ABSTRACT

Despite being around for less than a century, institutional diplomats are usually considered indispensable to peaceful international relations. Unconventional actors outside the foreign services corps might be acknowledged for their occasional role in forging bilateral deals but are considered too unpredictable to ensure a stable global order. Challenging these assumptions, this article offers a new framework to conceptualize the repeated patterns and recurring logics of informal diplomats. As its primary case study, it draws on ethnographic interviews conducted in 2015 with Jumma Khan, a little-known stateless diplomat. Despite no institutional or state support Khan served as a consular, resident ambassador, ambassador-at-large, special envoy, and a delegate to multinational conferences from 1958 to 2002, when he retired. I argue that he achieved these feats by channelling three historically established diplomatic character-types: the pretender, the entrepreneur, and the mercurian. As a pretender, he mobilized support abroad to gain recognition back home. As an entrepreneur, he oversold scant connections to leverage a deal that made his exaggerations a reality. As a mercurian, he moved as familiar-stranger, able to quickly string new places into his dispersed personal network. The article substantiates each of these characters through comparable figures from across global history. Diplomatic actors from various places and times, enacting similar approaches and logics, collectively demonstrate that informal diplomats are not inimitable aberrations. They are instead ubiquitous, recurring features of international relations, and in many ways, more stable elements of transnational politics than institutional diplomats.

摘要

尽管存在不到一个世纪，机构外交官通常被认为是和平国际关系不可或缺的。外交服务机构之外的非常规行为者可能会因其偶尔在达成双边协议方面的作用而受到承认，但被认为太不可预测，无法确保稳定的全球秩序。挑战这些假设，本文提供了一个新框架来概念化非正式外交官的重复模式和反复出现的逻辑。作为其主要案例研究，它借鉴了 2015 年对鲜为人知的无国籍外交官 Jumma Khan 进行的民族志访谈。尽管没有机构或国家支持，可汗在 1958 年至 2002 年退休时担任过领事、常驻大使、无任所大使、特使和多国会议代表。我认为他通过引导三种历史上确立的外交角色类型来实现这些壮举：伪装者、企业家和水银。作为伪装者，他动员国外的支持以在国内获得认可。作为一名企业家，他为了利用一笔使他的夸大其词成为现实的交易而超卖了很少的人脉。作为一名水星，他像熟悉的陌生人一样行动，能够迅速将新的地方融入他分散的个人网络中。这篇文章通过全球历史上的可比数据证实了这些特征中的每一个。来自不同地方和时代的外交行为者采用相似的方法和逻辑，共同证明非正式外交官不是无法模仿的异常。相反，它们是国际关系中无处不在、反复出现的特征，并且在许多方面，