ABSTRACT Whilst the diplomatic studies field has grown impressively in the past decade, paradoxically there is much still to be learnt about ‘state foreign services’, a term covering the two sides of the diplomacy coin: diplomats serving at home – in the Foreign Ministry – and abroad – at embassies and consulates. Diplomats have a Janus-faced view of their profession: as envoys abroad and bureaucrats at home. This analysis first assesses the American approach to diplomacy’s two sides, focusing on the impact of the Donald Trump presidency as a benchmark. Flowing from this are several key challenges that bedevil virtually all democratic foreign ministries: How to frame the ‘national interest’? How to represent blemished or populist leaders? How to deal with dissent? How to balance the field-headquarters nexus? And how to manage relations with non-state actors. So long as the Westphalian state system survives, so, too, will the two-sided foreign-service model. Only when moving away from diplomacy as ‘state practice’ to diplomacy as ‘social practice’ can the foreign-service model recede, with diplomacy becoming disintermediated, omnilateral, and post-Westphalian, potentially manifesting radically different practices.

中文翻译：

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外交部的当代挑战：国内外

摘要 虽然外交研究领域在过去十年中取得了令人瞩目的发展，但矛盾的是，关于“国家外交服务”还有很多需要学习的地方，这个术语涵盖了外交硬币的两个方面：在国内服务的外交官——在外交部——和国外 - 在大使馆和领事馆。外交官对他们的职业有一种坦率的看法：作为国外的使节和国内的官僚。这一分析首先评估了美国对外交的两个方面的态度，以唐纳德特朗普总统任期的影响为基准。由此产生的几个关键挑战几乎困扰着所有民主外交部：如何界定“国家利益”？如何代表有缺陷或民粹主义的领导人？如何处理异议？如何平衡外勤与总部的关系？以及如何处理与非国家行为者的关系。只要威斯特伐利亚国家体系继续存在，双边外交模式也将继续存在。只有当从作为“国家实践”的外交转向作为“社会实践”的外交时，外交服务模式才会退却，外交变得非中介化、全方位和后威斯特伐利亚，可能表现出完全不同的实践。