into the fascinating formation of modern diplomacy.”
—Robert William Dry, New York University, USA, and Chairman of AFSA’s
Committee on the Foreign Service Profession and Ethics

“I discovered Geoff Berridge’s book on diplomacy after serving as a diplomat for over
30 years. It is well-researched, sophisticated, inspiring and, where the subject invites
it, suitably ironic. I used the 4th edition with my students and will now continue
working with the 5th edition.”
—Dr Max Schweizer, Head Foreign Affairs and Applied Diplomacy, ZHAW School of
Management and Law, Switzerland

“Berridge’s Diplomacy is an enlightening journey that takes the student, the practitio-
ner and the general reader from the front to the backstage of current diplomatic
practice. The thoroughly updated and expanded text—also enriched with a stimulat-
ing new treatment of embassies—is an invaluable guide to the stratagems and out-
comes, continuities and innovations, of a centuries’ long process.”
—Arianna Arisi Rota, Professor of History of Diplomacy at the University of
Pavia, Italy

“This is an excellent text-book which fills a gap in the current writing on diplomacy.”
—Lord Wright of Richmond, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign
Office (UK), 1986–91

“This book remains the best introduction to the subject.”

—Alan Henrikson, Director of Diplomatic Studies, The Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, USA

“Berridge is the leading authority on contemporary diplomatic practice.”

—Laurence E. Pope, former US ambassador and senior official at the Department
of State

“Berridge’s study of diplomacy is the standard text on the subject—succinct yet sub-
stantial in content, lucid in style.”
—John W. Young, Professor of International History, University of Nottingham, UK
 G. R. Berridge

Diplomacy
Theory and Practice
G. R. Berridge
Politics and International Relations
University of Leicester
Leicester, UK
DiploFoundation
Geneva, Switzerland

ISBN 978-3-030-85930-5    ISBN 978-3-030-85931-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85931-2

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 Also by G. R. Berridge
BRITISH DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY, 1583 TO THE PRESENT: A Study in the
Evolution of the Resident Embassy
BRITISH HEADS OF MISSION AT CONSTANTINOPLE, 1583–1922
THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN DIPLOMACY and Other Essays
DIPLOMACY AND SECRET SERVICE: A Short Introduction
DIPLOMACY AT THE UN (co-editor with A. Jennings)
THE DIPLOMACY OF ANCIENT GREECE: A Short Introduction
DIPLOMATIC CLASSICS: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel
DIPLOMATIC THEORY FROM MACHIAVELLI TO KISSINGER (with
Maurice Keens-Soper, and T. G. Otte)
A DIPLOMATIC WHISTLEBLOWER IN THE VICTORIAN ERA: The Life
and Writings of E. C. Grenville-Murray
ECONOMIC POWER IN ANGLO-SOUTH AFRICAN DIPLOMACY:
Simonstown, Sharpeville and After
EMBASSIES IN ARMED CONFLICT
GERALD FITZMAURICE (1865–1939), CHIEF DRAGOMAN OF THE
BRITISH EMBASSY IN TURKEY
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS: States, Power and Conflict since 1945,
Third Edition
AN INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (with D. Heater)
THE PALGRAVE MACMILLAN DICTIONARY OF DIPLOMACY: Third
Edition (with Lorna Lloyd)
THE POLITICS OF THE SOUTH AFRICA RUN: European Shipping and
Pretoria
RETURN TO THE UN: UN Diplomacy in Regional Conflicts
SOUTH AFRICA, THE COLONIAL POWERS AND ‘AFRICAN DEFENCE’:
The Rise and Fall of the White Entente, 1948–60
TALKING TO THE ENEMY: How States without ‘Diplomatic Relations’
Communicate
TILKIDOM AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: The Letters of Gerald
Fitzmaurice to George Lloyd
For Jack Spence
 Preface and Acknowledgments

This edition of Diplomacy: Theory and Practice has been updated throughout
and—despite the excision of some long passages that I concluded were either
out of place or no longer important—considerably expanded. With the
Covid-19 pandemic in mind and because I had ignored it in previous edi-
tions, health diplomacy finds a major place for illustrative purposes. Among
other subjects new to this edition are capacity-building in following up,
embassy branch offices, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change,
interpreters at summits, and—unavoidably—the diplomatic implications of
former US President Donald J. Trump. Subjects covered in the previous edi-
tion but to which increased attention is given in this one include the use of
embassies for transnational repression, video-conferencing, Twitter, intelli-
gence officers on special missions, and the variation in representative offices
by degree of diplomatic status.
An innovation to which I must give special notice is the addition at the end
of each chapter of a list of ‘Topics for seminar discussion or essays’. This draws
not only on my teaching career but also on my long experience of vetting
draft exam questions while an external examiner at five British universities. A
good question should be short and clear—and provoke thought, which is
therefore what I have tried to achieve on these lists. A few cautions: first, very
few of these questions can be answered well by reliance on this book alone,
hence the ‘Further reading’; second, some questions overlap, which does not
matter unless they are used by a lecturer setting an exam; and third, most lists
feature a comparative question (e.g., ‘Compare the roles of Austria and

ix
x Preface and Acknowledgments

Switzerland in conflict resolution’ in the chapter on mediation), for advice on

answering which, as well as on other points, see ‘7 common pitfalls to avoid
in writing essays and dissertations’ on my website.
In order to give better guidance on further reading at the end of each chap-
ter, here and there I have annotated the works listed. Other things being
equal, I have also given preference to sources freely available on the Internet.
As in earlier editions, I have avoided providing URLs for such sources, partly
because they are often so long, partly because they tend to change or disap-
pear, and partly because it is usually easy enough to find a web resource via a
search engine; I simply add ‘[www]’ to a reference available on the Internet at
the time of writing, although a few might be behind paywalls.
I do not believe that footnotes or endnotes are appropriate for a textbook.
However, sources for quotations must be provided and I do this by means of
in-text citations of full references to be found at the end of the book. Also,
where a box relies chiefly on primary sources I provide these at the foot of the
box itself.
The sources for unreferenced recent events are usually serious news agencies
such as Reuters, news websites such as Politico, and online versions of newspa-
pers such as The Guardian (which has no paywall). For many points in the
text, the sources are my own earlier writings or works listed in ‘Further read-
ing’ that should be fairly obvious. Works listed in ‘References’ at the end of
the book include all those cited in the text, together with the more important
among those on which I have drawn that are not listed in ‘Further reading’. In
providing book titles, it is an idiosyncrasy of mine that I put the name of the
publisher before place of publication, because I find this intuitive and because
publishers have been doing the same thing on the title pages of their own
books for well over half a century. (Students beware! You will probably incur
the wrath of your tutors if you follow my example.)
As usual, I have prepared the Index myself. Due to production difficulties
and space limitations, it is much shorter than before and I have concentrated
the entries on diplomatic activity, procedures and institutions at the expense
of countries and—with notable exceptions—persons. I believe the Index is
not seriously the worse for its relative brevity.
For valuable observations on parts of the text of this edition, I am grateful
to Christiaan Sys, Petru Dumitriu, John W. Young, Keith Hamilton, and my
daughter Willow Berridge. For sharing with me raw data from her research on
health attachés, I am in debt to Sabrina Luh. I must also mention Jelena
 Preface and Acknowledgments xi

Jakovljevic, who has for many years expertly managed my website, on which
the book is updated. Finally, I wish to thank most warmly the two anony-
mous readers of my proposal for this edition for giving me valuable ideas that
have shaped the final draft and Anne-Kathrin Birchley-Brun of the publisher
for her patient and prompt support throughout. The responsibility for all
remaining deficiencies is mine alone.

Leicester, UK G. R. Berridge

May 2021
 Online Updating

For each chapter in the book there is a corresponding page on my website,

which is hosted by DiploFoundation. These pages contain further reflections,
any corrections needed, and details of recent developments. Among other
things, the website also has pages on ideas for dissertation and thesis topics,
primary sources for study, recommended reading, and advice on essay and
dissertation writing. Please visit http://grberridge.diplomacy.edu/ Links to
other sites/organizations made to the content of this book by the publisher do
not necessarily reflect the views of the author.

xiii
 Contents

1 The Foreign Ministry  1

Staffing and Supporting Missions Abroad    5
Policy-Making and Implementation   6
Coordination of Foreign Relations   12
Dealing with Foreign Diplomats at Home   15
Building Support at Home   16
Summary  17
Further Reading  17

Part I The Art of Negotiation  21

2 Prenegotiations 23
Agreeing the Need to Negotiate   24
Agreeing the Agenda   27
Agreeing Procedure  29
Secrecy  30
Format  30
Venue  33
Delegations  36
Timing  38
Summary  39
Further Reading  39

3 ‘Around-the-Table’ Negotiations 41
The Formula Stage   41
The Details Stage   45

xv
xvi Contents

Difficulties  46
Negotiating Strategies  47
Summary  50
Further Reading  50

4 Diplomatic Momentum 53
Deadlines  55
Self-imposed Deadlines  55
External Deadlines  56
Symbolic Deadlines  58
Overlapping Deadlines  59
Metaphors of Movement   60
Publicity  63
Raising the Level of the Talks   65
Summary  66
Further Reading  67

5 Packaging Agreements 69
International Legal Obligations at a Premium   70
Signaling Importance at a Premium   71
Convenience at a Premium   73
Saving Face at a Premium   74
Both Languages, or More   75
Small Print  76
Euphemisms  78
‘Separate but Related’ Agreements   79
Summary  80
Further Reading  81

6 Following Up 83
Early Methods  84
Monitoring  87
Review Meetings  90
Capacity-Building  94
Summary  95
Further Reading  95
 Contents xvii

Part II Diplomacy with Diplomatic Relations  99

7 Embassies101
The Normal Embassy  105
The Fortress Embassy  115
The Mini-Embassy  118
The Militarized Embassy  119
Summary 121
Further Reading  122

8 Telecommunications125
Telephone Diplomacy Flourishes  126
Video-Conferencing Peaks  133
Summary 137
Further Reading  138

9 Consulates141
Consular Functions  146
Career Consuls  149
Honorary Consuls  152
Consular Sections  154
Summary 155
Further Reading  155

10 Secret Intelligence159
Ambassadors as Agent-Runners  160
Service Attachés  161
Intelligence Officers  163
Cuckoos in the Nest?  169
Summary 175
Further Reading  176

11 Conferences179
International Organizations  181
Procedure 183
Venue 183
Participation 184
Agenda 189
Public Debate and Private Discussion  190
Decision-Making 191
xviii Contents

The ‘New Multilateralism’  195

Summary 196
Further Reading  197

12 Summits199
Professional Anathemas  200
General Case for the Defense  203
Serial Summits  204
Ad hoc Summits  206
The High-Level Exchange of Views  208
Secrets of Success  209
Summary 212
Further Reading  213

13 Public Diplomacy215
Rebranding Propaganda  215
The Importance of Public Diplomacy  217
The Role of the Foreign Ministry  219
The Role of the Embassy  222
Summary 225
Further Reading  226

Part III Diplomacy Without Diplomatic Relations 229

14 Embassy Substitutes231
Interests Sections  231
Consulates 236
Representative Offices  238
Front Missions  242
Summary 243
Further Reading  244

15 Special Missions247
The Advantages of Special Missions  247
The Variety of Special Missions  249
Unofficial Envoys  249
Official Envoys  251
To Go Secretly or Openly?  255
Summary 257
Further Reading  258
 Contents xix

16 Mediation261
The Nature of Mediation  262
Different Mediators and Different Motives  264
Track One  264
Track Two  267
Multiparty Mediation  268
The Ideal Mediator  270
The Ripe Moment  273
Summary 274
Further Reading  275

Conclusion: The Counter-revolution in Diplomatic Practice277

References281

Index295
 Abbreviations

AU African Union [formerly Organization of African Unity]

