Personal commitments are a ubiquitous but undertheorized phenomenon in the everyday wheels of world politics. While resonating with multiple threads in international relations theory, the role of individuals’ commitments in statecraft, diplomacy, and foreign policy has hardly been addressed in and of itself. Drawing on insights from symbolic interactionism and organizational psychology, this article conceptualizes the notion of commitment highlighting its omnipresence in foreign policy and diplomatic practice. Specifically, the article demonstrates the analytical cache of the notion of commitment by focusing on moments when state-agents deviated from their commitment to the national interest, acting on behalf of other foci of commitment. Relying on Israeli, French, and EU diplomatic archives, we examine three illustrative case studies that show how and why state-agents dedicate time, energy, and resources to advance interests other than those of the state.

中文翻译：

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许多主人的仆人：状态代理的多重承诺

在世界政治的日常车轮中，个人承诺是一种普遍存在但理论不足的现象。虽然与国际关系理论中的多条线索产生共鸣，但个人承诺在治国之道、外交和外交政策中的作用本身几乎没有得到解决。本文借鉴符号互动主义和组织心理学的见解，将承诺概念概念化，强调其在外交政策和外交实践中的无所不在。具体来说，本文通过关注国家代理人偏离其对国家利益的承诺、代表其他承诺焦点采取行动的时刻，展示了承诺概念的分析缓存。依托以色列、法国和欧盟的外交档案，