Becoming an EU diplomat in the European External Action Service

• In Event: Interpretive Approaches to Political Science

Abstract

The European External Action Service is the European Union's diplomatic service. Since 2010, the EEAS has helped coordinate and carry out the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. Today, the EEAS represents the EU through some 140 EU delegations and offices around the world. Recruiting from all over the 27 EU-member states, the EEAS is a melting pot consisting of diplomats carrying with them different languages, norms, and practices. The EEAS has been in operation for more than 10 years, but we still know surprisingly little about how individuals become EU diplomats and conduct EU diplomacy in practice. For instance, how do incoming EU diplomats experience the meeting of cultures in the EEAS? How do the cultural encounters influence the practice of diplomacy in the EEAS? What challenges and opportunities arise from the EEAS’ multinational make-up? This paper addresses these questions by examining how individuals become EU diplomats.

Based on an interpretivist methodology (e.g. Schwarz-Shea and Yanow, 2012 & 2014) and drawing inspiration from existing research employing Étienne Wenger’s (1998) notion of community of practice to the field of international relations (e.g., Adler, 2008; Goff, 2015; Wiseman, 2015; Hofius, 2016; Greve, 2018), this paper explores the individual experiences of encountering the EEAS and the subsequent processes of being socialized into its community of diplomatic practice. More concretely, the paper focuses on how individuals experience(d) the process of forming collaborative relationships (mutual engagement), internalizing a shared understanding of what binds the EU diplomats together (joint enterprise), and finally the reconstruction of a shared repertoire to pursue—occasionally renegotiate—the joint enterprise (Wenger, 1998: 72–73).

To examine what it means to be(come) a participant in this diplomatic community, the paper draws on data gathered from in-depth interviews (Schaffer, 2014; Fujii, 2017) with current and former EU diplomats. In addition to the Brussels headquarter, the EEAS spans across numerous missions and delegations around the world. To learn about the potential similarities and differences of becoming an EU diplomat in different settings, the paper draws on interview data gathered from a variety of individual encounters within the EEAS across time and space.

The paper contributes with a bottom-up account that seeks to highlight the individual experience of what it means to be(come) an EU diplomat. As a supplement to top-down approaches focusing on how the EEAS as an organization differentiates itself from national foreign ministries and international organizations at a distance (e.g. Balfour et.al., 2015), this paper promises experience-near knowledge about how the EEAS conducts its diplomacy in practice at the individual level of analysis (see also Lequesne, 2015). Particularly, the paper promises an inside account that helps elucidate the potential challenges and opportunities arising from the EEAS’ multinational make-up. Furthermore, the paper offers novel insights about the possible differences and similarities characterizing the individual processes of becoming an EU diplomat across time and space within the EEAS headquarter, missions, and delegations.

Author

• Jonas Gejl Kaas, Aarhus University