Changing Diplomacy - Actors or structures?

Abstract: The nature of diplomacy has evolved during time and world political situation. The focus in this thesis lies on change in the nature of diplomacy and the explanatory capacity of two different views; namely the actor-centered and the structure-centered perspectives. The starting point is a theory presented by Susan Strange, focusing on globalization as a structural cause for change in the nature of diplomacy. With this theory as a background we perform three case studies to explore the relationship between actors and structures, in order to evaluate the view presented by Strange. We name our method a case study with comparative implications as we use different contexts to apply our actor-structure lenses. The last case study, that concerns the possible role of the Swedish Trade Council as a diplomatic actor of growing importance, is emphasized more than the others since it operates in the same contextual framework as the theory by Strange. Therefore it is of greatest significance when evaluating her theoretical approach. The structures explored as possible changing factors are all related to economy; this is a thesis about diplomacy, economical structures and the capacity of actors to change the development within these structures.