This book shows how changing diplomatic practices are central in explaining key dimensions of world politics, from law to war.

During the Cold War, both Chinese and American officials employed a wide range of migration policies and practices to pursue legitimacy, security, and prestige. They focused on allowing or restricting immigration, assigning refugee status, facilitating student exchanges, and enforcing deportations. The Diplomacy of Migration focuses on the role these practices played in the relationship between the United States and the Republic of China both before and after the move to Taiwan. Meredith Oyen identifies three patterns of migration diplomacy: migration legislation as a tool to achieve foreign policy goals, migrants as subjects of diplomacy and propaganda, and migration controls that shaped the Chinese American community.Using sources from diplomatic and governmental archives in the United States, the Republic of China on Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, and the United Kingdom, Oyen applies a truly transnational perspective. The Diplomacy of Migration combines important innovations in the field of diplomatic history with new international trends in migration history to show that even though migration issues were often considered "low stakes" or "low risk" by foreign policy professionals concerned with Cold War politics and the nuclear age, they were neither "no risk" nor unimportant to larger goals. Instead, migration diplomacy became a means of facilitating other foreign policy priorities, even when doing so came at great cost for migrants themselves.

In Diplomatic Material Jason Dittmer offers a counterintuitive reading of foreign policy by tracing the ways that complex interactions between people and things shape the decisions and actions of diplomats and policymakers. Bringing new materialism to bear on international relations, Dittmer focuses not on what the state does in the world but on how the world operates within the state through the circulation of humans and nonhuman objects. From examining how paper storage needs impacted the design of the British Foreign Office Building to discussing the 1953 NATO decision to adopt the .30 caliber bullet as the standard rifle ammunition, Dittmer highlights the contingency of human agency within international relations. In Dittmer's model, which eschews stasis, structural forces, and historical trends in favor of dynamism and becoming, the international community is less a coming-together of states than it is a convergence of media, things, people, and practices. In this way, Dittmer locates power in the unfolding of processes on the micro level, thereby reconceptualizing our understandings of diplomacy and international relations.

Kenneth Schultz explores the effects of democratic politics on the use and success of coercive diplomacy. He argues that open political competition between the government and opposition parties influences the decision to use threats in international crises, how rival states interpret those threats, and whether or not crises can be settled short of war. The relative transparency of their political processes means that, while democratic governments cannot easily conceal domestic constraints against using force, they can also credibly demonstrate resolve when their threats enjoy strong domestic support. As a result, compared to their non-democratic counterparts, democracies are more selective about making threats, but those they do make are more likely to be successful - that is, to gain a favorable outcome without resort to war. Schultz develops his argument through a series of game-theoretic models and tests the resulting hypothesis using both statistical analyses and historical case studies.

The founder -- Shadow diplomacy -- War by other means -- Chasing respectability -- Between truth and lies -- Diplomacy in retreat -- Selective integration -- Rethinking capitalism -- The fightback -- Ambition realized -- Overreach.

After 9/11, which triggered a global debate on public diplomacy, 'PD' has become an issue in most countries. This book joins the debate. Experts from different countries and from a variety of fields analyze the theory and practice of public diplomacy. They also evaluate how public diplomacy can be successfully used to support foreign policy.

Diplomacy means different things to different people, the definitions ranging from the elegant ("the management of relations between independent states by the process of negotiations") to the jocular ("the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock"). Written by Joseph M. Siracusa, an internationally recognized expert, this lively volume introduces the subject of diplomacy from a historical perspective, providing examples from significant historical phases and episodes to illustrate the art of diplomacy in action, highlighting the milestones in its evolution. The book shows that, like war, diplomacy has been around a very long time, at least since the Bronze Age. It was primitive by today's standards, there were few rules, but it was a recognizable form of diplomacy. Since then, diplomacy has evolved greatly, to the extent that the major events of modern international diplomacy have dramatically shaped the world in which we live. Indeed, the case studies chosen here demonstrate that diplomacy was and remains a key element of statecraft, and that without skilful diplomacy political success may remain elusive.