Coping with digitalization in diplomacy: autonomy and discretion at the digital frontlines

Abstract

The advancement of digital technologies in the last decade has introduced new tools, workflows and stakeholders in diplomacy, creating significant information demands and a state of “digital stress.” To navigate these challenges, diplomats employ coping strategies that leverage their reflexivity and autonomy to manage demands, prioritize tasks, and mitigate overload. Beyond merely adapting traditional skills and engagement platforms to online settings, digital diplomacy has fostered new routines, norms, and practices, each accompanied by its own tensions and dilemmas. These challenges are addressed through discretionary decision-making and a relative independence from political authority, collectively shaping bureaucratic agency. This article examines digital stress in diplomacy by integrating insights from International Relations (IR) and international public administration scholarship. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with European diplomats conducted between 2016 and 2024, it explores the coping strategies required for the evolving landscape of “digital diplomacy.” Engaging with Lipsky’s work on the coping mechanisms of frontline practitioners in the context of e-government, this study reveals how these coping strategies as sources of bureaucratic agency, push back against top-down digitalization efforts while also exposing risks and tensions in diplomatic norms and practices arising from digital transformation.

Introduction

How do diplomats cope with the abundance of digital workflows and the stress associated with digital technology, and what can be learned from these coping strategies about the state of diplomacy? The prevalence of digital workflows and technological tools in professional life is overwhelming in many professional sectors. This is certainly true for the diplomats and foreign service officials engaged in implementing their country’s foreign policy, managing international relations, and safeguarding their nation’s interests abroad. The COVID-19 pandemic further pushed diplomatic practices into virtual modes with seemingly lasting effects on the status of hybrid interaction alongside the trend of increasing political engagement with the technology sector (Bjola and Holmes, 2015; Bjola and Manor, 2022). Despite this, scholarship on the bureaucratic effects of digitalization and transitions to “e-government” has often neglected foreign service and diplomatic organizations in favor of analyses of the impact on domestic public service delivery (Breit et al., 2021; Buffat, 2015). Meanwhile, the surge in digital diplomacy studies in International Relations (IR) have produced a rich account of how digital technologies have reshaped diplomatic practices (Bicchi and Lovato, 2024; Cornut, 2022; Danielson and Hedling, 2022; Hedling and Bremberg, 2021; Svendsen, 2022). These studies detail the emergence of new working routines, norms, and practices, each accompanied by tensions and dilemmas (Eggeling, 2025; Eggeling and Adler-Nissen, 2024 [2022]; Hedling, 2023). Despite a rise in attention to the practical enactments of digital diplomacy, the bureaucratic perspective remains largely absent from the academic debate. Modern diplomats navigate the dual challenge of leveraging digital tools, such as virtual meeting platforms, workflow applications, and social media, while maintaining a necessary level of detachment to both uphold the continuity of their institution and preserve autonomy within bureaucratic structures. These challenges are addressed through discretionary choices and a relative independence from political authority, which collectively constitute bureaucratic agency (Lipsky, 2010 [1980]: 13). Consequently, digitalization influences not only the coping strategies of individual diplomats but the role of these strategies in the broader shifts in diplomacy. This article centers on the effects of digital stress in diplomacy and takes steps to assess its influence.

Diplomats are the frontline deliverers of a country’s foreign policy. They translate high-level strategic directives into actionable tasks and engagements with foreign counterparts, seeking to successfully implement the policy goals of their government. As such they mediate and translate politics through discretion and tact (McConnell, 2018). As frontline practitioners, these interpretations and translations often take place in less-than-ideal situations (Cooper, 2019). When tensions arise between political goals and means at their disposal in the field, diplomats must act autonomously, reflecting on the costs and resisting any stressors (Cooper and Cornut, 2019; Oberfield, 2014). Therefore, the gap between what is formally possible and practically desirable is often dealt with through coping strategies to adapt to recurrent challenges in the field. The alternative to coping, to manage tensions by insolence, by disobedience or by neglect often comes at a high personal, social and political cost (Dietl, 2022). Instead, coping strategies become recognized as professionally accepted practice even when they serve to preserve, navigate or circumvent rigid protocol. While many would associate stressing conditions for frontline diplomats with external factors such as a quickly deteriorating political situation or threats to negotiations falling through, bureaucratic processes, government instructions and organizational change are also critical sources of pressure and demand in diplomacy (Ban, 2013; Kuus, 2016).

While digitalization impacts many professional communities in international politics, the high-stakes nature of diplomacy, and the bureaucracy involved in managing international relations and mediating complex stressors, requires consideration. Moreover, the recent upsurge in attention to “international public administration” is an emerging research agenda in IR (Christian, 2024, 2025; Fleischer and Reiners, 2021; Heinzel, 2022; Knill and Bauer, 2018). The bureaucratic processes of international cooperation are essential to reaching foreign policy goals, and governments and their citizens rely on their foreign ministries, subordinated units, and diplomats to perform civil service (Hocking, 2013). Seen in this light, Wille (2023: 7) suggests that diplomats’ role as performers of civil service is that of “knowledge workers” who produce and maintain a particular kind of practical knowledge about the views and intentions of their foreign counterparts and who communicate and negotiate on behalf of their governments. This knowledge work, however, carries cost and change or expansion (such as digital transformation) in bureaucratic organizations can therefore pose severe challenges to the legitimacy of state action (cf. Barnett and Finnemore, 2012: 157). Alongside opportunities for more communication and information exchange in diplomacy, digitalization involves uncertainties and risks. Research on the impact of technology on skill demands over the past decades indicates that digitalization (encompassing computerization and organizational change) extends far beyond mere deskilling or upskilling in terms of complexity (Giritli Nygren, 2012; Wallin et al., 2020). The consequences of digitalization are not limited to the professional spaces in which individuals experience adaptation and change; they are connected to the broader implications of living in a digital society (Osiceanu, 2015) in which the control over digital technologies is increasingly political (Adler-Nissen and Eggeling, 2024). Attention to the areas of tension in the digital transformation of diplomacy and how diplomats cope with these is therefore relevant to the future understandings of diplomacy as routines of bureaucracy on a general level as well as for more fine-grained analyses of the costs involved in the knowledge work performed by diplomats as groups or individuals in international public administration.

