Description
In recent years studies of contemporary diplomacy have often focused on hierarchies of social status (Larson and Shevchenko 2010, Pouliot 2016, Renshon 2017). Diplomatic practices and social status are always interrelated, as can be gleaned in standard IR textbook accounts describing how emissaries competed for attention at imperial courts in centuries past. High social status may nevertheless accrue by way of diplomatic competence, a property not exclusive to powerful countries as small states clearly also accomplish foreign policy breakthroughs (de Carvalho and Neumann 2015). Diplomatic success ideally implies securing vital interests, high levels of stakeholder satisfaction and longevity of arrangements (Adler and Barnett 1998, Mestre-Jorda 2016). This paper explores positive reverberations of success across several fields of diplomatic practice, benefitting agents of recognized accomplishments and/or their principals. A specific theoretical claim is that countries that achieve diplomatic success bask in an ‘afterglow’ that can help achieve longstanding ambitions, if the momentum is utilized well. Designed as a plausibility probe, the second part of the paper compares the aftermath of diplomatic success in Norway (facilitating Middle East peace 1993-95), Denmark (co-shaping NATO deployments 1992-2003), Lithuania (bolstering Ukrainian sovereignty 2014-15), and Sweden (championing humanitarian law at the UN Security Council 2017-18).