BCE Before the Common Era [aka ‘BC’]
CGTN China Global Television Network
CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
COP Conference of the Parties [as in COP21, the twenty-first conference of
the parties to the UNFCCC]
CSCE Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
CSO Civil Society Organizations
DFAT Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
EU European Union
FAC Foreign Affairs Committee [British House of Commons]
FAO UN Food and Agriculture Organization
FAOHC The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the [US] Association
for Diplomatic Studies and Training
FARA Foreign Agents Registration Act [US]
FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office
FCDO Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States
FOIA Freedom of Information Act
G7 Group of Seven
G20 Group of 20
GAVI Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization
GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters [British]
GRU Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye [Russian—formerly Soviet—
military intelligence]
HHS Health and Human Services, US Department
Humint human intelligence-gathering

xxi
xxii Abbreviations

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

ICJ International Court of Justice
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
ILC International Law Commission
IMF International Monetary Fund
ISC Intelligence and Security Committee [British]
JCPOA Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [for Iran’s nuclear program]
KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti [Committee for State
Security]
KRG Kurdish Regional Government
MIRV multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle
MOU memorandum of understanding
MSF Médecins sans Frontières [Doctors without Borders]
NGO non-governmental organization
NPT Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
NSA National Security Agency [US]
OAS Organization of American States
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN
OIG Office of Inspector General [US Department of State]
OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
P5 Permanent 5 [on the UN Security Council: Britain, France, PRC,
Russia, United States]
P5+1 P5 plus Germany
PCO Passport Control Officer
PLO Palestine Liberation Organization
PNA Palestinian National Authority
PNGed declared persona non grata—no longer welcome
PRC People’s Republic of China
QDDR Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review [US]
SALT I Strategic Arms Limitations Talks [first negotiations, 1969–72]
S&T Science and Technology
Sigint Signals intelligence
SIS Secret Intelligence Service [British; also known as MI6]
SVR Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki [successor to the KGB—Russian
External Intelligence Service]
TECRO Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office
TPO trade promotion organization
UNESCO UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNFCCC UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
UNICEF UN Children’s Fund, formerly UN International Children’s
Emergency Fund
 Abbreviations xxiii

UNMOVIC UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission

UNSCOM UN Special Commission [on Iraq]
USIA United States Information Agency
USINT US Interests Section Cuba
USIP United States Institute of Peace
VCCR Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963)
VCDR Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961)
WMD weapons of mass destruction
WHO World Health Organization
WTO World Trade Organization [formerly General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade]
 List of Boxes

Box 1.1 ‘Department of Foreign Affairs’ to ‘Department of State’ 2

Box 1.2 Communications with Embassies 3
Box 1.3 Foreign Ministries: Formal Titles Making a Point, and Some
Metonyms4
Box 1.4 Crisis Management 7
Box 1.5 Should the Foreign Ministry Control Development Aid? 14
Box 2.1 The Geneva Conference Format for Middle East Peace
Negotiations32
Box 3.1 Formula for an Anglo–Turkish Alliance, 12 May 1939 42
Box 3.2 Nuclear Talks with Iran: The Details Stage 45
Box 3.3 The Cost of Making Major Concessions Too Early 49
Box 4.1 The Non-paper 54
Box 4.2 The Chinese ‘Deadline’ on Hong Kong 56
Box 4.3 The Good Friday Agreement, 1998 59
Box 5.1 Treaty Registration with the UN 71
Box 5.2 The ‘Treaty’ So-called 72
Box 5.3 A Peace Treaty in the Wrong Language 75
Box 6.1 Thai Tribute to the People’s Republic of China 85
Box 6.2 Special Group on Visits to Presidential Sites: Iraq, 26 March–2
April 1998 88
Box 6.3 The International Commission 91
Box 7.1 Locally Engaged Staff and Diplomatic Immunity 106
Box 7.2 Embassy Branch Offices 107
Box 7.3 The Economic and/or Commercial Section 107
Box 7.4 The Health Attaché 108
Box 7.5 Embassies and Transnational Repression 114
Box 8.1 The White House–10 Downing Street Hotline 126
Box 8.2 The Reagan–Assad Telephone Call 130

xxv
xxvi List of Boxes

Box 9.1 The Main Differences Between Diplomatic and Consular

Privileges and Immunities 145
Box 9.2 European Convention on Consular Functions (1967) 146
Box 9.3 Disgusted in Ibiza 148
Box 9.4 Consular Districts 151
Box 10.1 The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) 164
Box 10.2 SIS and Passport Control Officer Cover 164
Box 10.3 British Consulate-General Hanoi During the Vietnam War 166
Box 10.4 Sigint Bases in Soviet Diplomatic and Consular Posts in the
Cold War 168
Box 10.5 The State–CIA ‘Treaty of Friendship’, 1977 170
Box 10.6 The Raymond Davis Affair, Pakistan 2011 171
Box 10.7 The Five Eyes’ Alliance 174
Box 11.1 The International Sanitary Conferences, 1851–1938 180
Box 11.2 GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance 186
Box 11.3 The UN Security Council: Question of Reform 188
Box 11.4 Inflated ‘Delegations’ to the World Health Assembly, 2019 194
Box 12.1 Philippe de Commynes 201
Box 12.2 The Funeral Summit 207
Box 12.3 The Role of the Interpreter 211
Box 13.1 Twitter 218
Box 13.2 ‘News Management’: Correcting Foreign Diplomatic
Correspondents220
Box 14.1 Protecting Powers and the VCDR (1961) 232
Box 14.2 Protecting Powers: When the Old System Lingers 233
Box 14.3 Diplomatic Acts and the VCCR (1963) 237
Box 14.4 The Consulates in Jerusalem 238
Box 14.5 The US/PRC Liaison Offices, 1973–1979 239
Box 15.1 The New York Convention on Special Missions (1969) 248
Box 15.2 About Lord Levy: Tony Blair’s Personal Envoy to the Middle
East and Latin America 249
Box 15.3 James Clapper’s Secret Mission to North Korea, November 2014 254
Box 16.1 Good Offices, Conciliation, and Arbitration 262
Box 16.2 Dr Bruno Kreisky 266
Box 16.3 Armand Hammer: Citizen-Diplomat 268
Box 16.4 Action Group for Syria 269
 Introduction

Diplomacy is an essentially political activity and, well resourced and skillful,

a major ingredient of power. Its chief purpose is to enable states to secure the
objectives of their foreign policies without resort to force, propaganda, or law.
It achieves this mainly by communication between professional diplomatic
agents and other officials designed to secure agreements. Although it also
includes such discrete activities as gathering information, clarifying inten-
tions, and engendering goodwill, it is thus not surprising that, until the label
‘diplomacy’ was affixed to all of these activities by the British parliamentarian
Edmund Burke in 1796, it was known most commonly as ‘negotiation’—by
Cardinal Richelieu, the first minister of Louis XIII of France, as négociation
continuelle. Diplomacy is not merely what professional diplomatic agents do;
it is carried out by other officials and by private persons under the direction of
officials. As we shall see, it is also carried out through many different channels
besides the traditional resident mission. Together with the balance of power,
which it both reflects and reinforces, diplomacy is the most important institu-
tion of our society of states.
The remote origins of diplomacy are probably to be found in the relations
between the ‘Great Kings’ of the Near East in the second, or possibly even in
the late fourth, millennium BCE. Its main features in these centuries were the
dependence of communications on messengers and merchant caravans, of
diplomatic immunity on codes of hospitality to strangers, and of the obser-
vance of treaties on terror of the gods under whose unforgiving gaze they were
confirmed. However, although apparently adequate to the times, diplomacy
during these centuries remained rudimentary. In the main this would seem to
be because it was not called on very often and because communications were
slow, laborious, insecure, and unpredictable.

xxvii
xxviii Introduction

Not so much later but more varied and probably more effective in its meth-
ods seems to have been the diplomacy of ancient China. As early as the last
two decades of the eighth century BCE, in a large region of some hundreds of
independent political entities well before the empire emerged in 221 BCE,
there is evidence of what were probably already well-established diplomatic
customs. Rulers themselves met in twos or threes, for example, to form mili-
tary plans, affirm friendly relations, make peace, or settle a marriage alli-
ance—although they convened ‘in the open, generally by lakes or on hills at
more or less sacred spots’, a practice probably born in times ‘when rulers dared
not open their capitals or cities to other rulers accompanied by retinues’
(Britton: 619). (However, princes in some friendly relationships made court
visits of a highly ceremonial nature in order to solidify their friendships.)
More numerous contacts were made by envoys of high rank enjoying the
‘extra-clan immunity’ of nobles; their missions were designed for similar pur-
poses but also included the delivery of gifts and preparations for the princes’
conferences (Britton: 634). Treaties were solemnized by blood oaths, and
mediation—uninvited as well as encouraged—was also a customary practice.
In the Greek world of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, which included
over 1000 city-states, conditions both demanded and favored an even more
sophisticated diplomacy, and great advances were made. First and foremost,
city-states appointed resident representatives to look after their interests
abroad, albeit not from their own people but instead from citizens of the for-
eign city-state, who for this reason bear a superficial resemblance to the mod-
ern honorary consul (see Chap. 9). The proxenos, as he was known, who was
usually an influential politician or judge, differed from the honorary consul in
so far as he was expected to handle any high-level political matters that came
up as well as the more mundane business of looking after visitors from the city
he served. Even small city-states appointed many proxenoi. The ancient Greeks
also employed large special missions, invented the oratorical techniques
required to gain popular acceptance of a bad as well as a good argument (the
art of rhetoric), publicized important treaties by inscribing them on stone or
bronze pillars (stelai) located in temples or other sacred places, practiced mul-
tilateral diplomacy in religious and military ‘leagues’, and employed media-
tion more or less thinly disguised as arbitration in the settlement of many
territorial disputes.
In late medieval Europe, the Byzantine Empire’s contribution in its declin-
ing centuries was to what would now be called public diplomacy, turning its
genius to ‘maintaining the illusion of world domination’ (Wozniac). Thus
other rulers were treated as junior members of the Emperor’s ‘family of kings’;
by means of elaborate ceremonial and extraordinary artifice, foreign envoys
 Introduction xxix

and minor rulers visiting Constantinople were overawed by the Emperor’s

power; and treaties were dressed up as unilateral decrees (‘golden bulls’), so
that even the most humiliating concessions—including the payment of trib-
ute to powerful barbarians on the Empire’s retreating frontiers—were made to
appear as acts of imperial grace.
Toward the end of the Middle Ages and over the following centuries, the
Republic of Venice had begun to set the pace, establishing new standards of
honesty and technical proficiency in diplomacy; the relazioni, the detailed
reports on all aspects of the country where ambassadors had served that were
presented to the Senate at the end of their tours, became famous.
It was in the Italian city-states’ system—of which Venice was a prominent
member—that in the late fifteenth century the recognizably modern system
of diplomacy first made its appearance. The hyper-insecurity of the rich but
poorly defended Italian states induced by the repeated invasions of their pen-
insula by the powers beyond the Alps after 1494, made essential a diplomacy
that was both continuous and conducted with less fanfare. Fortunately, no
great barriers were presented by language or religion, and although communi-
cations still depended chiefly on messengers on horseback, the relatively short
distances between city states made this less of a drawback. It is not surprising,
therefore, that it was this period that saw the birth of the genuine resident
embassy; that is to say, in contrast to the proxenos, a resident mission headed
by a citizen of the prince or republic whose interests it served.
The Italian system, the spirit and methods of which are captured so well in
the despatches of Niccolò Machiavelli to the Florentine Ten of War, was later
named the ‘French system of diplomacy’ by the British scholar-diplomat
Harold Nicolson (Nicolson 1954: Ch. 3). He did this with some justification
because it was Frenchmen—notably Cardinal Richelieu and François de
Callières—who were so influential in refining its practice and developing its
theory, and because French gradually replaced Latin as the working language
of diplomacy. The French system was the first fully developed system of diplo-
macy and the basis of the modern—essentially bilateral—system (see Chap. 7).
In the early twentieth century the French system was modified but not, as
some hoped and others feared, transformed. The ‘open diplomacy’ of ad hoc
and permanent conferences—notably the League of Nations—was simply
grafted onto the existing network of bilateral communications, which weath-
ered the attacks on it by the Communist regimes in Soviet Russia and, later,
China, as it had done those of the French revolutionaries of the late eigh-
teenth century. Why did diplomacy survive these assaults and continue to
develop to such a degree and in such an inventive manner that, at the begin-
ning of the twenty-first century, we can speak with some confidence of a
xxx Introduction

world diplomatic system of unprecedented strength? The reason is that the

conditions that first encouraged the development of diplomacy have for some
decades obtained perhaps more fully than ever before. These are a balance of
power between a plurality of states, mutually impinging interests of an unusu-
ally urgent kind, efficient and secure international communication, and rela-
tive cultural toleration—the rise of radical Islam notwithstanding.
As already noted, diplomacy is an important means by which states pursue
their foreign policies, and in many states these are still shaped in significant
degree in a ministry of foreign affairs. Such ministries also have the major
responsibility for a state’s diplomats serving abroad and for dealing (formally,
at any rate) with foreign diplomats at home. It is for this reason that this book
begins with the foreign ministry. Following this, it is divided into three parts.
Part I considers the art of negotiation, the most important activity of the
world diplomatic system as a whole. Part II examines the channels through
which negotiations, together with the other functions of diplomacy, are pur-
sued when states enjoy normal diplomatic relations. Part III looks at the most
important ways in which these are carried on when they do not.

