Ministries of Foreign Affairs: A Crucial Institution to be Revisited
Abstract
The scholar who attends international conferences and reads regular publica-tions on diplomatic studies and foreign policy analysis is confronted with one indisputable observation: If plenty of new academic research on contemporary diplomatic practices has emerged, few of those studies paradoxically focus on the comparative role of ministries of foreign affairs (MFA s). Thus, providing academic material to students on MFA s requires using chapters published in general textbooks;1 monographs based on single-country case studies;2 practi-tioners’ accounts, which can be rather descriptive;3 and, finally, research pub-lished more than fifteen years ago.4 The goal of this book is to fill the gap in the literature by devoting a complete volume to the contemporary role of MFA s in diplomacy. Several chapters of the book have already been published in a special issue of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, available in 2020. Others are original chapters specifically written for this book. The main objective of this combination is to have an up to date and coherent volume on MFA s useful to scholars, students and practitionners.