To theorize diplomats’ coping with digital transformation, I build on recent advancements in the study of digital practices in IR (Adler-Nissen et al., 2021; Bjola and Coplen, 2022; Cornut, 2022; Hedling and Bremberg, 2021). While this strand of research inspired by the tenets of International Practice Theory (IPT) has demonstrated the influence of the increasing habitual reliance on digital tools in diplomacy, I suggest that diplomats exercise more bureaucratic agency and reflexivity in digitalization than previously discussed and that these sources of autonomy can in fact contribute to both the competent and incompetent performance of diplomatic roles. In contrast to previous studies on digital diplomacy, I propose a bureaucratic perspective grounded in critical organization studies, with a particular focus on research that adapts Michael Lipsky’s work on frontline bureaucrats to the context of the digital age. This approach bridges conversations in IPT on the materiality of digital technology with international public administration, enabling new analyses of the implications of digitalization in IR. In the broader context, this venture is relevant for IR because it enables us to develop a more critical and contextual approach to digitalization in our field.

This article proceeds as follows. The subsequent section reviews the role of digital technology in frontline diplomacy, understood broadly as activities of diplomats posted in the “field” away from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) that they serve. In this study, the frontline is approached differently, as the spaces where individual diplomats are confronted with digital stress and act to mitigate it so that they can perform their professional roles. Following the review, I draw on Lipsky’s conceptualization of coping strategies as a particular form of knowledge work in the digital age to advance a framework for thinking about how and why diplomats cope with digitalization. I then move to explain the methodological strategy developed for mapping the experiences of digitalization among diplomats from EU member states between 2016 and 2024. The framework is then illustrated and discussed through an analysis of collective experiences and anecdotal reflections shared by the diplomats. The article concludes by discussing how coping strategies can reveal a better understanding of the ways in which digitalization challenges the norms and practices that underpin diplomacy, while also highlighting the risks associated with digital transformation.

Digital technology, adaptation, and frontline diplomacy

The recent surge in digital diplomacy studies has established that diplomats are adapting to digitalization through both organizational-driven change (Manor and Crilley, 2019; Manor and Pamment, 2019), sociotechnical entanglement (Hirblinger et al., 2023), and through spontaneous and tacit appropriations of digital technology developed in the “field” (Adler-Nissen and Drieschova, 2019). The relative lack of research on the patterns of autonomy and reflexivity these processes produce in the field aligns these accounts of top-down, incremental, and bottom-up driven change. As a result, diplomats are foremost envisioned to respond to digitalization through compliance, adjustment, adaptation or internalization (Cornut et al., 2022; Vadrot and Ruiz Rodríguez, 2022) with only marginal attention to contestation and resistance (Adler-Nissen and Eggeling, 2022; Hedling, 2023).

At the surface level, digitalization has indeed transformed the field. Since the early 2010s, Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFA) worldwide have increasingly invested in more digital infrastructure and established a presence on social media platforms (Adesina, 2017; Manor and Pamment, 2019; Ross, 2011). Much attention has been given to how digital technologies are institutionalized in diplomacy (Bjola and Holmes, 2015; Manor, 2019). This digitalization process and growing awareness of the permeance of digital media in modern societies have also produced changes in how diplomacy is conducted. Through their speed and reach, social media have become instrumental tools in crisis management. In carrying out the duty of care, diplomats at embassies and consulates often rely on social media to inform and instruct citizens abroad (Duncombe, 2018). By the 2010s, the US State Department had in fact been so successful in redirecting attention to its social media channels that they were considered the primary communication channel for reaching citizens in times of crisis (Ross, 2011). In conducting conflict analysis and monitoring, diplomats increasingly depend on the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) (Hirblinger, 2022). In navigating the coordination between permanent representatives posted to international organizations, diplomats use instant messaging apps to communicate outside formal negotiations (Cornut et al., 2022). In projecting the state’s image to the foreign public, public diplomacy officers must keep up with trends on social media platforms including the swift abandonment of platforms that become politically contested such as the recent case of X.

In diplomacy, just like any other bureaucratic activity, digital transformations are foremost noticeable in the practical changes in daily work habits. For diplomats, this might mean the introduction of a new system for diplomatic cables or other information, using online data for conflict analysis, expectations to communicate to local audiences through social media, or using mobile communication apps to coordinate positions before negotiations (Cornut, 2022; Hedling, 2024; Hirblinger, 2022). These activities involve developing new skills and competencies to keep up with the changing nature of diplomacy in the digital age. It may include learning the technicalities of using software, apps, or AI or analyzing and interpreting large amounts of data. It may also include learning the social codes and engaging more with emotional cues on social media platforms (Duncombe, 2019; Hedling, 2023). As diplomats face requirements for new skills and forms of knowledge, the learning curve involves tension with other aspects of the job. For instance, when mediators adapt to virtual communication, mistakes can be made regarding breaches in cyber security or disruptions of the formal structure of negotiations. As diplomats have learned to deal with new areas of geopolitical confrontation, such as digital disinformation, new strategies for containment have involved experimentation (Bjola and Pamment, 2016). Experimentation involves risks of mistakes. While such mistakes are part of the learning curve of digital adaptations, they can be costly in sensitive diplomatic contexts. Moreover, recognizing technological skills as essential or even necessary in everyday diplomatic practice also challenges power dimensions in the professional field. An ambassador asking the intern to instruct them may cause both to experience unease (cf. Adler-Nissen and Eggeling, 2022: 16). Thus, there are tensions in how digital interfaces demand a new set of skills and competence from diplomats.

