Struggles over Legitimate Diplomathood : the United States Foreign Service, the State Department and Other Government Agencies in Contemporary American Diplomacy

The last half-century has been characterized by the multiplication of state and non-state actors involved in political representation and governance at the international or global level. Despite this evolution, International Relations scholars tend to perpetuate the conventional distinction between "diplomats" - mainly thought of as state representatives from foreign ministries - and other types of international actors. This thesis problematizes such distinction by looking inductively at how "diplomathood" is constituted and reproduced in practice. Combining theoretical insights from Pierre Bourdieu and other sociologists (Max Weber, Andrew Abbott, Michèle Lamont), I argue that diplomats create and reproduce themselves as a status group through symbolic and social struggles. These struggles over legitimate diplomathood involve the (re)production of symbolic boundaries (boundary work) and jurisdictional claims, whereby agents claim legitimate control of a set of tasks. Diplomathood is contingent on the social legitimacy conferred to these boundaries and jurisdictional claims. The argument is demonstrated through a case study of American diplomacy, building on over thirty semi-directed interviews, notably with Foreign Service officers (FSOs), and a set of primary and secondary written sources. The dissertation shows that the American corps of FSOs seeks to constitute and reproduce itself as a status group of United States diplomacy through boundary work and jurisdictional claims vis-à-vis three other groups of foreign affairs actors: State Department civil servants; political appointees as ambassadors or domestic officials of the State Department; and public servants from other agencies or bureaucracies of the federal government. FSOs from different functional specializations also reproduce informal social and symbolic hierarchies among themselves with respect to diplomathood. Against these internal hierarchies, which put political officers in a dominant position, Foreign Service organizations (e.g. the Service's professional association) foster the esprit de corps of the group by emphasizing its collective identity as an elite corps of professional diplomats and by claiming control in its name of a number of diplomatic and foreign policy tasks. On balance, the efforts of FSOs and their organizations aimed at constituting the former as a status group of US diplomacy appear partly successful. They have so far managed to reproduce their social and symbolic domination vis-à-vis civil servants of the State Department. However, their jurisdictional claims are contested by political appointees and public servants from other agencies involved in US foreign relations. In sum, the thesis contributes to knowledge, within the discipline of International Relations, on ongoing social and symbolic processes that constitute diplomats, arguably one of the most important social groups in world politics.

Keyphrases: Diplomacy, United States, Department of State, Sociology, Boundary work, Jurisdictional claims, Status group, Foreign service