Why Studying State Foreign Services Remains a Research Priority
Abstract
It is quite understandable that diplomatic studies devote a huge
amount of research to new trends in diplomacy such as public
diplomacy, cyber-diplomacy, and digital diplomacy. Research has
therefore become more limited when states’ foreign services and
institutions are concerned. This contribution is a plea for not
forgetting research perspectives on foreign ministries in the
world. It insists on five good reasons to continue comparative
work on what seems to be a ‘classic’ topic of diplomatic studies.
The article is conceived as the introduction to a series of other
contributions on the subject, all resulting from a round-table that
took place at the ISA Congress 2017 in Baltimore.