Further Reading

Adcock, F. and D. J. Mosley, Diplomacy in Ancient Greece (Thames and

Hudson: London, 1975). Part 2, by Mosley.
Berridge, G. R. (ed.), Diplomatic Classics: Selected texts from Commynes to
Vattel (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2004).
Berridge, G. R., The Diplomacy of Ancient Greece: A short introduction
(DiploFoundation: Geneva, 2018). Available on the ISSUU platform.
Berridge, G. R. et al (eds), Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger
(Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2001).
Britton, Roswell S., ‘Chinese interstate intercourse before 700 BC’, American
Journal of International Law, vol. 29(4), 1935.
Bull, Hedley and Adam Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society
(Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1984).
Cohen, Raymond and Raymond Westbrook (eds), Amarna Diplomacy: The
beginnings of international relations (Johns Hopkins University Press:
Baltimore, 2000).
Eilers, Claude (ed), Diplomats and Diplomacy in the Roman World (Brill:
Leiden, 2009). Introduction and ‘Roman perspectives on Greek diplo-
macy’ by Sheila L. Ager.
 Introduction xxxi

Frey, Linda and Marsha Frey, ‘“The reign of the charlatans is over”’: the French
revolutionary attack on diplomatic practice’, The Journal of Modern History,
vol. 65(4), Dec., 1993.
Frodsham, J. D. (transl. and ed.), The First Chinese Embassy to the West: The
Journals of Kuo Sung-T’ao, Liu Hsi-Hung and Chang Te-Yi (Clarendon
Press: Oxford, 1974).
Hamilton, Keith and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy, 2nd edn
(Routledge: London, 2011). Chs 1–4.
Jones, Raymond A., The British Diplomatic Service, 1815–1914 (Colin
Smythe: Gerrards Cross, Bucks., 1983).
Liverani, Mario, International Relations in the Ancient Near East (Palgrave:
Basingstoke, 2001). Intro. and ch. 10.
Machiavelli, Niccolò, trsl. by Christian E. Detmold, The Historical, Political,
and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolo Machiavelli, (James R. Osgood: Boston,
1882), vol. III (‘Missions’) and vol. IV (‘Missions continued’). More com-
monly known as the ‘Legations’, these are Machiavelli’s diplomatic des-
patches sent back to Florence. Detmold’s English translation of the
complete works is highly regarded and still, as far as I know, the only one
available of the ‘Legations’.
Mack, William, Proxeny and Polis: Institutional networks in the Ancient Greek
World (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2015).
Mack, William (Project Director), Proxeny Networks of the Ancient World (a
database of proxeny networks of the Greek city-states) [www].
Mattingly, G., Renaissance Diplomacy (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1965).
Meier, S. A., The Messenger in the Ancient Semitic World (Scholars Press:
Atlanta, GA, 1988).
Mösslang, M, and T. Riotte (eds), The Diplomats’ World: A cultural history of
diplomacy, 1815–1914 (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2008).
Munn-Rankin, J. M., ‘Diplomacy in Western Asia in the early second millen-
nium B.C.’, Iraq, Spring 1956, vol. 18(1).
Nicolson, Harold, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (Constable:
London, 1954).
Peyrefitte, Alain, The Collision of Two Civilisations: The British expedition to
China 1792–4, trsl. from the French by J. Rothschild (Harvill:
London, 1993).
Queller, Donald E., The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton
University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1967).
Queller, Donald E., ‘The development of ambassadorial relazioni’, in J. R. Hale
(ed), Renaissance Venice (Faber and Faber: London, 1974).
xxxii Introduction

Selbitschka, Armin. ‘Early Chinese diplomacy: “Realpolitik” versus the so-­

called tributary system’, Asia Major, vol. 28(1), 2015.
Sharp, Paul and Geoffrey Wiseman (eds), The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution
of International Society (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2007).
Skinner, Quentin, Machiavelli (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1981). Ch.
1, The Diplomat.
Victoria Tin-bor Hui, ‘Toward a dynamic theory of international politics:
insights from comparing ancient China and early modern Europe’,
International Organization, vol. 58(1), Winter, 2004.
Wozniak, E. E., ‘Diplomacy, Byzantine’, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol.
4 (Scribner’s: New York, 1984).
 1
The Foreign Ministry

It is difficult to find a state today that does not have, in addition to a diplo-
matic service, a ministry dedicated to its administration and direction. This is
usually known as the ministry of foreign affairs or, for short, foreign ministry.
It is easy to forget that this ministry came relatively late onto the scene. In
fact, its appearance in Europe post-dated the arrival of the resident diplomatic
mission by nearly three centuries. This chapter will begin by looking briefly at
the origins and development of the foreign ministry, and then examine its
different roles.
Until the sixteenth century, the individual states of Europe did not concen-
trate responsibility for foreign affairs in one administrative unit but allocated
it between different, infant bureaucracies on a geographical basis. Some of
these offices were also responsible for certain domestic matters. This picture
began to change under the combined pressure of the multiplying interna-
tional relationships and thickening networks of resident embassies that were a
feature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first of these trends
increased the possibilities of inconsistency in the formulation and execution
of foreign policy, and this demanded more unified direction and better pre-
served archives. The second trend—foreign policy execution by means of resi-
dent missions—increased vastly the quantity of correspondence flowing
home. This added the need for attention to methods of communication with
the missions, including the creation and renewal of their ciphers. It also meant
regard to their staffing and, especially, their financing—including that of their
secret intelligence activities, because separate secret service agencies did not
appear until very much later (see Chap. 10). All of this demanded better pre-
served archives as well, not to mention more clerks and messengers. In sum,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85931-2_1
2 G. R. Berridge

the rapid increase in négociation continuelle abroad required not only continu-
ous organization at home but also one bureaucracy, rather than several in
competition.
It has often been assumed that it was in France that the first foreign minis-
try began to emerge when, in 1589, Henry III gave to one of his secretaries of
state, Louis de Revol, sole responsibility for foreign affairs, an administrative
innovation that—after some regression—was confirmed by Richelieu in
1626. But there might well be other candidates, within and beyond Europe,
for the title of first foreign ministry. Moreover, the office of the French secre-
tary of state for foreign affairs in Richelieu’s time was little more than a per-
sonal staff: it was not even an outline version of a modern foreign ministry,
with an organized archive and defined bureaucratic structure. This had to wait
until the last years of the reign of Louis XIV at the beginning of the eigh-
teenth century (Picavet: 39–40).
Indeed, it was only during the eighteenth century that a recognizably mod-
ern foreign ministry became the general rule in Europe, and even then the
administrative separation of foreign and domestic business was by no means
watertight. Britain came late, having to wait until 1782 for the creation of the
Foreign Office. The US Department of State was established shortly after this,
in 1789 (Box 1.1). It was the middle of the nineteenth century before China,
Japan, and Turkey followed suit.

Box 1.1 ‘Department of Foreign Affairs’ to ‘Department of State’

A Department of Foreign Affairs was established by the Continental Congress on
10 January 1781. This title was also initially employed for the foreign ministry of
the United States itself under legislation approved by the House and Senate on
21 July 1789 and signed into law by President Washington six days later. In
September, the Department was given certain domestic duties as well, which
subsequently came to include management of the Mint, fulfilling the role of
keeper of the Great Seal of the United States, and the taking of the census. No
longer charged solely with foreign tasks, it was for this reason that, at the same
juncture, the department’s name was changed to ‘Department of State’. Despite
surrendering most of its domestic duties in the nineteenth century, the
Department found itself stuck with the name.

Even in Europe, however, it was well into the nineteenth century before
foreign ministries, which remained small, became anything like bureaucrati-
cally sophisticated. By this time, they were divided into different administra-
tive units on the basis either of specialization in a particular function (e.g.,
protocol and treaties), or—more commonly—geographical regions. In addi-
tion to the foreign minister, who was its temporary political head, the typical
 1 The Foreign Ministry 3

foreign ministry had by this time also acquired a permanent senior official to
oversee its administration. As time wore on, this official also acquired influ-
ence over policy, sometimes very great. Entry into the foreign ministry increas-
ingly demanded suitable educational qualifications, although the pool from
which recruits came was limited to the upper reaches of the social hierarchy
until well into the twentieth century, and certainly in some states—and prob-
ably in many—still is.
The foreign ministry continued to have rivals for influence over the formu-
lation and execution of foreign policy in the nineteenth century. Among these
were the monarchs or presidents, chancellors or prime ministers, who felt that
their positions gave them special prerogatives to dabble in this area, as also the
war offices with their nascent intelligence services. Nevertheless, assisted fur-
ther by the greater control of missions abroad given to it by the communica-
tions revolution of the nineteenth century (Box 1.2), if the foreign ministry
had a golden age, this was probably it. It did not last long. Distaste for both
commerce and popular meddling in foreign policy was entrenched in most
foreign ministries, which were essentially aristocratic in ethos, and this put
them on the defensive in the following century. World War I was also a tre-
mendous blow to their prestige because it seemed to prove the failings of the
old diplomacy over which they presided. Much of the growing dissatisfaction
with the way ministries such as these were staffed and organized, as well as
with the manner in which they conducted their affairs, focused on the admin-
istrative (and in some instances social) divisions within the bureaucracy of
diplomacy.
Despite the intimate link between those in the foreign ministry and the
diplomats serving abroad, both their work and the social milieux in which they

Box 1.2 Communications with Embassies

The heavy reliance on messengers on horseback (and later in horse-drawn vehi-
cles) for the carriage of diplomatic messages between home and missions abroad
began to change radically with the introduction during the nineteenth century
of steam ships, steam locomotives, and above all the electric telegraph. Soon,
using submarine as well as land cables, written messages sent by telegraph cut
delivery times over some routes from weeks to hours, although they were inse-
cure and so needed to be enciphered, and for a long time were also expensive
and prone to garbling. However, the invention of radio telegraphy in the 1890s
improved this medium further. In the early twentieth century, it also became
possible to deliver the spoken word over vast distances by telephone (available
in the late nineteenth century only over short distances) and short wave radio,
although it remained a very long time before foreign ministries steeled them-
selves to risk these methods.
4 G. R. Berridge

mixed were very different. Persons attracted to the one sphere of activity were
not, as a rule, attracted to the other, and they were usually recruited by differ-
ent methods. Foreign ministry officials had more in common with the civil
servants in other government ministries than with their own glittering diplo-
mats, whom in any case they rarely met and had good grounds for believing
looked on them as social inferiors. They also tended to develop different out-
looks. American diplomats, who closed ranks in the face of frequent ridicule at
home (notably in the Middle and Far West), developed a particularly strong
‘fraternal spirit’ (Simpson: 3–4). The result was that, except in small states, it
became the norm for the two branches of diplomacy—the foreign ministry
and its representatives abroad—to be organized separately and have distinct
career ladders. Between them there was little if any transfer. It was also usual
for the representatives abroad to be themselves divided into separate services,
the diplomatic and the consular—and, later on, the commercial as well.

