Diplomacy, agency, and the logic of improvisation and virtuosity in practice

Immersed in the flow of activities, diplomats and other international practitioners are simultaneously influenced by past experiences and constantly innovating in response to situations that are never exactly the same. The conceptual tools of International Relations scholars must be capable of capturing this practical reality. To that end, I introduce in this article a relational approach to agency that can make sense of practitioners’ innovative ways of doing things in practice. Practice theorists in IR often emphasize hierarchies, struggle, and the role of habitus in shaping practices. Both building on and departing from them, I dig into the logic of practical sense and discuss Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of regulated improvisations, virtuosos/amateurs, and illusio to grasp agency in practice. I develop the idea that international actors are primarily practical and put improvisations and virtuosity — rather than rationality, cognitive processes, emotions, norm-compliance, path-dependency or even habits/habitus — in the foreground. I contend that this approach holds broader promise for the analysis of international politics than existing conceptions. We have much to gain by focusing on how international practitioners in their local contexts actually improvise in the moment. These improvisations in specific sites are constitutive of the ‘big picture’ of international politics. I take diplomatic practices in embassies and in permanent representations as an illustration.