Conventional views on diplomacy emphasise the centrality of the state. This article will argue that the state is incoherent, and that this incoherence necessarily extends itself to statist diplomacy. Traditional concepts of diplomacy note the tension between negotiation and violence, so that if we are to make use of the conciliatory potential of diplomatic practice, we have to look to rework radically the concept of diplomacy. A rigorous distinction between violence and coercion (and constraint), and the state and government, enables us to reconstruct diplomacy so that it acquires a consistency which its association with the state makes impossible.
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