While still a core component of international relations, post-Westphalian diplomacy has evolved into a multi-actor and multi-level phenomenon. Diplomacy has thus become democratised. Among the ever-expanding palette of diplomatic actors, this panel considers parliaments and diaspora communities as legitimate and democratic players.
Parliamentary and diaspora diplomacy play a fundamental and increasingly significant role in countries’ foreign policy. The diplomatic activity of parliaments, also called interparliamentary cooperation, is especially relevant in wartime. National parliaments and interparliamentary organisations help resolve inter-state and intra-state conflicts and political crises, tackle sensitive issues such as human rights violations, promote liberal norms, and guide states in their nation-building, integration, and democratisation.
Alongside national parliaments and interparliamentary organisations, diaspora communities also represent an essential third-party mediation actor in conflict settings. With a gradually growing size and strength, they have become influential actors on the domestic and international fronts, able to play the peacemaker and the peace-breaker roles. This panel focuses on their positive role in the different phases of conflict: pre-conflict, hot conflict, peace-making democratisation, and post-conflict reconstruction.
Against this backdrop, this panel aims to assess how parliaments at the bilateral and multilateral levels, interparliamentary organisations, and diaspora communities have engaged in preventing, disrupting, or mitigating conflicts, and have contributed to democratisation and post-conflict reconstruction.
This panel welcomes papers featuring case studies and comparative studies that address one or more aspects of the following sub-topics:
-The diplomatic practices of national parliaments and diaspora communities in maintaining peace and avoiding war, as well as, once conflicts have broken out, contribute to their resolution:
Authors could evaluate parliamentarians’ and/or diaspora communities’ involvement with peacekeeping missions, sanctions, or condemnations of human rights violations.
-The role of parliamentary and diaspora diplomacy in the aftermath of wars:
Papers could explore how national parliaments and diaspora communities have, through their transnational activities, contributed to nations’ rebuilding, consolidation of the post-war political regimes, and the strengthening of human, civil, and political rights.
-The contributions of interparliamentary organisations to peacekeeping and peace-making:
Authors could assess the role of interparliamentary organisations in peacekeeping missions, conflict resolution, post-war reconstruction, and post-conflict human rights consolidation.
