Symbolic power in European diplomacy: the struggle between national foreign services and the EU's External Action Service

Abstract

National diplomacy is challenged by the rise of non-state actors from transnational companies to non-governmental organisations. In trying to explain these challenges, scholars tend to either focus on a specific new actor or argue that states will remain the dominant diplomatic players. This article develops an alternative Bourdieu-inspired framework addressing symbolic power. It conceptualises diplomacy in terms of a social field with agents (field incumbents and newcomers alike) who co-construct and reproduce the field by struggling for dominant positions. The framework is applied to the EU's new diplomatic service (the European External Action Service, EEAS), which is one of the most important foreign policy inventions in Europe to date. I show that the EEAS does not challenge national diplomacy in a material sense -but at a symbolic level. The EEAS questions the state's meta-capital, that is, its monopoly of symbolic power and this explains the counter-strategies adopted by national foreign services. The struggles to define the 'genuine' diplomat reveal a rupture in the European diplomatic field, pointing towards a transformation of European statehood and the emergence of a hybrid form of diplomacy. A focus on symbolic power opens up new avenues for the study of transformations of authority in world politics.

New Directions in EU Foreign Policy Governance: Cross‐loading, Leadership and Informal Groupings

“…The EEAS emerged as an ‘interstitial organization’ that ‘increased [the] heterogeneity of established organizational fields’ (Bátora, , p. 599). It met resistance from Member States because it has been impinging on their symbolic and material diplomatic resources (Adler‐Nissen, ) and Member States in turn have fought to control the EEAS or key components (such as the requirements for recruitment into the EEAS of national diplomats). The European Commission too, while permeating the administrative culture of the EEAS, successfully retained key dossiers, such as external trade.…”

The Leadership Paradox in EU Foreign Policy

“…However, the sources for legitimate leadership continue to be anchored at the national level of Member States. This is why the presence of the EU High Representative (HR) and the European External Action Service (EEAS) as ‘newcomers’ in European diplomacy have been symbolically challenging (Adler‐Nissen, ).…”

Theorising the EU’s Diplomatic Service: Rational Player or Social Body?

“…Constructivist approaches, and in particular the sociological organisational perspectives, could draw on the so-called practice turn currently developing in IR, which has focused on diplomacy and its transformation (Neumann, 2012;Pouliot, 2008;Adler-Nissen, 2014;Adler-Nissen and Pouliot, 2014). There is a call in parts of the literature on the EEAS (Batora, 2013;AdlerNissen, 2013) for renewed attention to an old concern with institutions in IR but this time round underpinned by a deeper theorising of institutions.…”