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

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.

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.