Adapting Economic Diplomacy to the E-commerce Era

Summary During the past decade, the ongoing progress of digitalisation has triggered so rapid a spread of cross-border e-commerce that it has required the responses of governments in their domestic and foreign policies. This article focuses on the related developments in economic diplomacy, almost neglected in the existing research. It attempts to highlight a growing need for state engagement and to trace the related shifts in the activities of governments and diplomatic representations. Drawing on the concepts of the economic diplomacy cycle and the economic diplomacy process, the newly emerging practices of countries leading in e-commerce and digitalisation are analysed. The analysis shows that the concurrence of rapid globalisation and slow international regulation has been creating favourable conditions for the upswing in e-commerce-related diplomacies. A new complex branch of economic diplomacy has been emerging, based on the adaptation of traditional economic diplomacy patterns but bringing also far-reaching change and innovation.