Toward an Urban Geography of Diplomacy: Lessons from The Hague

Abstract

This article examines the microgeography of diplomacy, particularly its localized embodiment in a corps diplomatique and international governmental organizations. Drawing on the case of The Hague, we map embassies and consider the locations of organizations engaged with interstate and transnational relations. The article raises questions about diplomatic form and function, whereby urban, economic, and political geographies intersect around issues of diplomacy, representation, and security. Our case study has implications for the study of other diplomatic centers and poses research questions about diplomacy as a spatial practice pertaining to diplomatic buildings, diplomatic clusters, para-diplomacy, and securitization.

本文检视外交的微观地理，特别是其在外交使团与国际政府组织中的在地化体现。我们运用海牙的案例，绘製大使馆的位置，并考量涉入国家之间与跨国关係的组织所在地。本文提出有关外交形式与功能的问题，其中城市、经济与政治之地理，在外交、再现和安全议题週遭相互交错。我们的案例研究，对于其他外交中心的研究具有意涵，并提出外交作为关于外交建筑、外交集团、平行外交，以及安全化的空间实践之相关研究问题。

Este artículo se refiere a la microgeografía de la diplomacia, en particular a su localizada materialización en un cuerpo diplomático y en las organizaciones gubernamentales internacionales. A partir del caso de La Haya, mapeamos las embajadas y consideramos las localizaciones de organismos comprometidos en relaciones interestatales y transnacionales. El artículo formula interrogantes acerca de la forma y función diplomáticas, a través de lo cual las geografías urbana, económica y política se intersectan alrededor de asuntos de diplomacia, representación y seguridad. Nuestro caso de interés tiene implicaciones para el estudio de otros centros diplomáticos y plantea preguntas de investigación concernientes a la diplomacia como práctica espacial relacionada con edificios diplomáticos, agrupamientos diplomáticos, paradiplomacia, y seguridización.

Key Words:

• diplomacy
• embassy
• legal capital of the world
• security
• The Hague

关键词:

• 外交，大使馆，世界的法律之都，安全，海牙。

Palabras clave:

• diplomacia
• embajada
• capital legal del mundo
• seguridad
• La Haya

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to two reviewers and the editor for their comments. The Politics, Economies and Space Group at the National University of Singapore also offered useful feedback on an earlier draft. However, the usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1 China and some media claimed that the embassy was deliberately targeted. On the claims and refutations, Wikipedia is a good entrée: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade (last accessed 12 April 2014). See also Parsons and Xu (2001).

2 A contemporary account notes that after World War I, in the eyes of the victors, Dutch neutrality would not be without consequences: “The choice of Paris for the historic Peace Conference was an afterthought. The Anglo-Saxon governments first favored a neutral country as the most appropriate meeting ground for the world's peace-makers. Holland was mentioned only to be eliminated without discussion, so obvious and decisive were the objections” (Dillon 1920, 4). See Abbenhuis (2006) for more on the maneuvers of Dutch neutrality, its limits, and its consequences.

3 The Hague played a leading role in this, hosting a World Conference on City Diplomacy in 2008. See Betsill and Bulkeley (2004) on cities in transnational environmental governance networks. On subnational paradiplomacy more widely, see Aldecoa and Keating (1999). Diplomatic cultures were the key theme of three workshops organized by Jason Dittmer and Fiona McConnell as an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Research Network in 2013. The final workshop was devoted to alternative cultures of diplomacy and convened in The Hague in November. Audio recordings of all three events were available at the time of the review of this article (December 2014) via http://diplomaticcultures. wordpress.com/ (last accessed 9 December 2014). And more recently, Winter (2014, 322) uses the term “heritage diplomacy” to refer to an array of cultural exports and exchanges in Asia, mobilizing archaeology and culture at state-to-state level.

4 For pointers on Astana, see Koch (2010).

5 Although it has little to say on diplomacy per se, Till's (2005) geo-ethnography of Berlin is instructive.

6 The significance of this distinction in diplomacy reinforces Robinson's (2013, 556) “call for geographers to be just as cognizant of the distinction between state and government as they traditionally have been of the distinction between state and nation.”

7 The EU sees itself as a diplomatic entity, with a diplomatic presence beyond that of its member states, expressed since 2009 via a European External Action Service recruiting its own diplomats from (but not to represent the interests of) member states (Bátora 2013; Juncos and Pomorska 2014).

8 Since 1977, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana is in the former U.S. embassy there (constructed in the 1950s), which is under Swiss legal protection. Late in 2013, the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, DC, suspended its consular services because it was unable to find a replacement for M&T Bank who had (reputedly under tightening sanctions) decided to stop offering it banking services (Lopez-Levy 2013).

9 In a recent book (that was unavailable when we wrote the main text of this article) on Exploring the Penumbra of Transnational Power in Washington, DC, Kent E. Calder (2014, 11) develops the concept of the “global political city” containing: “A political-diplomatic community [and] … [a] strategic information complex, within which flows important political, military, and country-risk information with global portent.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Virginie Mamadouh

VIRGINIE MAMADOUH is an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, Postbus 15629, 1001 NC Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests are in political and cultural geography and geopolitics, especially issues of language and territory, transnationalism, and new media.

Anne Meijer

ANNE MEIJER is a publishing assistant for the history department of Boom Publishers, 1017 JX, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]. She completed her MSc cum laude in human geography at the University of Amsterdam in 2012, specializing in political geography.

James D. Sidaway

JAMES D. SIDAWAY is Professor of Political Geography at the National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570. E-mail: [email protected]. His principal scholarly interests are political geography and the history and philosophy of geographic thought. Other research includes financial geographies, deathscapes (spaces for death, mourning, and remembrance), and geographies of security and insecurity (securityscapes).

Herman van der Wusten

HERMAN VAN DER WUSTEN is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, Postbus 15629, 1001 NC Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include political centers and diplomacy, European integration, and the interactions among Francophone, Dutch, and German geography.