Box 1.3 Foreign Ministries: Formal Titles Making a Point, and Some
Metonyms
Most foreign ministries describe themselves as the ‘Ministry of Foreign Affairs’
(or some generic equivalent), but in their formal titles it is now common to see
text added that advertises a priority of the moment or a recent merger with
another ministry, or makes some other point. It is a pity that a few feel the need
to add the word ‘Cooperation’, as if otherwise they might be suspected of a
greater interest in the opposite. Some foreign ministries are also referred to by
the names of buildings or streets with which they are associated (metonyms).
The following list illustrates the variety of titles given to foreign ministries at the
time of writing (2021), together with some metonyms:
Australia: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Austria: Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs
Belgium: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, and Development
Cooperation
Benin: Ministry of Foreign Affair and African Integration
Botswana: Ministry of International Affairs and Cooperation
Brazil: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (‘Itamaraty’)
France: Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (‘Quai d’Orsay’)
India: Ministry of External Affairs (‘South Block’)
Italy: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (‘Farnesina’)
Japan: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (‘Gaimusho’)
Malaysia: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (‘Wisma Putra’)
Mauritius: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and
International Trade
Senegal: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Senegalese Abroad
South Africa: Department of International Relations and Cooperation
Syria: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates
United Kingdom: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
United States of America: Department of State (‘Foggy Bottom’)
 1 The Foreign Ministry 5

The gradual unification during the twentieth century of the bureaucracy of

diplomacy, including that of the diplomatic and consular services (see Chap.
9), no doubt played its part in enabling the foreign ministry to survive the
later challenge of ‘direct dial diplomacy’, discussed later in this chapter.
Freedom from the conservative reflexes likely to have been produced by close
relationships with powerful domestic interests also assisted the foreign minis-
try by making it easier to adapt to changing circumstances. There is no doubt,
however, that it is the continuing importance of the tasks discharged by the
foreign ministry that has ensured its survival as a prominent department of
central government in most states. What are they?

Staffing and Supporting Missions Abroad

The efficiency of the administrative departments that carry out the numerous
tasks falling under this sub-heading is of great importance, not least in foreign
ministries where the traditional glitter of the diplomatic career has been tar-
nished and the loss of experienced staff in mid-career is a constant risk. These
tasks include the following:

• Providing the personnel for the state’s diplomatic and consular missions
abroad, including posts at the permanent headquarters of international
organizations. This means not only their recruitment and training, some-
times in a fully-fledged diplomatic academy such as the Rio Branco Institute
in Brazil, but also the sensitive job of selecting the right persons for particu-
lar posts, which is of special importance in the case of mini-­embassies
(see Chap. 7).
• Supporting the diplomats and their families, especially when they find
themselves in hardship posts or in the midst of an emergency. Because of
the murderous attacks on its embassies in recent decades, the US
Department of State has had to devote considerable energy and resources
to giving them greater protection, and since 1999 has required an Office of
Casualty Assistance.
• Providing the physical fabric of the missions abroad, which means renting,
purchasing, or even constructing suitable buildings, and then providing
them with equipment and furnishings, regular maintenance, guards, and
secure communications with home.
• Performance measurement of missions against stated objectives, including
periodic visits of inspection. The reports that follow such visits are usually
valuable, provided they are conducted by persons commanding ­professional
6 G. R. Berridge

respect. The Semiannual Reports of the Department of State’s Office of

Inspector General (OIG), which has a hotline for whistle-blowers, are
available on the internet. These are unclassified summaries of detailed indi-
vidual reports of inspections, although some of the latter—much the more
interesting and rightly in parts redacted—are also publicly available.
Among those produced during 2020 were reports on the US embassies in
Namibia, Bangladesh, and the Czech Republic, as well as an audit of the
Department’s own Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations. By contrast,
the quantitative performance measurement popular with some foreign
ministries in recent years is generally worse than useless: not only is it
unsuited to judging missions’ core functions of policy advice and imple-
mentation but it also tends to frustrate staff and magnify the importance of
their commercial and consular services simply because they are more ame-
nable to measurement; for example, the value of arms sales assisted.

Policy-Making and Implementation

The foreign ministry has traditionally had the main role in foreign policy-­
making, issuing the appropriate instructions to missions and ensuring that
they are carried out. However, communications technology now allows mis-
sions to join more easily in debates at home and thereby themselves contrib-
ute more to policy; and some argue it should be their responsibility alone. The
foreign ministry should certainly engage its missions abroad in lively dialogue
on the bilateral relationships in which they are at the sharp end, but it is
important that it should not surrender too much influence to them. If it does,
it risks foreign policy being infected either by ‘localitis’, a resident mission’s
adoption of the host state’s point of view; or by ‘clientitis’, the sacrifice of
objective reporting by the mission to what some important client in its own
metropolis wants to hear.
It is in regard to policy advice that what are sometimes known as the ‘politi-
cal departments’ come in. Most of these are arranged either along geographi-
cal or functional lines, as already mentioned, although in an acute crisis a
special section within the ministry might take over (Box 1.4). Geographical
departments normally concentrate on regions or individual states of particu-
lar importance, while functional departments (sometimes called ‘subject’ or
‘thematic’ departments) deal typically with high-profile general issues such as
climate change, drugs and international crime, human rights, and energy
security.
 1 The Foreign Ministry 7

Box 1.4 Crisis Management

The foreign ministries of states that have to deal regularly with crises with
national security implications tend to have a crisis section that is permanently
operational. In the Israeli foreign ministry, for example, this is called the
‘Situation Room’, while in the US Department of State its name is the ‘Operations
Center’. Significantly, both are located within the office with overall coordinat-
ing functions within their ministry. Most states handle crises of this sort by means
of temporary arrangements, for which they have more or less precise plans,
although increasing numbers have permanent units ready to respond to con-
sular emergencies abroad. In March 2020 the Ukrainian foreign ministry created
a Situation Room to coordinate its response to the problems caused by the
Covid-19 virus for its citizens abroad.

Historically, the geographical departments dominated foreign ministries

and so, until relatively recently, had more prestige. Among those in the British
Foreign Office, the Eastern Department was for many years before World War
I the most prestigious and aristocratic; it covered the Ottoman Empire and its
predatory Russian neighbor, and was thus much absorbed with the famous
‘Eastern Question’ (whether to prop up or carve up the Ottoman Empire). In
the US Department of State, an attempt in the 1950s and 1960s to give more
prominence to functional departments at the expense of the regional bureaus
was made more difficult by personnel distinctions remaining from the pre-­
Wriston reform era: the functional departments were staffed by civil servants,
while the geographical ones were staffed by diplomatic officers.
Even issue-oriented functional departments, however, had some historical
pedigree. The British Foreign Office, for example, created a Slave Trade
Department at the beginning of the 1820s, although it was initially an exter-
nally funded add-on that did not become part of the regular establishment
until 1854 and was without parallel in other European foreign ministries.
Departments such as these concentrate technical expertise and advertise the
fact that the foreign ministry is seized with the current international problems
of greatest concern. More in harmony than geographical departments with
the concept of ‘globalization’, functional departments now tend to be at least
as prominent, and often more so. It is, however, highly unlikely that they will
replace the geographical departments completely and—except on the part of
small, poor states with very limited bilateral ties of any importance—it would
be a mistake to pursue this course. Apart from the fact that the disappearance
of geographical departments would weaken the case for a separate foreign
ministry (since the international sections of other government departments
might be regarded as capable of taking over their functional work), there are
8 G. R. Berridge

two main reasons for this. First, the conduct of bilateral relations with an
important individual state or region by half a dozen or more functional
departments, each with a different global agenda, is hardly likely to be well
coordinated. Second, functional departments inevitably have little—if any—
of the kind of specialist knowledge of the languages or history of the world’s
regions essential for judicious policy advice; a persuasive internal FCO report
laid much of the blame on country ignorance for the failure of British policy
in Iran prior to the fall of the Shah in 1979 (Browne: chs. 10, 11; FAC 2011:
11, 68–70).
It is chiefly for one or both of these reasons that, in the late 1970s, major
reforms in the French foreign ministry restored administrative divisions on
geographical lines after decades of advance by the functional principle; that
geographical departments still actively jostle functional departments in the
FCDO; and that the State Department’s six regional bureaus remain ‘the
heart’ of its operations, even if they might look ‘a mere bump on its impossi-
bly complex and horizontal wiring diagram’ (Pope: 20). It is also reassuring
that, even among small states, it is not difficult to find foreign ministries
where geographical departments are prominent in their structures; Armenia
and Botswana provide good examples. With the rise in importance of interna-
tional organizations, most foreign ministries now have multilateral depart-
ments as well, some of which also have a geographical focus in so far as they
deal with regional bodies such as the African Union (AU).
Some foreign ministries also have departments known by names such as
‘intelligence and research’ or ‘research and analysis’. These specialize in general
background research and assessing the significance of information obtained
by secret intelligence agencies (see Chap. 10). Although chiefly a consumer of
the product of these agencies, the foreign ministry sometimes plays a key role
in its assessment in high-level inter-departmental committees.
If policy is to be well made and implemented properly, the foreign minis-
try’s institutional memory must be in good order. This applies especially to the
details of promises made and received in the past, and potential promises that
have been long gestating in negotiations. This is why such an important sec-
tion of even the earliest foreign ministries was their archive (later, ‘registry’) of
correspondence and treaties, as well as maps, reports, internal memoranda,
and other important documents. Before separate foreign ministries were cre-
ated, such archives were kept by other secretaries of state or palace officials.
They even existed in the palaces of the Great Kings of the ancient Near East.
Preserving securely, organizing systematically, and facilitating rapid access to
their archives by indexing are key foreign ministry responsibilities. A related
task in the foreign ministries of liberal democracies is determining carefully
 1 The Foreign Ministry 9

what sensitive documents—and parts of sensitive documents—can be released

to the public upon application under freedom of information legislation.
Many foreign ministries also have a small historians’ section that is responsi-
ble, among other things, for selecting and publishing periodically hitherto
secret documents of historical interest. In America, under the title Foreign
Relations of the United States (FRUS), these have appeared since 1861.
Since foreign policy should be lawful and sometimes pursued by resort to
judicial procedures, and since agreements negotiated by exhausted diplomats
need to be scrutinized for sloppy language, internal inconsistencies, and
incompatibility with existing agreements, legal advice and support is always
vital—although whether it is taken is another matter. In some states, it has
been traditional to provide this from a law ministry (‘ministry of justice’) serv-
ing all government departments. Nevertheless, the predominant pattern is
now for a major foreign ministry to have its own legal (or ‘treaties’) division,
headed by an officer usually known as the legal adviser or, in French-speaking
states, directeur des affaires juridiques. It is also now more common for the
members of this division to be lawyers specializing in this work and not dip-
lomats with a legal education who are rotated between the legal division and
general diplomatic work. It is interesting, and perhaps hopeful for the
strengthening of international law, that since the end of the 1980s informal
meetings of the legal advisers of the foreign ministries of UN member states
have been held on a regular basis at the organization’s headquarters in
New York.
The foreign ministries of the developed states, and a few others, also have a
policy-planning department. Very much a product of the years following
World War II, this was a response to the frequent criticism of unpreparedness
when crises erupted and was inspired in part by the planning staffs long-­
employed by military establishments. It is no accident that the Department of
State was given its first planning staff when a former soldier, General George
C. Marshall, became secretary of state after the war, and that its Quadrennial
Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR)—the first of which was com-
pleted at the end of 2010—is modelled on the Pentagon’s Quadrennial
Defense Review. The best planning units—in regular contact with outside
bodies such as research institutes—are chiefly concerned with trying to antici-
pate future problems; identifying the type, quantity, and disposition of the
resources needed to meet them; and, in the process, challenging conventional
mind-sets. The British foreign ministry’s planners, like those in the State
Department, appear not to look much beyond the medium term of four to
five years, although others are more ambitious. Their potential value was
acknowledged following the failure of British diplomacy to anticipate the fall
10 G. R. Berridge

