are necessary to ensure that no personal emotion or style should colour the
message, that two diplomats of different nations have more in common, and are
better able to treat the matters they discuss objectively and unemotionally than
are two ordinary politicians. As foreign policy is increasingly made, in all
countries, directly by the heads of theexecutive, and as international con-
ferences increasingly depend on direct confrontation between senior politi-
cians, it might be thought that diplomacy as a special technique, and the
diplomatic corps as professional experts both in the making and execution of
foreign policy, are going out of date. There is probably considerable truth in
this. It was noteworthy that a British cabinet ‘think tank’ report on the foreign
service urged its radical cutting, and the replacement of most functions by
ordinary civil servants who were technical experts in the area in question. No
action was taken on this report, but it caused considerable public debate. In the
USA the tendency for foreign policy to be taken out of the State Department
and into the White House has not attenuated over the years.
One development that has strengthened the idea of diplomacy as a special
endeavour has been the growth of importance of transnational bodies, the
European Union (EU)in particular, which have no direct capacity to use
force, but do represent a huge potential power. Thus the presence of EU
negotiators in recent conflicts like theGulf Waror the Yugoslavian crisis has
been a vitally important example of purely diplomatic activity. The interna-
tional crisis following the terrorist attacks in the USA in 2001 again demon-
strated both the importance of the EU and the highly personal nature of
diplomacy as consisting of face-to-face meetings between heads of state. In
particular the clear personal empathy between Tony Blair, as prime minister of
the UK and both President Bush of the USA and President Putin of Russia
became crucial.
Direct Democracy
Direct democracy is to be contrasted withrepresentative democracy, much
as the respective titles suggest. According to the theory of direct democracy, all
concerned citizens must directly participate in the making of decisions and the
passing of laws, and this function can neither be delegated to others, nor can it
be carried out by others chosen to represent the interests of the many. The
inspiration for this system of democratic politics comes from classical Greek
democracy, especially as it is understood, sometimes, to have worked in 5th
century Athens. The earliest, and still most influential, exponent in the
modern world is Jean JacquesRousseau, particularly inThe Social Contract.
The arguments given for the advantage of direct instead of representative
democracy are varied. Foremost is the idea that only a genuine majority of the
population can make a law which really maximizes the democratic nature of
Direct Democracy