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Ministries of Foreign Affairs: A Crucial Institution Revisited

The scholar who attends international conferences and reads regular publications on diplomatic studies and foreign policy analysis is confronted with one indisputable observation: If plenty of new academic research on contemporary diplomatic practices has emerged, few of those studies paradoxically focus on the comparative role of ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs). Thus, providing academic material to students on MFAs requires using chapters published in general textbooks;1 monographs based on single-country case studies;2 practitioners’ accounts, which can be rather descriptive;3 and, finally, research published more than fifteen years ago.4 The goal of this special issue is to fill this gap in the literature by devoting a complete journal issue to the contemporary role of MFAs in diplomacy. The special issue is built on three components: original research articles, theoretical accounts and practitioners’ accounts. Making a distinction between the three types of contributions is a clear choice to clarify who is speaking from where.