CIAO DATE: 11/2011
August 2011
United States Institute of Peace
While the U.S. government has long employed special envoys for occasional diplomatic missions, the Obama administration’s 24 special envoys represent an unprecedented expansion of this mechanism after the Bush administration, which generally did not use them. Use of the special envoys permitted more effort, focus and attention to be placed on a given issue than would have been the case had the position not existed, according to interviews with nine special envoys currently serving and three former special envoys.
Resource link: U.S. Special Envoys: A Flexible Tool [PDF] - 293K