Despite the contestation, tensions, and risk experienced in the digitalization of diplomacy, scholarship in the field appears constrained by assumptions of digitalization as an autonomous force and its societal consequences as inevitable (Wyatt, 2008). This “forced adaptation” narrative gained ground during the COVID-19 pandemic when diplomats worldwide had to learn how to negotiate through virtual platforms (Danielson and Hedling, 2022; Maurer and Wright, 2020). Pandemic adaptations left little room for resistance but certainly affected diplomatic practice by disrupting the order of things. In their survey of diplomats’ experiences of virtual negotiations, Bjola and Coplen (2022), for instance, found that mediators were “empowered by the ability to “mute participants” or “interrupt the meeting” in order to move the negotiating agenda forward” (p. 86). Other studies of the lived experiences of the pandemic in the field have found similar changes noticeable in areas such as gender roles (Bramsen and Hagemann, 2021), expertise (Bremberg and Hedling, 2024) and processes of establishing and maintaining trust (Eggeling and Versloot, 2023). Moreover, not surprisingly, a general sense of “screen fatigue” and technology overload was experienced in diplomacy, which indicates signs of resistance (Bjola and Manor, 2022) and contestation (Adler-Nissen and Eggeling, 2022). These stories from the field warrant attention to how digitalization produces not only adaptation but also changes in the autonomy of diplomats within their bureaucratic contexts.

Coping with digital transformation

In this study, I approach diplomacy as a bureaucratic activity to advance a framework centered on autonomy and discretion in the coping strategies that emerge in response to digitalization in diplomacy. Diplomacy as a bureaucratic activity bears similarities with other areas of civil service. Diplomats posted in the field have direct contact with members of the public, both with citizens and the public of the hosting states. Just like teachers, police officers, social workers, and border guards, diplomats act as liaisons between government policymakers and citizens as they implement foreign policy decisions made by both appointed and elected officials (Barnett and Finnemore, 2012; cf. Cohen, 2021). Despite this status as implementers, diplomats are rarely included in the categories of street-level bureaucrats for reasons best explained by the scholarly division between domestic and international politics (Fleischer and Reiners, 2021; Goldmann, 1989). There are exceptions; the bureaucratic character of diplomacy as a site of embodied state action has, for instance, been treated in studies that map the bureaucratic activities of diplomats as patterns of inertia (Neumann, 2007), technocratic cooperation (Damro, 2006), social interaction (Hedling, 2024), emotional labor (Nair, 2020) and transnational knowledge production (Kuus, 2015, 2021) and as routines of state performance and claims of recognition (Wille, 2023).

To connect this discussion to how digitalization has produced new coping strategies in diplomacy, I draw on Michael Lipsky’s (2010 [1980]) renowned studies of the role of “frontline bureaucrats” in the United States government and the adaptations of his conceptualization of coping mechanisms in the digital age (Breit et al., 2021; De Boer and Raaphorst, 2023; Pors, 2015; Vedung, 2015). In Lipsky’s definition, frontline bureaucrats are the public servants who interact directly with citizens, and they play a critical role in shaping how government policies and programs are implemented and experienced. Lipsky (2010 [1980]: 221) argues that frontline bureaucrats have a great deal of autonomy and discretion in how they go about their work, which can significantly impact the quality and effectiveness of government action. He also highlights the various factors that influence the behavior of frontline bureaucrats, including organizational culture, professional values, and the tensions in terms of constraints, lack of resources and incentives they face (Lipsky, 2010 [1980]: 172). These tensions may also come in the form of stakeholders that can influence the behavior of frontline bureaucrats (through advocacy or informal pressure) (Lipsky, 2010 [1980]: 72, 203). Lipsky’s mapping of the daily work of street-level bureaucrats has been influential in exploring how government policies and programs can be designed to support frontline bureaucrats’ work better and promote more effective and responsive government-citizen interactions (Moore, 1987). An essential aspect of such mappings is the identification of tensions and how they are circumvented through coping.

“Coping” refers to the strategies and behaviors individuals and organizations engage in to manage and adapt to stress, challenges, and other demands. In psychology and coping theory, coping is either seen as a style associated with a particular way of dealing with something or as a process of efforts to manage stress that may change over time (Zeidner and Endler, 1995). Coping can involve various activities, such as seeking support from others, avoiding situations, engaging in problem-solving, or adopting routines to simplify tasks to manage and reduce stress. In Lipsky’s (2010 [1980]: 73) conceptualization, street-level bureaucrats adopt coping strategies to deal with the tensions between what is demanded of them and what they can do with their available resources (discretion). According to Lipsky, street-level bureaucrats resort to coping because they experience a gap between the many demands for their services and their limited resources. These mechanisms tend to bias the implementation process in a way that hampers achieving policy goals. Hence, more emphasis is put on the enactment of tasks than on assessing the impact of those tasks on the objective behind the tasks. Lipsky (2010 [1980]: 212) recognizes that frontline bureaucrats often have leeway through discretion in performing their duties. Importantly, street-level bureaucrats possess this discretion precisely because the nature of their profession “calls for human judgment that cannot be programmed and which machines cannot substitute” (Lipsky, 2010 [1980]: 161). This nonreproducible and inherently human source of discretion allows them to adapt policies to the specific needs of the individuals they serve or to respond to unique and unforeseen situations. However, the autonomy derived from discretion is not absolute and is always constrained by organizational rules, resource limitations and by managers’ expectations. Moreover, the complexity of the role of coping strategies in frontline bureaucracy also stem from the fact that street-level practitioners tend to feel guilty about their coping strategies (Nielsen, 2006). Lipsky’s notion of reflexivity refers to the self-awareness and critical reflection that frontline bureaucrats engage in as they navigate their roles. In these roles, they must constantly assess the impact of their decisions and actions on the individuals they serve and how they relate to broader social and political contexts (Pors and Schou, 2021). Finally, resistance refers to when frontline bureaucrats push back against policies or directives that they perceive as unjust, ineffective or not in the best interests of those they serve. This resistance can take different forms, such as subtle non-compliance, creative interpretation of policies or vocal advocacy for policy change. Lipsky (2010 [1980]: 186) acknowledges that resistance is often a response to the tensions and constraints and can serve as a mechanism for challenging institutional norms.

