The notion of diplomatic culture is invariably presented as something which belongs exclusively to the semantic field of international relations, completely strange to the complexities of political life within the contours of specific states. In so doing, diplomatic studies tend to reproduce the fiction of the existence of perfect political community –the state-, as the foundational assumption that gives sense to the whole system of diplomatic recognition, representation and negotiation among states. The study of sub-state diplomacy is particularly revealing in this terrain. International activism of sub-state governments, which is rapidly growing across the world, results frequently controversial neither because their material scope nor their supposedly undesirable legal consequences in terms of international responsibility for the affected states, but to the extent in which it is a significant -albeit somewhat oblique- expression of a more or less radical will of recognition and assertion of political agency and subjectivity, both in the wider international realm and within the hosting state. That trend however is not solely ideational. It is rooted in deep historical transformations in the global political economy, that even international rate agencies are becoming to recognize through their innovative practice of differentiating different sub-national foreign debt qualifications within the same states. Bearing all these in mind, this paper aims to explore the further implications of these processes not only for prevailing notions of diplomatic culture or the practicalities of foreign policy-making, but, more importantly, for our better understanding of the changing foundations of political communities and democratic life at the edge of the inside/outside divide.
