Summit Diplomacy as Theatre of Sovereignty Contestation

Abstract

The recent revival in the interest in summitry in International Relations scholarship conceptualises it as an elite-centred or foreign policy-focused process targeting foreign governments and publics. This article makes a theoretical intervention on the effects of summitry by foregrounding publics as audiences of international politics who can exercise agency. Because summits are primarily elite-staged performances of Westphalian principles of state sovereignty, they generate a political space for audiences to publicly embrace or contest summitry performances and their meanings of sovereignty. They can do so by co-performing with or by counter-performing elitist summitry performances, which can generate narratives with potential to shape and alter domestic societies in the long run.