The digital transformations of our time and their pervasiveness in public administration, most notably connected to the introduction of “e-government” (with a range of practical implications such as the reliance on implementation of computerized technologies (ICTs), automation, and AI), have inspired a new generation of studies to revisit Lipsky’s concepts of coping and discretion (Breit et al., 2021 etc. Buffat, 2015; Pors, 2015). These studies advance knowledge about the role of frontline bureaucracies by explaining the impact of street-level bureaucrats in digital everyday life. These findings are instructive because they have identified how new coping strategies emerge among frontline workers as they seek to deal not only with the general pressure and dilemmas of frontline service work (Lipsky, 2010 [1980]) but also with tensions amplified and created through encounters with digital technology. Understanding the changing conditions for diplomats’ knowledge work, therefore, warrants attention to coping at the digital frontlines in diplomacy.

Mapping coping at the digital frontline of diplomacy

This study is based on fieldwork and interviews among 13 European Union member states’ diplomats conducted over almost 8 years (December 2016 to June 2024). This time extends both before, during and after the COVID 19 pandemic which marked a significant acceleration of digitalization in diplomacy due to the restrictions of physical meetings (Bjola and Manor, 2022; Maurer and Wright, 2020). In total 102 interviews were conducted with diplomats that had been posted in Brussels at some point during the period although not all interviews were conducted in Brussels. Approximately one third of the diplomats were employed or posted in the EU institutions at the time of the interview and two thirds represented their member states. Roughly 60% of the interviewees were men and 40% were women. Most of them were mid-career or senior diplomats with at least 15 years of experience. The initial recruitment of participants was guided by their prior experience with digitalization processes of some kind, ensuring that the sample included individuals directly involved in or impacted by such transitions. Subsequent participants were identified using the snowball sampling method, a widely recognized technique for expanding sample size through participant networks. This approach facilitated the inclusion of a diverse range of perspectives, while maintaining relevance to the study’s focus on digitalization that became a focal point during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The member states included in the study were digitally advanced with foreign ministries and diplomatic services overtly committed to some form of “digital diplomacy.” They were also at the forefront of the digital economy and many of them were represented in the so-called D9 + Group of digitally ambitious countries. ¹ In addition, most diplomats posted in Brussels were at some point working in the EU Council or in the European External Action Service (EEAS). When I refer to “digital frontlines” in this article, I do not mean frontline diplomacy in the traditional sense of diplomats stationed far from their home capitals, though many of them would also fit this description. Instead, the diplomats in my study were frontline bureaucrats tasked with “digital knowledge work” while operating at a relative distance from the strategic decisions and commitments partly driving digitalization in diplomacy. In terms of the validity of digitalization as the source of transformation, the analysis that I offer also demonstrates intersections with broader processes of bureaucratization, rationalization and management- and audit culture that have spread to foreign ministries and to the EU governance system (Ban, 2013; Georgakakis, 2017; Kuus, 2016). This study however covers a period when major stints of bureaucratization had already occurred and captures how some of the more general coping mechanisms such as avoidance, directly relates to digitalization especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bureaucratic analysis presented in this article is not tied to any specific organization or state. While this might seem counterintuitive given the emphasis on the bureaucratic context, diplomacy, in some contrast to several other areas of civil service, is characterized by the fluid movement of individuals across organizations, stations, and secondments (Neumann, 2005) and by the role of foreign ministries in preserving foreign policy continuity (Neumann, 2007). This dynamic is particularly evident in the EU context, where diplomats working in the EEAS may simultaneously represent both their home member state and the EU or take leave from one to serve the other. Some diplomats also bring recent experience from other international organizations, where they have been socialized into digital routines influenced by practices from different member states. As a result, individual diplomats manage bureaucratic constraints that are both context-specific and broadly applicable to the state of digitalization in the organizations they serve. For these reasons, this study does not offer a comparison between the member-states and/or the EU. Rather they are treated as common field.

The interviews were semi-structured, each lasting between 45 and 90 minutes; 61 were conducted face-to-face and 41 through virtual communication. I conducted 46 interviews before the pandemic restrictions were introduced in March 2020 and 56 after, up until June 2024. While this study does not aim to isolate the effects of the pandemic, it is worth noting that the digitalization processes under examination were already well underway before the pandemic. However, the pandemic accelerated the pace of adaptation and heightened the extent to which interviewees reflected on how digital technology was driving change in diplomacy. Moreover, in the aftermath of the pandemic, digitalization assumed a much more prominent geopolitical role. This shift was partly due to the pandemic’s spotlight on the importance of digital tools and platforms in infrastructure and service delivery, as well as the growing recognition of the need for innovation and digital skills to address future challenges. In addition to interviews, I conducted workplace visits in Brussels during 2016, 2018, 2022, and 2024 as well as observations during panels, training sessions and virtual events during the entirety of the period. The research corpus of interview transcripts and field notes was also complemented by documents such as internal handbooks, strategies and guidelines. The collection of accounts and observations of digitalization in diplomacy over 8 years allowed me identify patterns over time.

In terms of analytical strategy, I have used the research corpus to triangulate results and generalizable conclusions. This means that I do not treat the interview data at face value but rather as contextual accounts and observations. For instance, the diplomats that I interviewed for the first time after 2022 had a very different recollection of how they had first experienced digitalization prior to the pandemic than the diplomats that I interviewed in 2016. Clearly, their perception of the urgency or risks of digitalization were influenced by the experience of a global crisis. All the interviews serve as the primary material for the analysis and was coded to identify patterns of coping strategies. I quote anecdotal excerpts from a small number of interviews (Diplomats A to E) to exemplify reflections around these coping strategies, but they serve to illustrate pervasive patterns in the research corpus.

