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Today diplomacy increasingly relies on tweets. Yet, as tweets only allow for 280 characters, statements must be brief and impactful, which encourages the use of humour in conveying one's message. This article scrutinizes irony and ridicule in diplomatic interactions. Even though these forms of humour may antagonize parties and even turn issues into a security concern, this article points out that they also have an affiliative aspect and could play a conflict-mediating role. Because humour, especially irony, is easy to misunderstand (especially in cross-cultural settings), many warn against using them in diplomatic exchanges. Nevertheless, I will argue that they are ideal for expressing multi-layered messages, enabling the speaker to rely on what is often called 'constructive ambiguity', which is often useful in diplomatic conduct. Two case studies illustrate the argument. The first focuses on cartoons ridiculing President Wilson in the early 20th century for his reluctance to commit the US to join WWI (suggesting that cartoons of the time might be predecessors of today's tweets), and the second on tweets published by the British Embassy in London apropos of the Skripal case (offering an example how humorous tweets can convey multi-layered, complex messages).

The article is a study of managing interstate relations via ambiguity and secrecy. At the focal point of the article is the different constitutive logic of domestic politics and diplomacy in conceiving and managing social reality; with the former implying the notion of community and the latter separateness - the difference that allows for diplomatic conduct to rely on tacit agreements and ambiguity for managing contradictory 'truth claims', as China and Japan did in the case of the Ryukyu and later the Senkaku Islands. Such successful management is conditional on the parties' ability to control domestic narratives avoiding contradictions in their 'truth claims' becoming too blatant. Yet, modern technologies increasingly undermine states' capacities for this. The leaking on YouTube of the collision of a Chinese trawler with the ship of the Japanese Coast Guard in 2010 offers a perfect example. The incident aggravated the conflict and triggered intense debates on secrecy in Japan. The article concludes by arguing that once ambiguity and tacit agreements break down, leaders should turn to their public - recognize that noisy nationalist are frequently but a minority - and attempt to renegotiate 'truth claims' domestically to create the basis for a compromise. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

In the past decades a paradigmatic change has been taking place concerning the concept of citizenship with the fading of the former prohibitive attitude towards dual citizenship. With this transformation the former congruity between citizens, the territory of the state, the nation and the sphere of political authority is undermined, which has major ramification on the concept of sovereignty. The thesis contends that sovereignty is the attribute of two entities of the political: the state and the individual and modern political life could be interpreted as the dialectic relationship of these two, with the individual seeking to realize his freedom and the state to create effective means to govern collectives of man. The Westphalian structure provided the framework to divide the world into distinct units of states, on the one hand with the domestic - where democratic politics offered the room for man to realize his freedom - and on the other hand the international - where states interacted in an anarchic environment. It was the corollary of this setup to neatly package individuals into states, creating a hierarchical primacy of states over their citizens. The prevailing of dual citizenship, however, could be conducive to transform this setup and shift it towards a 'more cosmopolitan reality' by entailing changes both for individuals and for the system states. For individuals as the result of dual citizenship membership in states increasingly turns into a choice and the proliferation of citizenships would bring about also the stratification of citizenship statuses, beyond the former rigid dichotomy of citizens and foreigners. On the system level dual citizenship could be conducive to realize cosmopolitan forms of governance, promoting questions of morality and solidarity to trespass borders of states.

This article analyzes the use of historical analogies to interpret and explain foreign policy behavior, focusing on the South China Sea conflict. In reviewing coverage in the international English-language press, we find a range of historical analogies, from the conflict between Athens and Sparta to the 1938 Munich agreement, to interpret China's strategy and motivations in the region. While analogies are powerful tools for interpreting international events, their use has dangers as they are often deployed to justify decisions rather than analyze options. This article has two goals. First, we argue that relying excessively on Western analogies for understanding China can be misleading; instead, we suggest visiting examples from China's past that offer alternative readings of its current ambitions. Second, we suggest a way to overcome the deterministic application of historical analogies by not taking them individually, but rather taking them as sets of alternative scenarios. This way, they can provide important insights for generating critical debate and informing tactful diplomacy.