Intended for teachers of public diplomacy and related courses, here is an update on resources that may be of general interest. Suggestions for future updates are welcome.
Bruce Gregory can be reached at BGregory@gwu.edu
Anne Applebaum, “There Is No Liberal World Order,” The Atlantic, May 2022, 9-12. Atlantic staff writer Applebaum makes five claims in the context of lessons from Ukraine. Four concern the necessity of enforcing liberal world order rules, downsides of trading with autocrats, dramatically shifting sources of energy, and serious attention to teaching, debating, improving, and defending democracy. A fifth is the “need to pull together the disparate parts of the U.S. government that think about communication, not to do propaganda but to reach more people around the world with better information and to stop autocracies from distorting that knowledge.” Her toolkit: a Russian language television station to compete with Putin’s propaganda; more programming in Mandarin and Uyghur; increased programming and research spending for RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Marti; rethinking education and culture (“So much of what passes for cultural diplomacy runs on autopilot.”); a Russian language university in Vilnius or Warsaw for thinkers and intellectuals leaving Moscow; and more spending on education in Arabic, Hindi, and Persian. Her organizational model is the way Americans “assembled the Department of Homeland Security out of disparate agencies after 9/11.”
Eliot A. Cohen, “The Return of Statecraft: Back to Basics in the Post-American World,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2022. Cohen (Johns Hopkins University) makes two arguments in this article. First, grand strategy and general principles are little help in devising policies and making decisions in a world shaped by contingencies, personalities, and events that surprise. Second, priority attention to US statecraft and an audit of its architecture are required for the quick pragmatic decisions needed in today’s chaotic reality. Cohen gives the US Marine Corps high marks as the only national security actor to engage in “harsh self-scrutiny.” His agenda for better diplomacy includes the following. The US “might revive the US Information Agency.” (As with most recent head fakes in this direction he offers no ideas as to its merits or feasibility.) More persuasively, he argues it is long past time to invest heavily in professional education and development – including “creating a state-run academy for foreign policy professionals from across government.” Cohen also calls for restoring procedural competence by repairing the “broken” system for appointing professionals to top posts in the State Department and Pentagon, and fewer political appointees to ambassadorships and the upper echelons of government.
Luiza Duarte, Robert Albro, and Eric Hershberg, “Communicating Influence: China’s Messaging in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS), American University, February 2022. The authors, researchers at American University’s CLALS, examine ways China has used soft power to expand its influence in the region. Their report focuses on four topics. (1) China’s public diplomacy “with Chinese characteristics” and the role of Confucius Institutes. (2) Technology and the “Digital Silk Road.” (3) China’s Covid-19 diplomacy in the region. (4) The growing presence of China’s state media. The authors conclude China’s government, state media, and corporations are promoting narratives in the region that are gaining sophistication in format and content – and point to the need for further research on their impact. The report was supported with funding from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and the Department of State. CLALS researchers and outside collaborators have written separate case studies on China’s engagement with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador. Links can be downloaded here.
Natalia Grincheva, “Beyond the Scorecard Diplomacy: From Soft Power Rankings to Critical Inductive Geography,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies, 2022,Vol. 28(1), 70-91. Grincheva (University of Melbourne) begins this article with a definition of data visualization: “a use of computation techniques to display data in order to illustrate relationships, phenomena, or causations.” She then offers a critique of Portland Soft Power 30, a ranking index that compares countries’ soft power resources based on metrics in six domains: political institutions, cultural appeal, diplomatic networks, higher education, economic models, and digital global engagement. Global ranking systems, she argues, suffer from “simplistic quantifications,” “inaccurate causality . . . from resources to outcomes,” and reduction of “complex reality to a preferred interpretation” that projects Western values and neoliberal policy reforms. To overcome problems of data visualization and pitfalls of ranking soft power through “whole country” measuring, she explores two alternatives. An inductive geo-visualization framework attentive to variables overlooked in soft power rankings. And a “Deep mapping” method used to integrate different types of data through cartographic display of multiple layers for each country, geographical spread and reach, and how actors’ soft power changes across different countries.
Marcus Holmes, Face-to-Face Diplomacy: Social Neuroscience and International Relations,(Cambridge University Press, Paperback, 2019). At a glance, this book seems a perfect fit for public diplomacy’s “last three feet” devotees. Then on first inspection, perhaps not, since its focus is on the summit diplomacy of leaders. But on a close read there is much that is relevant to concepts and practice in diplomacy’s public dimension even though this is not the book’s purpose. Holmes (College of William and Mary) is concerned to show how psychology and neuroscience can be used to challenge the “problem of intentions” in face-to-face diplomacy – meaning “it is difficult, if not impossible to look inside the minds of other people in order to experience what they are thinking.” His book offers a theory of how face-to-face interaction can overcome the problem by allowing participants to simulate the specific intentions of others using a “mirroring system” – a brain structure that “is able to pick up on microchanges in facial expressions and realize subtle shifts in the emotional states of others that conveys their levels of sincerity.” Holmes argues his theory is applicable in a wide range of diplomacy contexts. He explains his theory in the introduction and opening chapter. The rest of the book is devoted to discussing four case studies of summit diplomacy: interactions between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan at the end of the Cold War, George H. W. Bush’s and James Baker’s interactions with Gorbachev on the reunification of Germany, the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt mediated by Jimmy Carter, and the problem of deception in Neville Chamberlain’s face-to-face meeting with Adolph Hitler in Munich. These chapters reward both as evidence for his theory and as well-researched inquiries into summit diplomacy.