Coping with digital diplomacy

In adapting Lipsky’s account of coping to the diplomatic context, I propose that coping at the digital frontlines of diplomacy refer to the strategies that diplomats employ when interacting with their stakeholders (authorities, peers, the public, and other actors) to navigate, manage, reduce, or avoid the demands and tensions they face on an everyday basis because of digital transformation. Hence, coping is considered in terms of knowledge work rather than a psychological process or an emotional behavior. ² This perspective broadly aligns with Bourdieusian accounts of agency within IPT through the relationship between dispositions and conditions in habitus but places greater emphasis on the bureaucratic context and the sources of agency that emerge from individual and collective adaptations to organizational change. Bourdieu’s (1990: 62) concept of the “hysteresis effect” for instance, highlights the tensions that arise when a field undergoes a significant crisis or faces external chock, causing its established ways of doing things to become misaligned with the new or evolving context. According to Bourdieu, the alignment between practice and institution depends on individuals’ ability to “activate” the historically embedded norms and expectations of a social institution (which they carry through habitus) within the context of a specific (and new) situation. In this perspective, the agency of coping is thus expressed through realignment in the internalization of field changes by individuals which only then lead to practical responses. Conversely, from a bureaucratic perspective, such as that advanced by Lipsky, it is the organization itself that internalizes structural and contextual shifts, while individuals within the system can exercise autonomy and discretion in responding to these changes. This autonomy allows actors to navigate and mitigate the impacts of change, highlighting a key distinction between the field-level adaptation in Bourdieu’s framework and the organizational-level dynamics (adaptation and resistance) emphasized in Lipsky’s analysis. While both digitalization and coping strategies represent responses to field-level change (as discussed in the methodological reflection), bureaucratic agency stem from these dynamics of coping within the organizations.

According to Lipsky (2010 [1980]: 45), street-level bureaucrats use two central coping strategies: limiting client demand and creaming. The first coping strategy is a form of avoidance, trying to deal with tensions by avoiding their manifestations altogether. Importantly, avoidance and resistance are distinct mechanisms here. The level of pervasiveness of digital society makes complete avoidance an impossibility in most professional environments, which is undoubtedly true in diplomacy (Bjola and Manor, 2022). Some diplomats avoid digital tools to the extent they can, but complete avoidance is impossible. As Adler-Nissen and Eggeling (2022: 21) note, the presence of digital technologies is felt in diplomatic practices even when they are actively avoided. Efforts to cope with tensions by avoidance are a question of the degree to which they can be avoided. For instance, a diplomat may exercise some autonomy by choosing not to use social media (Author’s interviews 12, 18. 34), voicing a preference for face-to-face meetings (Author’s interviews 62, 69, 84. 95), or opting for sharing paper versions of analyses with peers to the extent that they are available (Author’s interview 82). Other ways to cope by limiting the time spent with digital interfaces can be by voicing criticism of or resisting digitalization processes, such as reluctance to accept technology expertise as a diplomatic skill (Author’s interview 6, 8, 12, 13, 15, 18, 26, 54). The second class of coping strategies, which I will devote more attention to here, refers to exercising autonomy in selecting activities more likely to produce a desired outcome or discretion in interpreting tasks and priorities to preserve resources (Lipsky, 2010 [1980]: 117, 125). With the dominant focus on social services in public administration, the selection of activities is often read as screening client cases (Breit et al., 2021; Vedung, 2015). While the frontline work that diplomats perform is somewhat different in character and not standardized in terms of caseloads, the level of autonomy and the patterns of rationalizing behavior to navigate, manage, and reduce demands and tension still provide a useful prism to increase our understanding of the digital transformations in diplomacy.

The expansion of digital diplomacy from a set of outreach practices within public diplomacy to an increasing range of encounters with digital work culture, infrastructural transformation, and a digital economy has produced “a maze of challenges for diplomats” (Author’s interview 56). There are several reasons why diplomacy, unlike other domains of civil service, has been subjected to cascading digitalization. Most importantly, technological advancement beyond facilitating global communication, was perceived as a marginal influence on diplomacy (Author’s interviews 2, 6, 8, 12 45), as the long-standing practice beyond the reach of political trends and whims. For instance, e-government initiatives launched in the 1990s only included foreign ministries to a certain extent since the promise of transparency and efficiency was less appealing to their relatively limited demands for citizen accountability (Potter, 2002). All this changed rapidly in the 2000s with the revelations of the Wikileaks dissemination of more than 250,000 US State Department cables in 2010 and the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, believed to be a “social media revolution” (Seib, 2012, 2016). These disruptive events had multiple effects on diplomacy. On one hand, they demonstrated both the opportunities and the risks of digital communication. However, on the other, they proved that digitalization and the demands of more transparency that came with social media anticipation were no longer an option (Author’s interview 21, 37, 14, 49). They also illustrated the power of the public in foreign policy, how the networked public sphere was enabling new connections between transnational groups, and how communicating and explaining matters of state affairs and international security was necessary in a more crowded information environment (Author’s interview 24). In this spirit, the US State Department launched its 21st Century Statecraft initiative in 2010 with the explicit goal of adapting and transforming diplomacy in the era of rapid change at the intersection of technology and foreign policy (Manor, 2019; Ross, 2011).

A decade later, this intersection is both more advanced and more complex. Initial optimism over connectivity has been replaced by a more pessimistic view of the role of social media in driving political polarization and hybrid warfare (Bjola and Pamment, 2019; Hedling and Ördén, 2025). This has led to a more prominent and expansive role of communication within diplomatic organizations, reflected in bigger budgets, more targeted sub-divisions, and a diversification of the portfolio of communication channels (Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2024). At the organizational level, there is also more experience with digitalization in a more general sense (Author’s interviews 56-102), and there are lessons learned about how it both enables and impedes diplomatic tasks. In the following, I discuss three broad patterns of coping strategies centered around routinization, prioritizing and risk-taking. The analysis uncovered other patterns but these three effectively demonstrates the impact on bureaucratic agency and the state of diplomacy.

Routinization

Previous research on digital diplomacy has demonstrated how routine digital technology use reflects and reproduces diplomatic dispositions and tacit knowledge (Adler-Nissen and Eggeling, 2022; Cornut, 2022). From this perspective, routinization refers to automation as a tacit habit and mostly unreflected pattern of practice. Interestingly, Lipsky’s (2010 [1980]: 86) theorization of discretion suggests that routinization can in fact be the very source of autonomy to exercise control over the work environment. Performing routine tasks can positively affect incremental creativity and innovation (Ohly et al., 2006). Routinization effectively conserves resources when carrying out tasks, freeing up cognitive capacity that can then be used for creative problem-solving (Chae and Choi, 2019). In this understanding, routinization is not an unreflected habit but a coping strategy to gain control under constraining bureaucratic conditions that add up to patterns of agency behavior (Lipsky, 2010 [1980]: 86).

