Front Matter -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction: The European Union and the Contemporary Transformation of Diplomacy -- Conceptual Framework: Diplomacy, Alienation and Ideal Types -- The Organisation of the EU as a Diplomatic Actor -- The EU in Bilateral Diplomatic Relations -- The Participation of the EU in International Organisations -- EU Diplomatic Meta-practices: Institutionalisation, Legalisation and Regionalisation -- Social Structures of EU Diplomacy -- Conclusions and Perspectives -- Annex 1: Ideal Type Social Structures of Diplomacy -- Annex 2: Ideal Type Diplomatic Meta-practices -- Annex 3: Ideal Type Diplomatic Practices -- Back Matter -- Index.

In The Ideas and Practices of the European Union’s Structural Antidiplomacy , Steffen Bay Rasmussen offers a comprehensive analysis of EU diplomacy that goes beyond the functioning of the European External Action Service and discusses the sui generis nature of the EU as a diplomatic actor, the forms of bilateral and multilateral representation as well as the actor identity, founding ideas and meta-practices of EU diplomacy. The book employs a novel theoretical approach that distinguishes the social structures of diplomacy from the practices and meta-practices of diplomacy. Comparing EU diplomacy to the two theoretically constructed ideal types of Westphalian diplomacy and utopian antidiplomacy, Steffen Bay Rasmussen concludes that the EU’s international agency constitutes a new form of diplomacy called structural antidiplomacy.