Representation

Regulations and the procedures as protocol are relevant for the classical and contemporary diplomacy. In the past and nowadays ambassadors have to be experts of culture. The difference, however, is the change of diplomat from aristocracy to professional.

While the foreign office is the brains of foreign policy, the diplomatic representatives are its eyes, ears, and mouth, its fingertips, and, as it were, its itinerant incarnations the diplomat fulfills three basic functions of his government- symbolic, legal and political (Morgenthau, 1973, 520). Symbolic representation includes symbolic functions of the diplomatic ceremonial, such as state dinners, receptions, and the like. While entertaining, the diplomat does not act for himself as an individual, but as the symbolic representative of his country. In legal representation a diplomat gives legal protection to citizens abroad, while politicalrepresentation. Puts the diplomatic representatives in the two-way traffic between the foreign office and the outside world.

Protocol is commonly described as a set of international courtesy rules. These well-established and time-honored rules have made it easier for nations and people to live and work together. Part of protocol has always been the acknowledgment of the hierarchical standing of all present. Protocol rules are based on the principles of civility." As defined by Dr. P.M. Forni on behalf of the International Association of Protocol Consultants. It goes as far back as there have been contacts between states, with evidence of diplomatic protocol being found in reliefs at Persopolis. The twentieth century has witnessed a growing informality in the practice of diplomacy, though there is always the underlying necessity, in the existing Westphalian system based on the sovereign equality of states, that states must see that they are being treated equally. The trend towards informality in the treatment of individuals as representatives of their state is underpinned by the evolution of formulas, which assure that all states are, and are seen to be, treated as equals.

Protocol concerning permanent diplomatic missions between states is now well established, but the area which is seeing the most innovation is that involving meetings between leaders. Historically, personal meetings between rulers of states were infrequent before the nineteenth century, the logistics of travel making such meetings difficult. Developments in technology and transport have made meetings easier and safer to arrange, and there has been a vertical rise in summitry since 1960. Little changed in the protocol of meetings between leaders until the twentieth century boom in summitry, when protocol has had to evolve in order to facilitate political leaders’ desire to meet. The result has been, for the most part, a further relaxation in it.