Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) is considered to be one of the pioneer sub-disciplines in theorizing the relevance of individuals in shaping international relations. In this spirit, FPA scholars have emphasized that “true agency” can only be located in individuals, which therefore represent the “grounds of international relations” (Hudson 2005). Oddly enough, this relationship has seldom been systematically exemplified with the group of individuals which is routinely assigned with the duty of conducting foreign relations – diplomats and the institution of diplomacy – characterized by some scholars as the “engine room” of international relations (Cohen 1998).
The aim of this contribution is to offer an account of the “first image” as a creative and potentially transformative factor for the evolution of foreign policy and - at the same time - for (re-)configurations at the systemic level. We do so by applying a symbolic interactionist framework to show how images of “proper” foreign policy actorhood are enacted, negotiated and institutionalized by diplomats in a global environment. One of the main theoretical arguments stresses that this interactive “identity enactment” requires both individual “performers” and “spectators” that equally resort to collectively held images of “proper” actorhood, therefore implying the simultaneity of collective and individual dimensions of action.
