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The Democratisation of Diplomacy: Negotiating with the Internet

30 Sep 2005 - 11:37
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This paper is a study of the use of information technology and its influence on the formulation of foreign policy advice. It attempts to define the rapid changes in information flows around the world and how they affect foreign ministries, whose task it is to advise national governments on their interaction with other governments and with international events and issues. The paper looks at the ways in which people, institutions, and organised groups can access the technologies to create a new role for themselves in international negotiations. The influence of new networks, enabled by new technology, is now an integral part of the world of diplomacy. It suggests some responses for governments and diplomats to enable them to deal with the questions of immediacy of information transmission around the world. The continuing requirements for judgement and accuracy - traditional qualities of diplomatic practice - still prevail, but the mechanisms for providing foreign policy advice have to adjust.

The views expressed in this study are the author's. They do not purport to be, nor are they, those of the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, nor of the New Zealand Government.

About the Author

Richard (Dick) Grant is a career foreign service officer in the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Between April and July 2004 he was a Visiting Fellow of the Oxford Internet Institute, where the original version of this paper was written. Before that he was a member of the Ministry's senior management group responsible for external economic and trade policy.

He is currently High Commissioner for New Zealand in Singapore. His previous postings have been as Ambassador to France, as High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, and as Ambassador to Germany.

He was educated at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) and the University of Clermont-Ferrand (France). In 1999 he was a Visiting Scholar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (USA).