Data-Informed Diplomacy: Adapting to the Digital Age in International Relations and Implementation in the OSCE Region

Abstract

Emerging digital technologies have brought comfort, flexibility, and agility to our lives, whereas traditional bureaucracy is on the knife-edge in protecting its status quo. While some states prefer to be governed by slow bureaucracy and law-making processes, others are trying to adapt to this change in which the old and analog is rejected and the digital and fast is accepted. Since there is no time, space, and borders in digital platforms, international relations is also on the knife-edge with three unique challenges. Firstly, global digital technology companies are leading this change rather than states without borders. Secondly, individuals and social media influencers can intervene in diplomacy policy-making process indirectly or directly by reaching across borders in a timeless manner and directing societies on inter-state policies or any other issue. Thirdly, digital technologies that allow for integrating more data into policy making create a more sophisticated execution of international power struggles within a global context, which also brings new fronts in threats such as cyber-attacks. Within these circumstances, an important research area is how state–state, state–citizen, and state–private sector relations are under the influence and what direction they are going. Data, as the numeric and core form of information, described as the “oil of the next century,” also became a strategic piece that is used by AI algorithms for making policy analysis and strategies for the states. To comprehend and explore the subject at hand, this chapter illustrates how data-informed diplomacy is becoming more critical for global politics.