ABSTRACT
Despite the significant changes in communication and transportation that globalization has brought to the world, the structure of international politics and diplomacy has, in many ways, remained unchanged. Today’s leaders and diplomats travel the globe to meet personally with friends and adversaries just as their counterparts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did. Indeed the stasis of diplomacy arguably goes back to antiquity and has changed only on the margins. 2 Peculiarly, teleconferencing and Internet communication technologies (ICTs) have fundamentally changed the way that business and other types of social interaction are conducted (Denstadli, Julsrud and Hjoprthol 2012), yet the basic process of negotiating while looking the other in the eye continues to dominate diplomacy efforts, both bilaterally and multilaterally. With the advent of these new communication tools, some have questioned whether these tête-à-têtes are necessary. Consider the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Political pundits astutely observed the irony in negotiators travelling thousands of miles in high-emissions aircraft in order to discuss how best to reduce overall emissions. Similar criticisms have been levied at other multilateral conferences, such as the G-20 Summit. Critics of the 2010 Toronto conference asked whether it was wise for statespeople to engage in costly extravagant meetings at a time of global recession. 3 These concerns are important and go beyond partisan rankle. They are indicative of an important theoretical puzzle: why has diplomacy not been affected by the technological revolution?