of the Shah in 1979. Thus, one proposal made by the secret FCO report to
help avoid such embarrassments in the future was that the planning staff
should regularly suggest ‘improbable scenarios’ for political risk countries and
challenge the embassy and the geographical department to refute them. This
was also one of the report’s recommendations accepted by the British ambas-
sador to Iran at the time, Sir Anthony Parsons, who believed that his failure
was not one of information but of imagination. A radical report on Dutch
diplomacy maintained that the most important element of the professional
expertise of The Netherlands’ foreign ministry should be its ‘ability to predict
future developments’ (Advisory Committee: 73).
Foreign ministry planners are usually given freedom from current opera-
tional preoccupations but are not left so remote from them that they become
‘too academic’ (Coles: 71, 87–8). With their strategic brief and supposed to
provide independent judgments, it is not surprising that they are usually per-
mitted to work directly under the ministry’s executive head. However, it is
often difficult to get busy foreign ministers and senior officials, who must
inevitably give priority to current events, to focus on discussions of even the
medium term, while the operational departments might well be obstructive.
As one former policy planner has observed, although they always say they
want ‘a strong institutionalized challenge’ to their assumptions, ‘in reality they
prefer a quiet life’ (Cowper-Coles 2012: 142). The result is that the policy
planners often feel they are wasting their time, which was certainly true of
George Kennan. The first director of the State Department’s planning staff, he
resigned after Dean Acheson, who had replaced Marshall as secretary of state,
began to make him feel like a ‘court jester’ and the operational units began to
insist on policy recommendations going up through the ‘line of command’
(Kennan: 426–7, 465–6). Today’s State Department policy planners, who
provide ‘mostly a speechwriting shop’, probably feel the same, although they
have only themselves to blame: the first QDDR was at once turgid and other-­
worldly, ‘drew nothing but yawns’ in the White House, and is best forgotten
(Pope: 39).
A related development of recent years is the appearance in a few foreign
ministries, notably those of Norway and the UK, of a department dedicated
to the big data analysis that has proved so productive for decision-making in
the business world. In February 2018 a report on the subject commissioned
by the Policy Planning and Research Unit of the Finnish foreign ministry was
published by DiploFoundation. This supported the creation of a ‘small, inno-
vative’ big data unit in the foreign ministry to ‘explore possible big data appli-
cations’, and also the appointment of a ‘big data champion’ in those
departments most likely to benefit from them (Jacobson et al.: 45–8). It also
 1 The Foreign Ministry 11

concluded that even large foreign ministries would need to outsource a great
deal of big data work to the private sector.
The foreign ministry’s influence on government policy varies from one state
to another. It is usually highest in those with both a constitutional mode of
government and long-established, strongly staffed foreign ministries with the
reputation for being one of the ‘great offices of state’, as in France and Britain.
This is one of the reasons why a major problem faced by Tony Blair (British
prime minister from 1997 until 2007) when re-shuffling his cabinets was that
everyone wanted to be foreign secretary and, once they had it, wanted to cling
on to it ‘until the end of time, or at least the end of the government…’ (Blair
210a: 270, 340). However, even in such states the foreign ministry is at a
permanent disadvantage relative to the military-intelligence complex if acute
military insecurity is ingrained, as in Israel.
A foreign ministry’s influence in the same state can also fluctuate markedly
over time, both in the case of that of its permanent officials relative to the
ministry’s political leadership and of the ministry as a whole relative to the rest
of government. One reason for this is the inevitable variation in the degree to
which prejudices embedded among officials chime with those of the political
leadership. For example, the pro-Indian tendency of the Department of State
at the time in the early 1970s when—for reasons of China policy—the Nixon
White House was ‘tilting’ to Pakistan, reduced further this foreign ministry’s
influence over US policy toward south Asia. But this was nothing compared
to the slump in the State Department’s position following the inauguration of
President Trump in January 2017. Led by secretaries of state without experi-
ence, hammered with savage budget cuts, subjected to a complete reorganiza-
tion without any strategic rationale, and embarrassed by a whole raft of senior
positions (including chiefs of mission) left unfilled, the department became
notorious in Washington for its demoralized staff and the exodus of experi-
enced personnel. Meanwhile, the FCO paid the price for its opposition to
Brexit, which it correctly judged would seriously weaken British diplomacy
while advancing the Russian goal of disharmony in Europe. Responsibility for
negotiating Brexit was given in July 2016 to a new ministry, the ‘Department
for Exiting the European Union’, and some of its tasks in economic diplo-
macy were simultaneously handed to a new ‘Department for [non-EU]
International Trade’.
Another reason for the fluctuation in a foreign ministry’s influence over
time is the inevitable variation in the political weight and experience of for-
eign affairs of individual foreign ministers. If new ministers are novices in
foreign affairs, senior officials are well placed to ‘educate’ them in the depart-
mental view. Such was the case with Jean Cruppi and Justin de Selves, who
12 G. R. Berridge

were successively French foreign ministers in 1911; it was their relative inex-
perience in foreign affairs that allowed a small group of activist officials in
the Quai d’Orsay to press successfully for a more forward foreign policy.
Today, with foreign ministers and any junior political colleagues in the min-
istry having to spend so much more time meeting their counterparts abroad,
in some circumstances a degree of role-reversal can be observed: diplomatic
officers at home shaping tactics and even strategy; ministers abroad seeking
to execute them. If the foreign minister is a political heavy-weight and the
president or prime minister has limited experience and interest in foreign
affairs, a perfect surge in foreign ministry influence is to be expected—as in
the case of the FCO following the appointment of William Hague as foreign
secretary and David Cameron as prime minister after the British general
election in 2010.

Coordination of Foreign Relations

Despite the foreign ministry’s continuing role in foreign policy via its
missions abroad, it is rare for it now to have its former authority, which
in many cases was far from absolute anyway. What the foreign ministry is
now inclined to aspire to instead is a coordinating role in the conduct of
foreign relations.
Probably in all states today the other government departments—notably
commerce, finance, health, transport, environment, the central bank, and,
above all, defense—engage in direct communication not only with their for-
eign counterparts, but also with quite different agencies abroad; and they do
so to an unprecedented degree. Indeed, the extent of this ‘direct dial diplo-
macy’ is now so great that these departments commonly have their own inter-
national sections. As a result, it is no longer practical—or, indeed,
advisable—for the foreign ministry to insist that, in order to ensure consis-
tency in foreign policy and prevent foreigners from playing off one ministry
against another, it alone should have dealings with them.
Direct dial diplomacy was the result of a growing list of increasingly com-
plex international problems, the diminishing ability of the generalists in the
foreign ministry to master them, and the increasing ease with which domestic
ministries could make contact with both counterpart ministries abroad and
the multiplying number of interested non-state actors—from multinational
corporations to civil society organizations. But this development was by no
 1 The Foreign Ministry 13

means as menacing to the foreign ministry as some observers thought and its
enemies hoped. This is because direct dial diplomacy threatened the overall
coherence of foreign policy. So, too, did other trends: pursuit of the same or
related negotiations through multilateral as well as bilateral channels, unoffi-
cial as well as official channels, and backchannels as well as front channels.
The chaos in the conduct of foreign relations that this promised could only be
reduced by some authoritative body charged with coordinating the foreign
activities of the other government departments: enter the hardy foreign
ministry.
It has been noted earlier in this chapter that foreign ministries have had
coordination very much in mind in reasserting the geographical principle in
their internal administration, but how do they try to promote coordination
beyond their own doors? Their strategies include the following:

• retaining control of all external diplomatic and consular missions, and

seeking to ensure that officials from other ministries attached to them
report home via the ambassador;
• placing senior foreign ministry personnel in key positions on any high-level
committee specifically charged with the coordination of foreign and
national security policy—attached to the office of a head of government,
such committees are often known by such titles as ‘cabinet office’, ‘prime
minister’s office’, or ‘national security council’;
• exploiting similarly the great potential of the lower-level interdepartmental
or inter-agency committee focused on a particular aspect of policy;
• securing for the foreign ministry the position of ‘lead department’ in as
many negotiations on global issues as possible, which is not realistic on
financial matters but is in more areas than might be imagined;
• requiring written clearance from the foreign minister of other ministries’
policies on key questions with an overseas dimension and securing the legal
prerogative of vetting all international treaties entered into by them;
• requesting prior notice of any proposed official trip abroad by a senior gov-
ernment employee;
• exchanging staff on a temporary basis with other ministries; and
• finally, and most radically, bringing under its own roof ministries with
which it has most affinity, the favored candidates here being those dealing
with trade and development cooperation (see Box 1.5; some examples are
listed in Box 1.3).
14 G. R. Berridge

Box 1.5 Should the Foreign Ministry Control Development Aid?

This issue has been around for a long time but caused controversy again in 2020
when a hard nationalist government in the UK brought the separate Department
for International Development (DfID) back under the control of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office. (Development aid had been ping-ponged by successive
governments into and out of the FCO for over three decades.) The FCO duly
became the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)—Britain’s
so-called ‘super-department for international affairs’. This was officially described
as a ‘merger’ but, as the allocation of senior appointments made clear, was in
fact a hostile takeover.
The chief argument for giving development assistance to the foreign min-
istry of any high-income state is that this makes it easier to direct it to coun-
tries where it will foster important national interests; in other words, it
makes aid a more effective instrument of economic statecraft. The separate
ministry had to go, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told the House of Commons
on 16 June 2020, because ‘For too long, frankly, UK overseas aid has been
treated like a giant cashpoint in the sky, that arrives without any reference
to UK interests’ (House of Commons Debates col. 670). Aside from the con-
siderable short- to medium-­term costs of administrative dislocation of merg-
ing major departments, the practice of locating development aid in a foreign
ministry has two main drawbacks.
First, foreign aid work requires special skills, notably in project manage-
ment, and a super-department for international affairs in which foreign aid
is the poor relation and lacks budgetary control is not attractive to the most
qualified, experienced and highly motivated individuals in this field; nor are
they likely to be replaced by the ablest foreign ministry staff since, as British
experience shows, aid work is not appealing to them as a route to improving
their career prospects.
Second, because a super-department is predicated on rejection of the
argument that aid should go to the most deserving, irrespective of any tan-
gible quid pro quo, it surrenders the moral high ground. In the process, it
also forfeits the influence or, if you will, soft power that derives from a repu-
tation for generosity, although against this has to be set the influence that
comes from ‘tied aid’.
There are other ways of keeping a separate development ministry while ensur-
ing that aid decisions do not ignore serious foreign policy considerations. Top-­
level oversight, inter-departmental committees, joint junior ministers and
in-country collaboration between ambassadors and aid officials are well tried
methods. But for a populist government they do not work well with tabloid
journalism.

