The new diplomacy

Following the discussions in seminars 5 to 7, as far as I am concerned, the most important aspect of the new diplomacy is multilateral/conference diplomacy. The reason why I say this is because of the way multilateral diplomacy is organised and its openness to a variety of actors in the international system. In fact, it responds to two current trends. The first is that international affairs are more and more interconnected and they continue to concern even more, almost all countries. Hence, faced with these new circumstances, the reflex is to establish a group of those states most interested in dealing with it.
As a result, the first important feature of multilateral diplomacy is that it involves several states on the one hand, unlike the old diplomacy which is conducted bilaterally or between two particular states. A practical example of this would be the United Nations and its general assembly represented by all states.
On the other hand, apart from states, multilateral diplomacy also consists of other entities, that is, a large number of non-state actors such as Nongovernmental organisations which make it more important and useful since it does not only consider states as the main actors in World Politics. This relation between states and non state actors has been labelled 'polylateralism' or 'polylateral diplomacy' and it is considerably being practiced nowadays.
This type of diplomacy is concerned with a wide range of low politics issues such as the economy, terms of trade, environment and so on rather than high politics issues of security for instance. Moreover, it is more open to public scrutiny and control although secrecy is still in use.
To sum up, multilateral diplomacy is in my opinion the most important aspect in new diplomacy because of its wide embracing of different actors with different or common interests sometimes and its openness to the public. In the UN, debates are public even though the content of the real negotiations is kept secret within the members of the Security Council. This pattern is growing more and more as the world gets progressively more and more interconnected.
Therefore, we can conclude that the increase of multilateralism is a feature of our times, which opens up new fields of action for diplomacy.