This study questions to what extent state agents invest efforts in building interpersonal relations with their counterparts. It is based on data collected during two years of ethnographic fieldwork at the Israeli president’s residence, where we observed credential ceremonies involving ambassadors from twenty-three states and interviewed the president’s advisors. We consider the credential ceremony an extreme case study regulated by highly formalized protocol, including the strictest guidelines existing in the world of diplomacy. We assume that if relation-building between statespersons takes place in the most unexpected spaces of international politics, we can detect it in all sites of diplomacy. Adopting a relational practice approach, we identified two methods of positive signaling for relationship building: preplanned by the organizers “from above,” directed at the individual-as-state-representative, and conveyed by participants “from below,” targeting the individual-as-guest/host. We conclude by discussing the implications of the prevalence of interpersonal relation-building in international politics, the role of diplomatic protocols as a communicative resource that affects the diplomatic environment, and how the concept of affordances provides a fresh look at one of the most fundamental debates in the field of IR: the relationship between agency and structure.

中文翻译：

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通过协议进行沟通：外交国书仪式案例


本研究质疑国家代理人在多大程度上投入精力与同行建立人际关系。它基于在以色列总统官邸进行的两年民族志实地考察中收集的数据，我们在那里观察了来自 23 个国家的大使的国书颁发仪式，并采访了总统的顾问。我们认为授证仪式是一个受高度正式化协议监管的极端案例研究，其中包括外交界现有的最严格的指导方针。我们假设，如果政治家之间的关系建立发生在国际政治中最意想不到的领域，我们可以在所有外交场所发现它。采用关系实践方法，我们确定了两种建立关系的积极信号方法：由组织者“自上而下”预先计划，针对作为国家代表的个人，并由参与者“自下而上”传达，针对个人——作为客人/主人。最后，我们讨论了国际政治中人际关系建设盛行的影响、外交礼节作为影响外交环境的沟通资源的作用，以及可供性概念如何为最基本的辩论之一提供新的视角。在IR领域：代理与结构之间的关系。