Such strategies are by no means always successful, especially in the case of

the US Department of State.
 1 The Foreign Ministry 15

Dealing with Foreign Diplomats at Home

Senior foreign ministry officials periodically find themselves having to respond
to a démarche on a particular subject made by a foreign ambassador; occasion-
ally, too, foreign ministers will summon a head of mission to listen to a protest
of their own. When something of this nature occurs, the foreign ministry is
engaged in a function already discussed; namely, policy implementation.
However, it has other responsibilities relative to the diplomatic corps resident
in its capital.
Well aware of the capacity of diplomats for intrigue, as well as their legiti-
mate role as observers, governments have treated their official guests with
suspicion since the inception of resident missions in the second half of the
fifteenth century. In some states, notably China in the 100 years or so follow-
ing the mid-nineteenth century, and latterly in Saudi Arabia and North Korea,
foreign missions have even been firmly steered to a particular quarter of the
capital—the better to keep their activities under close scrutiny and avoid con-
tamination of the population with degenerate foreign habits and subversive
ideas. Today, most states are more relaxed about the political activities and
moral character of diplomats but there remains a concern that they will abuse
their immunities from the criminal and civil law.
This concern has grown since the 1950s, chiefly because the explosion in
the number of states since that time has greatly increased both the size of the
diplomatic corps and the size and frequency of special missions. Accordingly,
all foreign ministries must have either a separate protocol department or one
that embraces protocol together with a closely related function. Such depart-
ments contain experts in ceremonial and in diplomatic and consular law.
Among other things, they serve as bridges between the diplomatic corps and
the local community and oversee arrangements for visiting dignitaries. For its
part, the Chinese government still takes a particularly close interest in the
activities of the diplomatic corps, with a vast Beijing Diplomatic Service
Bureau affiliated to the foreign ministry, as well as a Protocol Department.
Among other things, the bureau provides service staff for the diplomatic and
consular missions in Beijing. Old habits also die hard in Russia, where an
analogous organization—the Main Administration for Service to the
Diplomatic Corps (GlavUpDK)—still survives. In some states, too, the for-
eign ministry is responsible for assisting in both the physical protection of
certain visiting dignitaries and foreign missions. In the United States, for
example, special agents of the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic
Security are charged with coordinating the protection of all foreign officials
and their missions across the country.
16 G. R. Berridge

Building Support at Home

Foreign ministries and their diplomatic services have for a long time
intermittently been targets of attack from politicians and commissions of
inquiry, and have been frequently sniped at by the tabloid press. This was
marked after World War I—and in some cases earlier—and it was not so
long after World War II that the attacks resumed with something of a
vengeance. It is not difficult to see why: they had acquired reputations for
social exclusiveness in recruitment and for high living abroad, and faced
a growing challenge to their very raison d’être. It was, therefore, an acute
weakness that they had no domestic political base on which to fall back
for support. Education ministries had teachers, agriculture ministries had
farmers, defense ministries had the armed forces—but foreign ministries
had only foreigners, a political base worse than useless.
The foreign ministries in many countries belatedly responded to this situa-
tion with some success. They now tend to nurture their national media at least
as carefully as they cosset foreign correspondents in the capital, and actively
cultivate parliamentarians and domestic interests.
They stress the fact that their officers abroad are the country’s ‘first line of
defence’, and cost only a fraction of the military’s budget. They seek popular
approval, as well as greater efficiency, by recruiting more women and members of
ethnic minorities, and, at least in the West, by flinging open their doors to the
representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academics, and oth-
ers, even attaching them to conference delegations; a few—from Britain to
Mongolia—go so far as to open their doors literally by having ‘open days’.
On their websites, foreign ministries advertise their value by providing up-­
to-­date information on foreign travel destinations, including advice on per-
sonal safety. These sites also highlight the consular services available to their
nationals should they find themselves in need of assistance abroad (see
Chap. 9). A logical bureaucratic extension of arrangements of this sort, also
much hyped up by numerous foreign ministries and particularly poignant in
the case of Syria (Box 1.3), is a separate department devoted to the welfare
needs of nationals permanently resident abroad, including the facilitation of
their return, even if in the case of authoritarian states this can too often have
sinister undertones (see Box 7.5). Foreign ministries also take every opportu-
nity to impress on exporters, and agencies seeking inward investment, the
value of the commercial diplomacy of their overseas missions and the top
priority they now give to this. And, in the small number of cases where for-
eign ministries have actually merged with trade ministries, they have not only
promoted coordination but also moved directly to capture a share of a key
political constituency, the private business sector.
 1 The Foreign Ministry 17

In short, it is now widely recognized that it is as important for head office

to engage in ‘outreach’ at home as it is for its missions to undertake this abroad.

Summary
In most states today, the foreign ministry must formally share control over the
making of foreign policy with other ministries and executive agencies—and
to a growing extent with its missions abroad. Nevertheless, it tends to retain signifi-
cant influence via its broader perspective, geographical expertise, control of the
diplomatic service, investment in public diplomacy (discussed in Chap. 13), nur-
turing of domestic allies, and acceptance by outsiders that it is well positioned to
make a major contribution to the coordination of the state’s complex interna-
tional relations. Most of these relationships issue, from time to time, in the activity
of negotiation, which—even narrowly conceived—represents the most important
function of diplomacy. It is therefore appropriate to turn next to this subject.

Topics for Seminar Discussion or Essays

1. What is the foreign ministry’s most important task?

2. ‘The US State Department’s Office of Inspector General provides a model
that all but the smallest foreign ministries should strive to adopt.’ What do
you think of this statement?
3. Should the development assistance programs of high-income states be run
from their foreign ministries? Make detailed reference to the experience of
AT LEAST TWO countries.
4. To what extent do you agree with the view that functional departments in
foreign ministries should be kept to the bare minimum?
5. What is the most serious threat to the influence of the foreign ministry?

Further Reading1
Advisory Committee on Modernising the Diplomatic Service, Modernising Dutch
Diplomacy: Progress Report, Final Report (May 2014) [www].

1
Many foreign ministries have their own websites, some of which provide at least a list of the different
departments (sometimes even an organization chart), while a few go so far as to give a detailed history of
the ministry; in the last regard, the website of the Canadian foreign ministry (‘Global Affairs Canada’) is
outstanding. The back copies of State Magazine, available via the US State Department’s website, are
also useful.
18 G. R. Berridge

American Academy of Diplomacy, ‘American Diplomacy at Risk’, April 2015 [www].

Anderson, M. S., The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450–1919 (Longman: London,
1993). See especially pp. 73–80, 110–19.
Browne, N. W., ‘British Policy on Iran, 1974–1978’ (FCO: ca. 1980). Chs. 10 and
11 and the rejoinder by Sir Anthony Parsons in the Appendix [www]. A highly
influential internal FCO report on the failures of the British Embassy in Iran prior
to the fall of the Shah in 1979.
Burke, Shannon, ‘Office of the Chief of Protocol: Following protocol is this office’s
charter’, State Magazine, January, 1999 [www].
Cowper-Coles, Sherard, Ever the Diplomat: Confessions of a Foreign Office mandarin
(HarperPress: London, 2012). Chs 4 (includes his time in policy planning) and 13.
A Democratic Staff Report prepared for the use of the Committee on Foreign
Relations United States Senate, Diplomacy in Crisis: The Trump Administration’s
decimation of the State Department, 28 July 2020 [www]. Hard-hitting but cer-
tainly not just a polemic: clearly organized and authoritatively supported with 274
footnotes full of references for further reading.
Durrant, Tim, ‘There’s good reason to reform Whitehall—but the government needs
to know what it wants to achieve’, Institute for Government, 19 December
2019 [www].
FAC, ‘The Role of the FCO in UK Government’, Seventh Report of Session 2010–12,
Volume I, 12 May 2011, HC 665 [www]. See also the government’s response at
‘Seventh Report…’ lower down this list.
FCO Historians, ‘The Permanent Under-Secretary of State: A Brief History of the
Office and its Holders’, History Notes, Issue 15 (FCO, January 2002) [www].
Fitzmaurice, Gerald G., ‘Legal advisers and foreign affairs’, American Journal of
International Law, vol. 59(1), 1965. See pp. 72–86.
Fitzmaurice, Gerald G., ‘Legal advisers and international organizations’, American
Journal of International Law, vol. 62(1), 1968. See pp. 114–27.
Gates, Robert M., Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (Knopf: New York, 2014).
Useful on Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
Hamilton, Keith, ‘Zealots and helots: the Slave Trade Department of the nineteenth
century Foreign Office’, in K. Hamilton and P. Salmon (eds), Slavery, Diplomacy
and Empire: Britain and the suppression of the slave trade, 1807–1975 (Sussex
Academic Press: Eastbourne, 2009). A chapter of great interest written with
immense authority.
Hamilton, Keith, Servants of Diplomacy: A domestic history of the Victorian Foreign
Office (Bloomsbury: London, 2021).
Ingram, George, ‘Rightsizing the relationship between the State Department and
USAID’, Brookings, 11 April 2018 [www].
Ioffe, Julia, ‘The State of Trump’s State Department’, The Atlantic, 1 March
2017 [www].
Jacobson, Barbara Rosen, Katharina E. Höne, and Jovan Kurbalija, Data Diplomacy:
Updating diplomacy to the big data era (DiploFoundation: Geneva, February 2018)
[www]. An important and accessible piece.
 1 The Foreign Ministry 19

Kennan, George E., Memoirs, 1925–1950 (Hutchinson: London, 1967). See

pp. 325–7, 426–7, 465–6, on formation of the policy planning staff in the State
Department.
Kissinger, Henry A., Years of Upheaval (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and Michael Joseph:
London, 1982). See pp. 432–49, on the Department of State and the
Foreign Service.
Kurbalija, Jovan (ed.), Knowledge and Diplomacy (DiploFoundation: Malta, 1999).
See ch. by Keith Hamilton.
Mitchell, Ian, ‘Should the UK’s Development Department be Merged with Foreign
Affairs and Trade?’, Centre for Global Development, 22 January 2019 [www].
Neilson, Keith and T. G. Otte, The Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs,
1854–1946 (Routledge: New York, 2009).
Pope, Laurence, The Demilitarization of American Diplomacy: Two cheers for striped
pants (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2014). Pope was a US scholar-diplomat;
see chs 2–3.
Rana, Kishan S., 21st Century Diplomacy: A practitioner’s guide (Continuum: London,
2011). Authored by a former senior Indian ambassador; see ch. 6.
Rana, Kishan S., Asian Diplomacy: The foreign ministries of China, India, Japan,
Singapore and Thailand (DiploFoundation: Malta, 2007). A rare compara-
tive exercise.
Rice, Condoleezza, No Higher Honor: A memoir of my years in Washington (Crown:
New York, 2011). Ch. 21—interesting reflections on the State Department,
including policy planning; previously National Security Advisor, Rice was
Secretary of State, 2005–9.
Rogin, Joe, ‘The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned’,
The Washington Post, 26 January 2017 [www].
Seldon, Anthony, ‘Power returns to the Foreign Office’, The House Magazine,
July 2013.
Seventh Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee Session 2010–12. The Role of
the FCO in UK Government. Response of the Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs, July 2011, Cm 8125 [www].
Stewart, Heather, and Patrick Wintour, ‘Three ex-PMs attack plan to merge DfID
with Foreign Office’, The Guardian, 16 June 2020 [www].
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
has failed to think of the moral significance of his act, or he has
chosen to do wrong. In the one case reformation may be brought
about by making clear the nature of the act; in the other the child
must will to do differently, and must by his own act regain his place in
the group whose welfare he has transgressed. What the ordinary
situation demands is more of thinking on the part of children and less
of resentment and anger on the part of teachers.
Punishments need to be differentiated to fit the child. The writer
has known boys in active rebellion against school authority who
would accept corporal punishment rather than give any evidence of
intention to submit. In such a case this form of punishment was
justified. Happily such cases are rare with the teacher who knows
how to work with children. Even in cases where the offense is
seemingly identical, the punishment must be varied to suit the
individual to be reformed. Suggestion may suffice for one, another
may be persuaded, and still another must be labored with at length
in order that the judgment which the teacher has passed may be
accepted by him as valid. In any event it is the thoughtful individual,
who has the habit of analyzing the situation when in doubt, and then
acts in accordance with his judgment, which it is the purpose of the
school to develop.
The importance of the moral influence of the teacher has always
been recognized. At times, however, the negative rather than the
positive factors have been emphasized. It is well enough to demand
that the teacher be free from vices, petty or great; but it is even more
important to inquire concerning the positive virtues which
characterize the instructor of children. We may hope that our schools
will develop open-minded children, provided the teachers are not
dogmatic. Courage, industry, integrity, are fundamental virtues. Does
the teacher possess them? Sympathy with all activities which make
for public good is demanded of all in a democracy. Does the teacher
participate, is the teacher a factor, in those movements which make
for improvement in the community? The ideal teacher is an
intelligent, hard-working public servant, whose field of endeavor is
limited only by the needs of the community which he serves. The
number of teachers who have thus exalted the office of teacher in
the community is happily increasing. The moral effect upon the lives
of children of association with such a man or woman cannot be
overestimated.

For Collateral Reading

Moral Training in Public Schools, Chapter I, by C. A. Rugh.
J. MacCunn, The Making of Character.
The Essentials of Character, by E. O. Sisson.