The field did indeed signal that the state of digital transformation had produced new patterns of routinization as coping strategies, which in part served to mitigate the effects of time constraints and the mental load of the digital workflows but also produced new silos for control and creativity. Diplomats, like most knowledge workers today, deal with digital overload and have both shared and individual strategies for coping with this. The recognized need to routinize certain tasks significantly increased during and after the pandemic. Nearly all interviewed diplomats emphasized the importance of these strategies, compared to the pre-pandemic period, when only about half mentioned this need. In the below conversation, a senior male diplomat discussed how frustration with the skills gap (not being proficient in digital technologies) also was a question of spending time and energy on the wrong things, which led to strategies to “protect” energy and areas of interest:

Diplomat A: Sometimes, I feel I am no longer suited for this profession. I still think diplomacy has a core, but there are many distractions. You know, instead of spending time on what I am truly good at and what is my vocation, I must spend so much time on technologies and artificial ways of connecting with people.

Me: How do you deal with that?

Diplomat A: You find ways to invest your energy in the things that really matter. Sometimes it’s not worth trying to fight the system. . .And I mean with the pandemic we had no choice, and it did become a way to keep talking so we needed to learn how to use those tools for our purposes and in the grand scheme of things it worked relatively well. . .. But you find ways to do it in ways that will limit the toll it has on you, whether that is strategies to limit the time you spend on email and other forms of digital communication or finding routines to do the bare minimum on social media, checking in or running analytics that you have to report or something. You find ways to protect your energy and what you care about.

Me: So, you mean you gain more control of your time by automating some of those draining digital tasks?

Diplomat A: More than your time! You get control of your agenda. The pandemic really helped here by speeding up the process of learning what we needed to learn so that we could do what we must do and get back to focusing on the urgent matters in the world and collaborating with our international peers to deal with them. But it also led to all these new expectations of things to do—so many more meetings. And sometimes, being able to do everything without investing too much into it gives you more opportunities to deal with things the way that you want to deal with them.

The diplomat here was conflating digitalization with the broader demands of audit culture in diplomacy that had created “distractions,” stressing the experience of change in what counts as knowledge and skill in diplomacy (Kuus, 2016). This conversation however went further in the specification of distraction and noise to echo a standard narrative among diplomats, especially after 2020 and the experiences of pandemic adaptations, about strategies developed to “shield themselves” (Author’s interview 62) from the digital demand. The pandemic produced a general sense of digital fatigue, but among the diplomats, there was an urgent sense of purposeful protection of the professional role balanced with emotions of both shortcomings in technical skill and digital etiquette and a lost focus on the “real” (Author’s interviews 56, 64, 78, 92, 93). In this sense, autonomy involved resisting deskilling and shifting away from human interactions. For many, virtual meetings that had been technically possible for some times had been resisted and rejected in diplomacy for good reasons: “it goes against the role of interpersonal connection” (Author’s interview 57). In this sense, the pandemic was experienced as forced adaptation through modernization of the unregulated tasks. In contrast to other aspects of audit culture, many of the demands of digitalization were beyond management control. The idea of digitalization as modernization and something to be skeptical about was generally shared in the field except for a younger generation of tech-enthusiast diplomats and senior diplomats that had specialized in IT in some form. To them, it was instead about catching up and a fear of not being relevant in a rapidly changing world (Author’s interviews 12, 22, 31, 44, 55, 61–63). There were also perceptions of gender imparities. Among the diplomats interviewed, questions of gender were sometimes invoked as relevant in the perception of “others’ coping strategies” not available to everyone (Author’s interviews 59, 62, 69). ³ In the below conversation, a female senior diplomat reflected on differences in how routinization was pursued:

Diplomat B: I think it is easier for men to specialize and opt out of things. It is more acceptable for them to say they will not bother learning to deal with certain things and they are systematic about it. Eventually no one expects them to. I am not talking about all men, obviously, or all women.

Me: Can you give an example of how you have encountered that in the context of digitalization?

Diplomat B: Well, during the pandemic, for instance, my experience was that women were expected to learn the etiquette, you know, in terms of muting their microphones and keeping to their speaking time much faster. Our mistakes were frowned upon, but no one expected the older men to even bother with the new instructions. There was almost a sense of achievement for them in not adapting.

Me: How do you deal with these expectations? Are you expected to learn how to do things faster across areas of digitalization?

Diplomat B: It is about streamlining your work. I am attentive, and I designate a limited time slot to prepare when I have to do things in new ways. I will invest in it and try to keep up, but it has to be reasonable. And frankly, it is not my job to be a tech expert.

Other women voiced similar perceptions of not being able to routinely dismiss digital technology in the same way that some of their male colleagues would (Author’s interviews 59, 62, 72). To them, digitalization was another process they had to manage to be seen as competent, whereas (some) men could be excused. In line with the statement on digital etiquette, women also spoke about how the cost of making mistakes and losing face in situations involving technology was more costly for them than their male peers (Author’s interviews 29, 33, 45, 50). To cope with this, they developed alternative strategies (since the coping through avoidance was not available to them) centered on routinization. Rather than productive of new sources of gender disparities, this pattern suggests that digitalization intersects with gendered organizational processes (Giritli Nygren, 2012) and gendered stratification in diplomacy specifically (Standfield, 2020; Towns, 2024). Ultimately, diplomats seek autonomy from and through digitalization by finding ways to automate digital work for the same reasons, but their coping strategies may differ according to social positionalities and skill sets.

Prioritizing

Among the most tangible effects of digitalization on diplomacy as an institution is the expansion of means of communication and of stakeholders whose influence is derived from their communicative reach and control. The increased emphasis and investment in digital public diplomacy have diversified communication practices toward more targeted and focused initiatives. Rather than a “one solution fits all” approach to engagement with the public and new influential actors, characterized by the early adoption of digital diplomacy, organizations and their diplomats are crafting their digital persona and using digital tools to serve various goals (Manor, 2019). In this sense, “digital diplomacy” remains an abstraction until it is carried out. Diplomats speak of “prioritizing” as selecting when and how to use digital means and of the “signaling value of digital diplomacy as being in flux” (Author’s interview 87). Prioritizing, in this sense, is a coping strategy used to either enhance or downplay “the digital” form or value of activities and to be strategic about “client differentiation” (Lipsky, 2010 [1980]: 151), for instance by being able to both acknowledge and resist the recognition of digital platforms as influential in world politics. Making these moves requires agency and reflexivity, attuning to how discourse changes and the social situation one is navigating at a particular moment.

