A comparative view of foreign diplomacy in Australia

Why develop this project?

As an academic within the field of International Relations, I have always had a great interest in diplomacy. After discovering the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Protocol Portal, I was disappointed to notice the absence of any comparative tool within it.

Fueled by curiosity — and the slightly less noble desire to create a project that would look good in the curriculum of a then unemployed, recently post‑graduate academic — I took it upon myself to develop an index where fellow academics could easily access and compare data on diplomatic missions in Australia.

This project began in late 2022, and first went online in October 2023.

Data source

All of the data presented is sourced directly from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Protocol Portal. This portal provides details about foreign diplomats and consular staff accredited in Australia.

For official and accurate data on diplomatic missions, always refer to the Protocol Portal.

Open the Protocol Portal

Methodology

Analytical input into the presented data is minimum. All of the source data was obtaining through the aforementioned portal and stored in a more malleable format to enable its presentation in different ways through this interactive JavaScript site.

Presented figures that include some degree of data processing are:

• Average staff: Obtained by summing the reported staff number values across all missions (both embassies and consular networks) and dividing by the number of missions.
• Gender data: Calculated by quantifying the number of male and female self-declared pronouns. The analysed data accounts for approximately 92% of all diplomatic and consular staff. The remaining 8% account for gender-neutral pronouns (Dr, Colonel etc).
• Head of mission rank: Highlighted to facilitate the analysis related to the diplomatic rank of heads of missions and the periodicity of tenures. Each change of a Head of Mission is indicated in the timeline, including for periods where missions are under the responsability of a Chargé d'Affaires a.i. or Acting High Commissioner.

Limitations

• Locally Engaged Staff (LES): The index does not account for locally engaged staff. Local staff are often a crucial asset in diplomatic missions, occasionally even surpassing the number of accredited personnel. However, due to the absence of public data on these employees, they cannot be accounted for in this project.
• Taiwan: Data on Taiwan was kindly provided by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia. It is not possible to keep this data updated like other missions, as it is not available via DFAT’s Protocol Portal.
• Hong Kong: Data on the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office is an estimate obtained from research and may not be accurate. This data is also not officially available via the Protocol Portal.

Contact

• If you find a bug or data innacuracies, reach out via: info@yarralumlaindex.com