Exercise.
1. Why is the school a good situation in which to train children in morality?
2. Is the man who simply does not injure others to be thought of as living a moral
life?
3. Do you think any teacher has a right to claim that she is not responsible for
the moral training of her pupils? Why?
4. In what way do the instincts furnish the basis for moral training?
5. Should you treat all of the children alike in situations which involve a moral
issue?
6. How would you hope to have boys come to render the moral judgment that it
is wrong to throw stones through the windows of a vacant house?
7. How may school spirit and school standards contribute to the development of
morality?
8. Name some troublesome things which boys do that might be explained by
bad physical conditions in the school or in the home.
9. What do you understand by the direct method of moral instruction? What is
the strength and the weakness of this method?
10. Do you think the moral significance of a story or a poem should be taught in
a lesson in literature?
11. Name school situations which involve moral judgments and which offer
opportunity for training in morality.
12. How would you hope to train children to form the habit of asking themselves
whether a proposed line of action was right before acting?
13. How may the one who does wrong in school provide the opportunity for the
best sort of training in morality?
14. Is there ever any defense for corporal punishment?
 15. How important do you consider the influence of the teacher in developing
morally sound boys and girls?
 CHAPTER XV

CLASS MANAGEMENT

In any discussion of class management it is necessary to

distinguish clearly between organization and control as a means and
as an end. Much of the discussion of school and class management
assumes that its sole purpose is found in economizing time and
energy for teacher and pupils. Class management, from this point of
view, is important as the means without which effective work cannot
be done in the school. Such a view neglects to consider the
opportunity afforded in managing a class for growth on the part of
pupils in the power of self-control. Any school which plans to
reproduce in its life the conditions commonly found in life outside of
the school must allow children to accept responsibility for their own
acts, and will, therefore, look upon management as an end.
The discussion has not been wholly one-sided. At times there has
been considerable controversy concerning the kind of management
which was most to be desired in the schoolroom. Those who have
thought of management as a means only have been apt to
overemphasize routine; while those who have thought only of the
opportunity afforded for growth in self-control have neglected to
realize the importance of habit in situations which are invariable. The
adherents of the one type of control want everything done at the tap
of the bell, in accordance with the rules which have been made by
the teacher. Their opponents would do away with “mechanized
routine,” and would expect children to exercise their judgment as
each question arises. This difference in point of view is easily
reconciled when we look at management now as a means and again
as an end.
If a fire drill is to be effective, every one must drop the work in
hand when the signal is given and march out of the building in an
order and by a route which has been determined previously and from
which there is no variation. Here we have the best example of
management as a means. There can be no question in this situation
concerning the right of the individual to exercise his judgment. The
safety of all depends upon the absolute following of rules, upon the
degree to which the response to the fire drill has become a matter of
habit. If we analyze this situation, we will discover the elements
which characterize situations in which we are to look upon
management as a means. In these situations we should strive to
secure habitual responses.
In the first place the response demanded is invariable. It will not do
to march out of the building one way to-day and another to-morrow.
The class may not go before or after its place in the line. The speed
with which the building is emptied depends upon every individual.
Here we have the second element: the welfare of the whole group
demands that the situation be followed always by a certain response.
Let us examine now some of the schoolroom situations in the light
of these criteria. In passing books, paper, pencils, and the like, a
definite order should be followed. In this situation the end desired is
invariable. What is wanted is to place the desired material in the
hands of each pupil with as little delay as is possible. The welfare of
the whole group depends upon this invariable response upon the
part of each pupil. If any one fails to do his part, there is delay and
loss of time in the work which it is desired to accomplish. For the
same reasons it is wise to have a definite order in getting wraps, a
rule concerning the manner of passing in the room, the habit of rising
and facing the majority of the class when reciting, and the like.
Let us now examine other situations which afford an opportunity
for the exercise of self-control, in which management is an end. In
some schools children are formed in lines five minutes before the
hour and marched into the building. There is no good reason why
children should march into the building. The end desired, that they all
be in their places promptly, can be secured by ringing a warning bell
and requiring that all enter the building as they see fit and be in their
places on time. In the latter instance they have a chance to act as
normal human beings who accept and fulfill their responsibility to
themselves and to the group. The desired end is secured, and, far
more important, the children are learning to exercise that self-control
which is demanded outside of school. Of course, it may be objected
that it is much easier to control the children, if you march them into
the building. The answer is found by suggesting that the school does
not exist primarily for the ease of teachers, but rather for the
development of socially efficient children.
A principal who had some difficulty in having the boys come from a
somewhat distant playground promptly lined them up for a race to
the schoolhouse. They found that it took them little more than a
minute to reach their schoolrooms. The boys understood his
suggestion that the warning bell, rung five minutes before school
opened, afforded ample time to reach their rooms and be ready for
work when school opened. It would have required less thought on
the part of the principal and less self-control on the part of the boys
to have marched them to the schoolhouse at the right time each day.
Many school situations offer similar opportunity. Passing through
halls, asking the teacher questions, leaving one’s seat for books or
materials, consulting with one’s neighbor may, in the hands of a
skillful teacher, become a most efficient means of training children in
self-control. In all such cases management is an end, in the sense
that these opportunities are sought by the teacher because of their
value in training children.
Pupil participation in school government has been much
advocated of late as the best means of securing a feeling of
responsibility on the part of pupils for the welfare of the whole group,
as well as in the exercise of self-control. As long as these ideals
control, it matters little what particular form of organization is utilized
to secure the ends desired. What sometimes happens is an
exaggeration of the importance of the machinery of government, with
a corresponding lack of self-control, or exercise of social
responsibility. The writer once visited a school which was much
talked of because of its system of “pupil self-government.” He found
there the worst bullying of small boys by those who held offices that
he has ever seen in any school. Many of the children declared that
they were not parties to the government supposedly in control of the
school. When the teachers were absent from their rooms, the
children droned over certain set exercises which were constantly
before them and from which type of activity they were not permitted
to depart. Now these defects in school management may not all be
charged directly to the overemphasis of the machinery of
government, but they were due to the fact that this machinery, this
form, had taken the place of genuine self-government on the part of
the pupils.
A wise principal or teacher may secure good results by
inaugurating a system of pupil participation in school government,
but the wise guide and counsellor must be there all of the time.
Introducing children dramatically to the machinery of government will
not place old heads on young shoulders. Children will still be childish
in their judgments and in their ideas of punishment, even though
they be called senators, aldermen, policemen, judges, and the like.
The dramatization of city or state government will undoubtedly help
in the understanding of the function of citizens and of their servants,
the officeholders. This alone would be sufficient justification for
introducing in the upper grades, in dramatic form, a system of
government, without expecting that it would in any considerable
measure relieve teachers or principals of the necessity of guiding
children in their development in power of self-control, and in their
acceptance of social responsibility.
The same system of pupil participation in school government will
succeed with one principal and set of teachers and fail in another
situation. The results which are most worth while, self-control and
the exercise of social responsibility, will be secured without any of
the forms of civil government in one school, while another principal
will claim that success in his school is due to his system of “pupil
government.” No teacher need feel condemned because she cannot
succeed with a particular scheme of government, and none should
be unduly elated because of the invention or use of some particular
form of organization. The essential element in school management is
found in the spirit of coöperation and helpfulness which should
actuate teachers and pupils.
The questions of management considered above cover much of
the ground usually considered under the head of school discipline.
The same problems, especially from the standpoint of punishments
and rewards, are considered in the chapter which deals with the
moral training of children. It may be well to add here that the problem
of discipline is largely one of good teaching. Children who are hard
at work seldom worry the teacher. Right conditions for work may play
an important part. The consideration of some of the problems of
organization is, therefore, in place in a chapter on management.
The ordering of the daily program is one of the most important
elements in classroom management. The desire for variety is strong
in children, and their power to concentrate their attention upon a
single kind of work is correspondingly short. In the primary grades
periods of from eight to twelve minutes, with a possible extension to
fifteen, will give sufficient opportunity for change of work. These
periods may be lengthened to thirty or even forty minutes in the
upper grades. The length of the period will depend upon the variety
which may be found in the work of a single period. In a reading
lesson which includes word drill, reading, and oral composition, the
maximum period may be used, while a period devoted to number
drill may be worse than useless after the first five or six minutes. It is
undoubtedly better for children to work to the maximum of their
capacity for short periods than to dawdle for twice the time. In the
upper grades twenty minutes may be as long as children can work
on the development of a difficult problem in geography, while they
may be active and willing to continue work in a literature lesson after
thirty-five or forty minutes. The writer has seen a class of seventh-
grade children who worked consistently for forty-five minutes on a
history problem which involved discussion, map work, and the
consulting of reference works.
Group instruction has long been recognized by teachers of large
classes as essential to the best work. In a class of forty or fifty
children, however carefully they may have been graded at the
beginning of the year, there will appear differences in attainment
which make it necessary to divide the class into two or more groups
in some subjects, in order to work to best advantage. In the lower
grades, especially in the first, where grading is least able to place
children on the basis of their ability, there is the greatest demand for
group work. As many as three or four classes in reading may be
necessary in the first grade. It must be remembered that such
grouping should never be made to apply to all subjects, nor is it
necessary to apply the group plan to any subject without variation.
Children divided into three groups for reading may do very well in
two for arithmetic, and may all work together in nature study or
constructive work. In reading it will be worth while to have all work
together at times on work which is possible for the least capable and
which may serve as a review for the more advanced group.
By the time the fourth or fifth grade is reached, the pupils will be
somewhat more evenly graded. It will still be necessary, however, to
group pupils in those subjects in which the sequence is such that the
pupils’ advance depends upon the complete mastery of the part of
the subject already covered. In arithmetic, in the more formal part of
the work in English composition, and sometimes in geography or
history, two groups are advantageous.
When pupils all work together it is not expected that all will be able
to do an equal amount of work. It is especially important that
provision be made for the brighter members of the class, in order
that they may have enough work to keep them active and alert. It too
often happens that in large classes the work is scaled down to meet
the ability of the poorest half of the class, in consequence of which
the brighter pupils learn to loaf and tend to lose interest in school
work. However many groups the class may be divided into, there will
always be the necessity for individualizing the children of each
section. The brighter ones must be given assignments which are
beyond the ability of the less capable, while a minimum of
achievement must be accepted when it represents the best effort
and means the continued development of the pupil who is weaker
intellectually.
 Good teachers provide for individual needs, not only by grouping
their classes on the basis of their ability, but also by giving individual
instruction. No daily program should fail to provide a period during
which the teacher can devote herself to the needs of those
individuals who need special help. It may be to help the boy or girl
who has been absent on account of sickness, to explain a difficult
problem in arithmetic, to help in the interpretation of a map or
diagram, or to teach the pupil how to study; always there will be
plenty for the teacher to do who thinks of her pupils as individuals
during the half hour or more devoted to individual instruction.
The idea of providing individual instruction may be made the
central idea in organizing the daily program, as is done in the
Batavia system,[24] which allows one half of all school time for
individual instruction. There would seem to be little need for devoting
so much time to individual instruction in a school having any
adequate system of grading and promotion. Indeed, as has already
been pointed out in the discussion of social phases of the recitation,
there is a positive advantage in teaching in groups. The extravagant
claims sometimes made for particular systems of organization,
especially when it is declared possible by means of the system for all
children to reach the same standard of excellence, bear on their face
the evidence of their fallacy.
Any attempt to give group or individual instruction must be
accompanied by provision for seat work for those who are not
working with the teacher. In the lower grades much has been
accomplished by allowing children to express themselves with
colored crayons and paints, with scissors and paste, as well as with
the more common pencil and paper for copying, or the letters and
words for word and sentence building. There is probably as much
worth in the seat work which results in the expression of the ideas
gained from a story by means of crayons or with scissors as there is
in the conversation concerning the story in class. As children
advance, more difficult problems in constructive work and in study
may be assigned.
In the intermediate and upper grades the problem of having
children occupied who are not directly under the supervision of the
teacher is largely the problem of teaching these children to study. A
child in the fourth grade ought to be able to discover and note
carefully the difficulties which the lesson assigned presents, and he
should, in some measure at least, be able to satisfy the problems
which arise. In succeeding grades, if children are being taught to
study, they ought in increasing measure to be able to gather data,
organize it, and proceed to the solution of their own problems.[25]
The conduct of the recitation has been discussed at length in
preceding chapters. It may be well to emphasize here the more
essential criteria. In a well managed recitation all of the children are
responsible for the progress of the class all of the time. To this end
the teacher addresses her questions to the whole class before
calling on any individual. The pupils are held responsible for the
answers which are given. The teacher does not constantly repeat
and explain answers. When they do not understand, children are
expected to ask each other questions. To secure these ends the
class should, when possible, be seated so that the one reciting may
easily face the other members of the class. The ideal seating is
found in the kindergarten circle. In a room with sufficient space in
front, the children may be seated or may stand in such a way as to
gain most of the advantages of the circle. If pupils must sit in rows of
seats with their backs to each other, it may help to have the children
reciting face the majority, and to encourage those whose backs are
toward the speaker to turn in their seats. It would seem possible that
we may sometime furnish our schoolrooms with reference to our
ideals of education; that a classroom may sometime become a place
fitted for a group of children who are to work together in the solution
of their problems.
The lack of proper management of a class may hinder the work of
a teacher whose work is excellent in other respects; but no skill in
management, however efficient in keeping children in order, can take
the place of good teaching. Most men and women who know how to
teach learn to manage a room full of children. There are still a few
who call themselves teachers who exalt management unduly. For
them the essential elements in school teaching are discipline,
control, organization. To the young teacher, or to the one who would
grow, the ideal of better teaching must constantly lead toward
greater efficiency. Observe any successful teacher, and you can
discover the devices of management which allow her to work to best
advantage, and the use which she makes of the opportunities which
the school presents to develop self-control and social responsibility
on the part of her pupils.

