Metis diplomacy: The everyday politics of becoming a sovereign state

Abstract

How do emerging states obtain international recognition and secure membership of international organizations in contemporary world politics? Using the concept of ‘metis’, this article explores the role of everyday prudent and situated discourses, diplomatic performances and entanglements in the enactment of sovereign statehood and the overcoming of external contestation. To this end, it describes Kosovo’s diplomatic approach to becoming a sovereign state by obtaining international recognition and securing membership of international organizations. Drawing on institutional ethnographic research and first-hand observations, the article argues that Kosovo’s success in consolidating its sovereign statehood has been the situational assemblage of multiple discourses, practiced through a broad variety of performative actions and shaped by a complex entanglement with global assemblages of norms, actors, relations and events. Accordingly, this study contributes to the conceptualization of the everyday in diplomatic practice by offering an account of how micro-practices feed into macro-practices in world politics.