The Rising Challenge of Consular Affairs: Cinderella in the Limelight

The Cinderella Service, as D.C. Platt famously called consular work, is hardly a launch pad for a fast track diplomatic career and in diplomatic studies consular affairs does not appeal sufficiently to academics to merit much study and reflection. But while there continues to be little academic writing on the subject, many foreign ministries are now taking a closer look. In this paper Maaike Heijmans and Jan Melissen make a first stab at an evaluation of consular affairs at the conference Challenges for Foreign Ministries: Managing Diplomatic Networks and Optimizing Value, which was held from 31 May to 1 June 2006 at the DiploFoundation and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

This is an edited end expanded version of the paper presented at the conference.