Symbolic power in European diplomacy: the struggle between national foreign services and the EU's External Action Service
Symbolic power in European diplomacy: the struggle between national foreign services and the EU's External Action Service
复制标题
欧洲外交中的象征性力量：国家外交部门与欧盟对外行动部门之间的斗争
DOI：
10.1017/s0260210513000326
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发表时间：
2013
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
Rebecca Adler‐Nissen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Rebecca Adler‐Nissen
摘要 国家外交面临着从跨国公司到非政府组织等非国家行为体崛起的挑战。在试图解释这些挑战时，学者们往往要么关注特定的新参与者，要么认为国家仍将是主导的外交参与者。本文开发了一种受布迪厄启发的替代框架来解决符号权力问题。它将外交概念化为一个社会领域，其中包括代理人（该领域的现任者和新来者），他们通过争夺主导地位来共同构建和再造这个领域。该框架适用于欧盟新的外交部门（欧洲对外行动署，EEAS），这是欧洲迄今为止最重要的外交政策发明之一。我表明，EEAS 并不是在物质意义上挑战国家外交，而是在象征层面上挑战国家外交。 EEAS 质疑国家的元资本，即其对象征权力的垄断，这解释了国家外交部门采取的反战略。定义“真正”外交官的斗争揭示了欧洲外交领域的断裂，指向欧洲国家地位的转变和混合外交形式的出现。对象征权力的关注为研究世界政治权威的转变开辟了新的途径。
Abstract National diplomacy is challenged by the rise of non-state actors from transnational companies to non-governmental organisations. In trying to explain these challenges, scholars tend to either focus on a specific new actor or argue that states will remain the dominant diplomatic players. This article develops an alternative Bourdieu-inspired framework addressing symbolic power. It conceptualises diplomacy in terms of a social field with agents (field incumbents and newcomers alike) who co-construct and reproduce the field by struggling for dominant positions. The framework is applied to the EU's new diplomatic service (the European External Action Service, EEAS), which is one of the most important foreign policy inventions in Europe to date. I show that the EEAS does not challenge national diplomacy in a material sense – but at a symbolic level. The EEAS questions the state's meta-capital, that is, its monopoly of symbolic power and this explains the counter-strategies adopted by national foreign services. The struggles to define the ‘genuine’ diplomat reveal a rupture in the European diplomatic field, pointing towards a transformation of European statehood and the emergence of a hybrid form of diplomacy. A focus on symbolic power opens up new avenues for the study of transformations of authority in world politics.