For Collateral Reading

W. C. Bagley, Classroom Management, Chapters I to VIII inclusive.
J. A. H. Keith, Elementary Education, Chapters VI and VII.

Exercises.
1. Distinguish between class management as a means and as an end. Give
examples of each.
2. How would you hope to have pupils feel their responsibility for good order in
the class?
3. Why do schemes of “pupil self-government” sometimes fail?
4. What is the argument in favor of having pupils pass into or out of the building
without marching in line?
5. Why is it important not to have the class periods too long?
6. Why do teachers sometimes divide their classes into two or more groups
even though they are all of the same school grade?
7. Can you ever expect to find a group of children all of whom will do equally
well in all subjects? Are the weaker pupils necessarily lazy?
8. Why is it important to make special provision for bright children?
9. What is the relation between the proper organization of class work and
teaching children how to study?
10. What do you think of a program which provides for class instruction during
every period of the day?
11. What criteria would you apply in judging your own class instruction?
12. What is “good order” in a schoolroom?
13. How would you judge of the success of a teacher in managing a class?
14. Name all of the activities of a class which in your judgment should be
reduced to routine.
 15. What rules would you make on the first day of school for the guidance of
your pupils?
16. What is the relation of good teaching to good class management?
17. If a majority of the class are misbehaving, where would you expect to find
the cause?
 CHAPTER XVI

LESSON PLANS

The best teachers never reach the point where preparation for the
day’s work is unnecessary. The teacher who stimulates her pupils to
their best effort must herself be interested in the work in hand. If
nothing new in material or method is found to vary the work, interest
soon lags. The lesson often repeated is as dry and lacking in power
to interest or inspire as the proverbial sermon taken from the barrel.
Even when a teacher has taught a most successful lesson, it is
dangerous to try to repeat that exercise in precisely the same way.
The two situations will not be alike. The fact that she tries to repeat
will take the edge off the lesson for the teacher, and make it
correspondingly dull for the pupils. Young and inexperienced
teachers are often most successful because of the zest with which
they attack the problems which are new to them. The older teacher
may be able to keep a class in order and teach them something with
a minimum of preparation; but her best work will be done only when
she has planned as carefully as the novice for whom the need of
preparation is so apparent.
The subject matter which should be drawn upon for any lesson
constantly changes. No two groups of children have had exactly the
same varieties of experience; hence the need for varying the
approach, as well as the demand for differences in observations,
experiments, reading, or other methods employed to bring the data
necessary for the solution of their problem before children. Subject
matter is growing, is being made all of the time. Last year’s
discussion of the geography of Europe, of South America, of Africa,
or of Asia will not suffice for this year, because interesting and
important events have occurred in these countries during the year
intervening. For the wide-awake teacher, even that most exact of the
sciences, mathematics, represented by arithmetic in our curriculum,
will change; since the number aspect of children’s experience will
vary. If spelling means the study of words which are needed for use
in written expression, the work in spelling will vary just as surely as
the occasions for written expression vary among children. No
teacher could, if she would, repeat a series of lessons which deal
with natural phenomena. In any field, the need for preparation
becomes apparent for one who would command the material which
should be made available for children.
In the preparation of a lesson plan the first and in some respects
the most important step is to become acquainted with the subject to
be taught. There is no method of teaching which can take the place
of a thoroughgoing knowledge of the material which bears upon the
topic to be treated. The teacher who finds in the life of the children
outside of school, in school activities, in books, pictures, magazines,
in study and travel, material for her daily class work, will make any
course of study vital and interesting to children. In such an
atmosphere pupils will grow not only in knowledge, but also in the
desire to inquire and investigate and in power to satisfy their
intellectual craving.
After the teacher has in hand an abundance of interesting
material, the next step in the plan is to organize the data to be
presented. Some organization is usually found in textbooks and
courses of study, and it is possible simply to try to fit any additional
material which may have been collected to the scheme provided.
The difficulty with this ready-made organization is found in the fact
that it has little or no relation to the needs or problems of the
particular group of children to be taught. Any organization which is to
be significant to children must take account of their point of view, and
attempt to present subject matter in response to the need which they
feel for the material to be presented. This is precisely what is meant
by the difference between the logical and psychological methods of
presenting subject matter. Not that the psychological method is
illogical, rather it takes account of the child’s needs and is for him
logical beyond the most complete adult logical scheme. It may seem
logical to the adult to teach the crayfish by calling attention to the
large parts and then to the smaller parts in order, or to deal with the
structure of the skeleton, nervous and circulatory systems,
connective tissues, and the like. To an eight-year-old child, the
problems which will probably be most logical, most satisfying to his
desire for investigation, will deal with the way in which the crayfish
gets his living, how he protects himself from his enemies, how he
brings disaster by making holes in levees, and how important he is
as an article of food. In satisfying these childish problems, much of
the information which might have been imparted, had the adult
scientific order been followed, will be mastered by the pupils. Much
more will be remembered, because the information is associated
with the solution of interesting problems. It may seem logical in
teaching India to a sixth-grade class to treat of prevailing winds,
surface features, climate, vegetation, animals, mineral products, and
people; but the children whose teacher approached this subject by
asking them to try to discover why they have had such terrible
famines in India probably remember more of the geography of India
to-day than those who followed the adult logical order. In
organization, then, the starting point is to get the child’s point of view,
to discover his problems, and to organize the material to be
presented with reference to these childish aims.
Good organization demands that material presented to satisfy the
demand made by the child’s problem be grouped around few
coördinate heads.[26] Many topics of equal value in an outline
generally indicate a lack of organization, a lack of appreciation of the
relation of the various facts to be presented. For example, one might
think of a great many facts about plant growth; the seeds must be
put in the earth, the weather must be warm enough, they must have
water, they need to be hoed, the ground should be fertile, they need
air, they grow best when they have sunlight, they may have too
much moisture, in rocky ground the soil may not be deep enough,
they must not be too close together, weeds and insects must be
destroyed, the roots should not be disturbed, the choice of the seed
is important, and so on. For a group of lower-grade children there
are two problems; namely, (1) what kind of plants do we want, and
(2) what can we do to make them grow well. Under the first head
would come the plants which are suitable for our conditions of soil
and climate, and the question of seed selection. Under the second
head the topics will be moisture, sunlight, air, and cultivation,
including the destroying of insects or other pests. Each of these
topics will be suggested in answer to the problems which have been
raised (what plants we want, and how we can make them grow well)
by a group of children who have had any experience with growing
plants. If any important topic is omitted, the teacher will call for it by a
question which suggests the lack of a complete solution to the
problem which is being considered. This brings us to the next step in
plan making.
A good lesson plan will include pivotal questions which will serve
to call for the data as indicated by the main topics given in the
organization of the subject matter. The problem of questioning has
been discussed at some length in a previous chapter.[27] In planning
a lesson, a question or two which will discover to the children the
problem to be solved should come first in the plan. With the problem
before the children, the function of the question is to stimulate
thought in the direction of the solution of the problem. The writer is
familiar with the objection that questions cannot be prepared ahead
of time.
It is true that the form of question may need to be varied because
of progress or the lack of it, not anticipated by the teacher, but the
question carefully prepared ahead of time will help rather than hinder
in the formulation of a question to meet the situation. It is true, too,
that not all of the questions can be prepared ahead of time. All the
more reason for careful preparation of a few questions which will
enable the teacher to prevent wandering by children during the
development of the topic. Thought-provoking questions which guide
and stimulate children in the solution of their problems are
dependent upon the aim which has been established and upon the
organization of material which it is desired to follow in the solution of
the problem. One might as well deny the need of organizing material,
as to question the value of preparing a few pivotal questions as a
part of the plan.
Lessons often fail because the ground covered during the period
cannot be retraced by the children at the end of the exercise. In a
well-organized plan the teacher will provide for summaries as each
main point is covered. In general these summaries should aim to
recall the subject matter covered from the beginning of the lesson. It
may be suggested that any good teacher summarizes her work as
she passes from point to point in her teaching, and that no artificial
reminder is necessary. The difficulty is that a good summary is not
accomplished merely by asking for a recapitulation of the material
covered. The skillful teacher puts her question which involves a
summary in such form that the pupils get a new view of the ground
already covered. In the experience of the writer, questions which
involve a summary of the work covered, with the added element of a
new view as a stimulus to further thought on the subject, are more
rare than good questions introducing new topics.
A good plan will include a list of illustrations, illustrative material,
books including references to chapter or page, maps or charts which
are to be consulted during the recitation. Teacher and children are
often disappointed because of the lack of materials which could have
been at hand had the teacher only thought about the lesson before
teaching it. In like manner, the opportunities for motor expression,
other than reciting or discussing, should be noted in the plan.
Dramatization, constructive work, graphic representation at the seat
or on the blackboard, may make the difference between success and
failure in a recitation.
A lesson which has been well planned will naturally end in the
assignment of work to be done in preparation for the next recitation.
In the discussion of any problem there must arise questions which
cannot then be answered. A good lesson is characterized not simply
by the ability of children to report progress, but quite as much by
their statement of the questions still unanswered. The direction
sometimes given to call up again the question which is left
unanswered during the recitation indicates a teacher whose
assignments provide a real stimulus for study in preparation for the
next day’s work. If it is necessary to have a live problem before
children during the recitation conducted by the teacher, obviously it is
much more necessary to make assignments which involve real
issues for children to meet.
In outline form the discussion of plan making given above would
appear as given below. This lesson on plan making may be taken as
an illustration of the type of plan a teacher should prepare for a
development lesson. In this plan, as in others, it seems wise to keep
the subject matter separate from the method of procedure.
A plan for teaching lesson plans: Their importance and the
elements which enter into their composition.
Teacher’s aim: To show the importance of plan making and to
indicate the elements which enter into the construction of a good
plan.
Preparation (which aims to get the problem before the class). How
do you prepare for your day’s work? Do you think you would do
better work if you planned your several recitations somewhat
systematically?
Pupil’s aim: Why do I need to make plans, and what are the
elements of a good plan?
 Subject Matter
I. Necessity for planning.
A. Lack of interest in old work.
B. Subject matter changes.
a. Subjects grow.
b. The experiences of different
groups of children vary.
C. Not safe to depend upon the
inspiration of the moment
for
a. Good questions.
b. Illustrations and illustrative
material.
c. References to books or
magazines.
d. Plans for constructive work
and the like.
Method of Procedure
Do you ever grow tired of teaching
the same subject over and over
again?
Why does a sermon out of the
“barrel” lack in interest or power to
inspire?
Do you know a subject thoroughly
to-day because you once studied it?
Why do different groups of children
respond differently to the same
material?
Formulate three good questions
which you might use in teaching a
lesson on the oak tree to second-
grade children.
Do you think you might have asked
better questions if you had had time
to think them over?
What picture or other illustrative
material would you use in teaching
this lesson?
Do you think the children would
gain by drawing a picture of the oak
near by?
When do you think you will have
had enough experience in teaching
to be able to get along without
making plans?