In the below statements, two diplomats speak of how they prioritize in distinct situations. In the first quote, a diplomat is speaking about when to use social media to establish a particular position proactively (in this case, on an UN-issued statement). Situations that called for a more careful approach to social media were connected to contested personalities (that would always attract much contention regardless of the context) (Author’s interviews 12, 16, 20, 25, 42, 52, 53, 69) and efforts to communicate with local audiences where global social media visibility was not seen as advantageous (Author’s interviews 55, 61, 69, 99). In the second quote, a diplomat posted to a multilateral hub talks about how some digital tools are helpful in diplomatic practice, whereas others produce “noise” that desires selective engagement.

Diplomat C: Sometimes social media may be the best way to establish a position on something, especially when you are trying to connect with, you know, advocacy that is already out there, so then it is part of the toolkit that you use. In other situations, we would rather avoid it altogether because it is not the right moment or audience for that. There has been a learning process in the organization; you know, from past mistakes. We now know that social media is not about maximal outreach, and I would rather be careful and restrictive. But that is me and personal experiences matter significantly to what you will argue for in the organization.

Diplomat D: I don’t care much for the public display of diplomatic engagement, but digital channels are great for building networks and interpersonal communication. WhatsApp has replaced many phone conversations, and the tone of it is very informal, even when conversing with my colleagues. That is an invaluable tool, whereas others produce more “noise.”

Even though these situations are radically different, signs of prioritizing and to some extent, differentiation were a reoccurring coping strategy for dealing with the inherent tension of stakeholder complexity, informality, shifting hierarchies in diplomacy, and how reflexivity rather than strict rationality or habit appeared to be influencing the course of action for the individual diplomat. Many diplomats also spoke to lengths about their “learning curve” (Author’s interviews 43, 49, 56, 57, 62, 82) and how they gradually became more attuned to the choices they needed to make “in navigating how digital technology has become more political” (Author’s interview 98). Reflexivity here is not in opposition with the socialized dispositions shaped by a diplomatic habitus; clearly, these reflections of prioritizing come from “somewhere,” but it still signals the role of autonomy in digital diplomacy. Having to deal with these tensions and the scale of challenges stemming from digitalization leads to a gradual dependence on the ability to prioritize within rather than adapting to the “rules of the emerging digital playbook”(Author’s interview 17). Diplomat D reflected on how digital tools such as WhatsApp enable informality and multilateral coordination through the ease of setting up a “group chat” for the people in “the circle of trust.” When asked if it was evident for him who to include in the group chat, he went on to reflect on how differentiation between diplomatic colleagues (outside the own organization) were much easier in a group context using digital tools:

“Things happen, and people who you used to confide in are no longer in that circle of trust. On WhatsApp, it is so easy to remove someone, and I think it is good that it sends a signal when you notice that you have been removed; you know that the trust is lost.”

On the follow-up question about whether someone excluded from the group could make it back in, diplomat D responded, “Yes, but the way back in is obviously not through digital channels . . .” “Some things cannot be achieved virtually.” Seemingly, WhatsApp was here also an example of prioritizing which digital tools to engage with and when, and a question of “offline” sensibilities of informality (Hedling, 2024). The digital channels had entered into the spectrum of informal interaction. A group chat was seen as even more informal than a chat in the coffee room. Still, it was through one form of social interaction that you get to the other. Many other diplomats reflected on similar distinctions between social codes online and offline and how they related to each other but importantly also how those codes could quickly shift. The diplomats interviewed in 2017-2019 often mentioned how not engaging with someone’s social media post could be a clear signal (Author’s interviews 1–33) whereas diplomats interviewed later often confirmed that “no one cares about that anymore” (Author’s interview 78). This aspect of prioritizing according to the currency of social codes is also remarkable considering the “paper trail” left by “trends” in digital communication confronting diplomatic norms of interpersonal engagement (Naylor, 2020). The widespread use of WhatsApp is largely due to its end-to-end encryption; however, it still demands a high level of trust and reflexivity within the group. Engaging in group chats comes with the awareness that the platform may one day become” out of fashion and forgotten” (Author’s interview 101), potentially leaving behind a neglected but revealing digital footprint.

Risk-taking

The speed at which technological advancements produce changes in professional practices leads to opportunities and risks (White, 2024). For instance, the use of generative AI signifies an underexplored area of advancement and substantial risk that is producing concern in many professions. A third pattern of coping strategies revolved around resistance to managing risks associated with digitalization. This pattern emerged later than the other two; it was foremost after 2021 that diplomats repeated these narratives of how their organizations was increasingly involved in risk-taking and how they, as individuals and a representatives of diplomacy as an institution, needed to find ways to resist. ⁴ These risks came in many forms; for some, it was the risk of losing track of the job’s core purpose (Author’s interviews 47, 52, 60, 62, 67, 73, 77, 80, 98, 101) or needing to focus more on the most critical and high-stakes responsibilities (Author’s interviews 71, 78, 81, 96). For others, it was more tangible risks, the risks of an unregulated tech industry (Author’s interview 102), or of managing questions of industrial policy (Author’s interview 91) or cyber espionage (Author’s interview 93) or dealing with AI (Author’s interview 39, 44, 46, 59), all very different areas intersecting with diplomacy, but all associated with a general feeling of “losing grounds to greater forces” (Author’s interview 102). In the statement below, a senior diplomat reflected on the EU digital diplomacy agenda adopted in 2022 (Council of the European Union, 2022), which steered away from social media use or digital work tools toward a reinterpretation on the EU’s positioning in the digital global economy and its role in the preservation of liberal democracy:

Diplomat E: It is about so much more than social media now; not being active on social media is one thing, I can choose not to do that, but I still have to acknowledge the influence of these platforms, the companies behind them, and their role in the digital economy and in our future. So yes, what we mean by digital diplomacy is so much more now that it has expanded from marginal things to being at the center of the agenda. You see that now, in the EU, there are mentions of digital diplomacy at almost all FAC meetings, and they are clearly not talking about public diplomacy. And the Commission is much more involved now, digital is at the forefront, it is everywhere.

