Author: Joachim Dehais, PMP
Book review: A small state's guide to influence in world politics, Tom Long, University of Warwick
Why a book review, why this book you may ask, not one of us works in international relations. Well not only do you, but you work in interdepartmental relations. Office politics can be a taboo subject due to its antisocial compenent; it is hard to observe and those good at it know better than to explain how. In fact, what little advice we get on this is biased towards individual, pro-social practices in specific cultures.
On the contrary, international politics and diplomacy show a wealth of cross-cultural examples in equally many context. In that it makes standardised analysis difficult, but insights and wisdom potentials strong.
So let's dive a little into the topic.
First, this is an academic book, therefore it relies on a long history of studying and on strong structure. This makes it somewhat hard to start but it is surprisingly approachable. It was also recently published and includes modern takes. In particular, there are lengthy explanations on how to approach diplomatic relationships. The more important of which is the shift from a globalised-absolute view of big vs small (difficult to generalise) to a differential view (bigger vs smaller country). This gives us the gift of easily changing context to, for example, a large department vs a small group of people.
Given that perspective, it becomes much easier to put things in perspective, though no system is perfect.
This is where the author gives use a great tool to analyse relationships, namely a typology of disagreements and their likelihood of successful resolution for smaller parties. This typology relies on three parameters: the difference of practice or opinion, how large it looms on the relationship, and how coherent the opinion is for the larger party. You can of course imagine that a large difference, that is at the forefront of the relationship, with a coherent interlocutor, will be hard to change.
The following chapters go into numerous and interesting case studies of the last century, demonstrating typical in each case and whether or how successful they were on their own. With cases in Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe, the coverage is quite high, and thankfully describes cases between regional actors, as well as globally recognised countries.
The following chapter provides further examples in the central role of contemporary intergovernmental bodies, governance, and rules. In particular, the author stresses the value of rule-based orders for smaller parties and their survival. Something that we often see and can leverage within our own organisations.
Finally, we can see how various unions of smaller parties can wrestle discussion agendas in international groups, apply peer pressure, and use their weaker statues to obtain concessions from "noble" larger parties.
What should you take away from it?
First, that politics are highly dynamic, and no single strategy (grinding, hardball, submission) will succeed for you everytime, in fact, you should be eminently attentive to the context, the window of opportunity. Study around you how people leverage (or not) different situations to read them better.
Second, that being clear on your goals helps, as does others being unclear.
Third, you can leverage disinterest for freedom, but otherwise need to garner interest and support in a topic, usually by having more parties speak of it in unison.
