Leaderisation in foreign policy: performing the role of EU High Representative

Abstract

This article examines how the mediatised context of foreign policy provides new opportunities for political leaders to both frame and project their own leadership role to new audiences. The past ten years have witnessed a sharp rise in political leaders' use of new social media to communicate on a range of foreign policy issues. We argue that this new media context of foreign policy, combined with a bolstered leadership mandate, has been central to the construction of a more visible public leadership role for the EU High Representative in the post-Lisbon era. Departing from recent scholarship on performative leadership and new media in International Relations theory, we develop an original theoretical framework drawing on Erving Goffman's dramaturgy of impression management. We employ the concept of "leaderisation" to analyse how mediatisation shapes the leadership process in terms of personification and drama to enable new forms of interaction with followers. We apply this framework in an illustrative case study focusing on the process of negotiating the EU Global Strategy. This diplomatic process provided the High Representative Mogherini with a stage on which she could frame herself in a central leadership position visà-vis European citizens to mobilise greater legitimacy for the EU as a global actor.

Public diplomacy in an age of perpetual crisis: assessing the EU's strategic narratives through six crises

“…Faced with this situation, it is advisable to review our own lessons. By personalising the message and promoting local voices, European diplomacy must adapt to the exercise of strong leadership with a social media presence (Aggestam and Hedling, 2020). It bears reflecting on the public profiles of current political representatives, encouraging either a technocratic profile, along the lines of Mario Draghi, or a background of transformational leadership based on values, as in the case of Merkel.…”

“…They clearly show a desire and a need for a new narrative about the emerging global order – what the EU has broadly defined as forging “a stronger Europe in the world” (European Commission, no date) – now that the founding principles of peace and stability on the continent are being put aside (European Commision, 2014). Noticeably, in the decade since its inception, the EEAS – spearheaded by its “chief”: the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission (HR/VP) – has made increasing use of new public communication techniques (Aggestam and Hedling, 2020).…”

The post-Lisbon high representatives: an introduction

“…The first two contributions focus on the HR/VPs 'political leadership'. They assess respectively the institutionalisation of the EEAS and its crisis management structures (Koops and Tercovich 2020) and the public diplomacy performance of the HR/VP in the social media (Aggestam and Hedling 2020).…”

“…By adopting a comparative approach, we assess the two post-Lisbon HR/VPs from three main perspectives. Through an institutional perspective, we examine the HR/VP's role in the institutionalization of EU crisis management (Koops and Tercovich 2020) and in devising EU public diplomacy via social media (Aggestam and Hedling 2020). Through a geographical perspective, we then investigate the HR/VP's role in the nuclear negotiations with Iran (Bassiri Tabrizi and Kienzle 2020), in EU foreign policy towards Kosovo and Ukraine (Amadio Viceré 2020), and in EU's relations in the Southern Mediterranean (Bremberg 2020).…”

Feminist digital diplomacy and foreign policy change in Sweden

“…The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the pursuit of diplomatic goals has become an important practice whereby foreign policy actors can digitally project their policy preferences, normative values and nation brands globally (Bjola and Holmes 2015). Leaders, states, governments and a variety of organisations increasingly use social media to project their influence beyond borders, enabling them to reach and manage domestic and global publics (Duncombe 2019;Wright 2019;Aggestam and Hedling 2020). Digital diplomacy, moreover, has changed the ways in which states manage their nation brands and this has amplified the reach and role of public diplomacy in global politics (Manor 2019).…”