Me: And what does this expansion mean? What kinds of changes is it producing in your work?

Diplomat E: We see all different kinds of changes. In Europe, we are under pressure to assert our position in the digital economy, and collectively, we are still foremost doing this through the regulatory approach by claiming regulatory leadership because that is what we do well. But eventually this will be about being more serious about the investments. But with that comes risks. We don’t know what the most important technology in the future will be, but we can guess. And yes, you notice it daily through a gradual disconnection from the risk-averse focus in diplomacy.

Me: So, there is more risk-taking?

Diplomat E: No, not necessarily more risks are taken, but we have to be much more vocal about our concerns and the risks we see. It is like we are slowly adapting to a more risk-taking approach. Dealing with emerging technologies can sometimes lead us to underestimate our analysis. You know, it comes from a long experience, not just my personal experience with the institution of diplomacy. In this digitalization process, I have seen several mistakes that should not have been made because we knew better. So, you cannot fully buy into this idea of being experimental for profit—that is not our business. We need to resist that.

Diplomat E spoke of the unease of the effects of digitalization in diplomacy and the need to resist change at the discursive level (the adoption of the EU digital diplomacy agenda) in the day-to-day working routines among peers. Although far from everyone was as vocal about these concerns as diplomat E, many did express unease in the face of a rapidly changing attitude toward the digital economy and warned of risks of “too much pragmatism toward Silicon Valley” (Author’s interviews 79, 86, 89, 97). At the same time, after the European Commission introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA) which strengthened the EU’s regulatory power over digital platforms, others were concerned about “the risk of friction with the governments hosting the non-EU tech companies that own the platforms” (Author’s interview 97, 102). Here, the pressure came not only from the organization but from responses to both technological advancements and geopolitical changes (Monsees and Lambach, 2022). These reflections resonate with findings in public administration where bureaucrats perceive a need to resist digitalization as an external and often “political” pressure to preserve their professional roles and institutions (Giritli Nygren, 2012; Pors and Schou, 2021). This form of coping highlights the influence as digitalization as more than a transition of skills to more a gradual renegotiation of norms (from risk-aware to a more risk prone approach). The diplomats spoke of a growing sense of despair in the future of diplomacy that they envisioned would be “more dictated by those in control of digital platforms and technology” (Author’s interview 96). This turn towards the tech sector was also noticeable in the shift in the associations coming from “digitalization” and “digital diplomacy” as these reflections came from the same probing of questions that would previously produce responses about social media or digital tools. To this extent, they also reflected a growing realization of the expanding scope of digitalization, from small changes in their working routines to the involvement in fundamental and geopolitical changes in the international system. To cope with this rapid change and the fact that digital transformation was beyond choice, diplomats were increasingly finding ways to resist or limit the risks within processes of digitalization in the scope of their own discretion and autonomy.

Conclusion

Over the past decade, the rapid advancement of digitalization has prompted diplomats to adapt to a landscape in which the management of international relations is crowded with new digital tools, workflows and stakeholders. This influx of distraction and complexity necessitates autonomy and discretion to manage demand, prioritize tasks and fend off digital overload. In Lipsky’s seminal study of frontline public service workers, autonomy and discretion as sources of bureaucratic agency raise concerns about equity, accountability and fairness in traditional public service delivery. In diplomacy, the stakes of service delivery hinges on the mediation and translation of state interests where how diplomats communicate and negotiate is just as important as what they are trying to achieve. Coping strategies thereby not only influence how individual diplomats navigate and negotiate a changing profession, but also how state interests are perceived and pursued on the global stage.

So, what can be learned from these coping strategies about the state of diplomacy? This article does not advance a normative argument about the effects of autonomy in digital diplomacy on the institution of diplomacy. Certainly, coping strategies in bureaucracies may adversely affect norms of accountability and procedural legitimacy (White, 2024), and digital automation may, in contrast, also gradually reduce the discretion of frontline bureaucrats (De Boer and Raaphorst, 2023). From the perspective of diplomats, coping in this context predominantly preserves professionalism in an otherwise impossible situation. However, the gradual institutionalization of avoidance and the routines for selective engagement may further decentralize diplomacy by increasing the gap between government instructions and the real-world practice of diplomacy. These effects speak to the continuity of diplomatic practice and may disrupt the very efforts to democratize foreign policy and diplomacy that initially drove the turn toward digitalization (Seib, 2012). Moreover, the decentralization of diplomatic practice intersects with other sources of autonomy and the power relations that ultimately govern them. For instance, while outside the scope of this study, there are differences in how diplomats can pursue and perform collective coping strategies. Coping, as discussed in this article, takes place in the context of broader social norms and institutionalized sets of social relations in bureaucracies. Status distinctions along colonial and gendered lines may produce coping patterns that reflect different positionalities in the generation of autonomy. The strategies available to the most powerful may differ from those developed in diplomacy’s margins (McConnell, 2018; Standfield, 2022). To fully grasp these complexities, comparative research is needed to assess the role of digitalization in these processes and the effects thereof.

Alas, rather than offer conclusive recommendations for how to proceed with digitalization in diplomacy, this article speaks of the relevance of bridging digital diplomacy studies with the emerging field of international public administration. The challenges of digitalization in diplomatic knowledge work partly mirror those experiences in domestic public bureaucracies that generally began their digitalization processes earlier. Bringing the international level into focus enables a closer examination of variation in how autonomy is pursued at the micro- and meso levels in these organizations and how efforts of “unmaking” inequalities in international institutions (Fehl and Freistein, 2020) might intersect with and be constrained by macro processes such as digitalization. Finally, the conclusions drawn here speak of digital diplomacy as a practice and a scholarly field coming of age in IR and the need for more expansive scholarship on how these partly new iterations of diplomatic knowledge work signify a broader shift with potentially far-reaching consequences for the international system.