Ole Jacob Sending is Director of Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Vincent Pouliot is Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montréal. Iver B. Neumann is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an associate of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

• Introduction Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot and Iver B. Neumann; Part I. Making of International Institutions: 1. International law and the politics of diplomacy Ian Hurd; 2. Diplomacy, war, and world politics Tarak Barkawi; 3. The practice of permanent representation to international organizations Vincent Pouliot; Part II. Making International Cooperation: 4. From representation to governing: diplomacy and the constitution of international public power Jennifer Mitzen; 5. Institutionalizing peace and reconciliation diplomacy: third-party reconciliation as systems maintenance Iver B. Neumann; 6. Christian ethics, actors, and diplomacy: mediating universalist pretentions Cecelia Lynch; Part III. Diplomacy as a Contested Terrain: 7. Diplomacy as economic consultancy Leonard Seabrooke; 8. US military diplomacy in practice Captain Miriam Krieger, Lieutenant Commander Shannon L. C. Souma and Daniel H. Nexon; 9. Diplomats and humanitarians in crisis governance Ole Jacob Sending; Conclusion. Relationalism: why diplomats find international relations theory strange Rebecca Adler-Nissen.

'As said of war and generals, diplomacy is too serious a matter to be left to the accredited representatives of the sovereign state. The authors offer new theoretical insights into the symbolic, strategic and institutional importance of traditional diplomacy while acknowledging cell-phone activists, camera-ready celebrities, humanitarian workers and lance corporals in a three-block war as the new faces of diplomacy. This collection has the jolt of an intellectual defibrillator, bringing diplomacy back from a grossly exaggerated death while nurturing emergent forms of global mediation.' James Der Derian, Director of the Centre for International Security Studies and Michael Hintze Professor of International Security, University of Sydney