Dimitra Kizlari and Domenico Valenza, “A Balancing Act? Inter-Ministerial Co-operation in the Work of Cultural Attachés,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 16 (2021), 493-518. Although Kizlari (University College London) and Valenza (Ghent University) place their research in three European cases – Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden – their excellent article has broad global relevance to the study of cultural diplomacy. The authors analyze practices and discourses in the interactions of Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and Ministries of Culture (MoC) in five areas: appointments, hierarchy, funding, agenda-setting, and evaluation. In Italy, cultural attachés, exclusively linked to the MFA, cooperate with other ministries ad hoc. In Sweden and the Netherlands, the MFA and MoC create common conditions for cultural attachés in budgeting and planning. The MoC leads coordination in Sweden and the MFA in the Netherlands. Strengths of this article lie in how it frames enduring issues in cultural diplomacy and its use of practitioner interviews to support conceptual claims. Worthy of further study are its observations on how structural arrangements impact utilitarian perceptions of the role of culture in diplomacy and the critical importance of practitioners “on the ground.”
Christian Lequesne, ed., Ministries of Foreign Affairs in the World: Actors of State Diplomacy, (Koninklijke Brill, 2022). In this rich collection, Lequesne (Sciences Po, CERI, Paris) has compiled essays by leading scholars on the comparative roles of ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) in today’s diplomacy. His goal is to fill a literature gap created by preferences of researchers to study new diplomatic institutions, the rise of new actors and demise of the monopoly MFAs held previously, research challenges in non-democratic states, and MFAs’ characteristic low transparency. Some chapters were published in a special issue of The Hague Journalof Diplomacy in 2020. Others are original.
— Christian Lequesne, “Ministries of Foreign Affairs: Crucial Institution to be Revisited.”
— Karla Gobo (Higher School of Advertising and Marketing, Rio de Janeiro) and Claudia Santos (Federal University of Paraná), “The Social Origin of Career Diplomats in Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Still an Upper Class Elite.”
— Birgitta Niklasson (University of Gothenburg), “The Gendered Networking of Diplomats.”
— Christian Lequesne, Gabriel Castillo (Sciences Po, CERI Paris), et.al, “Ethnic Diversity in the Recruitment of Diplomats: Why Ministries of Foreign Affairs Take the Issue Seriously.”
— Guillaume Beaud (Sciences Po, CERI Paris), “The Making of a Diplomatic Elite in a Revolutionary State: Loyalty, Expertise and Representatives in Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
— Geoffrey Wiseman (DePaul University), “Expertise and Politics in Ministries of Foreign Affairs: The Politician-Diplomat Nexus.”
— Andrew F. Cooper (University of Waterloo), “The Impact of Leader-Centric Populism on Career Diplomats: Tests of Loyalty, Voice, and Exit in Ministries of Foreign Affairs.”
— Jorge A. Schiavon (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico) and Bruno Figueroa (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico), “The Impact of Globalization and Neoliberal Structural Reforms on the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
— Kim B. Olsen (Danish-Arab Partnership Program, Tunis), “Implementing the EU’s Russia Sanctions: A Geoeconomic Test Case for French and German Ministries of Foreign Affairs.”
— Pierre-Bruno Ruffini (University of Le Havre), “Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Challenge of Science Diplomacy.”
— Jan Melissen (University of Leiden), “Consular Diplomacy in the Era of Growing Mobility.” — Casper Klynge (Microsoft, Brussels), Mikael Ekman, and Nikolaj Juncher Waedegaard (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark), “Diplomacy in the Digital Age: Lessons from Denmark’s TechPlomacy Initiative.”
— Ilan Manor (University of Oxford) and Rhys Crilley (University of Glasgow), “The Mediatisation of Ministries of Foreign Affairs: Diplomacy in the New Media Ecology.” (full text)
— Damien Spry (University of South Australia), “From Delhi to Dili: Facebook Diplomacy by Ministries of Foreign Affairs in the Asia-Pacific.”
— Iver B. Neumann (Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo), “Approaching Ministries of Foreign Affairs Through Ethnographic Work.”
— Marcus Holmes (The College of William and Mary), “Diplomacy in the Rearview Mirror: Implications of Face-to-Face Diplomacy Ritual Disruptions for Ministries of Foreign Affairs.”
— Jason Dittmer (University College London), “Distributed Agency: Foreign Policy sans MFA.” (full text)
— Thierry Balzacq (Sciences Po, CERI Paris), “The Site of Foreign Policy: A Field Theory Account of Ministries of Foreign Affairs.”
“Public Diplomacy for the 2020s and Beyond: Investment in Social Media and Artificial Intelligence Show the Way Ahead,” US State Department Diplomacy Lab, May 2022. This report was written by six American University School of International Service seniors (Nicholas Dohemann, Dexter Hawes, Jenny Jecrois, William Manogue, Bailey Shuster, and Jane Tilles) at the request of State’s Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. The students’ recommendations include humor in digital diplomacy, short form looping videos, influencer marketing, giveaway marketing, artificial intelligence, and general suggestions for State’s social media and AI strategies. (Courtesy of Sherry Mueller and Tony Wayne)
US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “ACPD Official Meeting Minutes: February 24, 2022,” The Commission’s virtual public meeting focused on public diplomacy practice from a field perspective and release of its “2021 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting.” A panel introduced by the Commission’s Executive Director Vivian Walker featured three career diplomats: Ginny Elliott, PAO, US Embassy, Ghana; Shayna Cram, PAO, US Embassy, Kyrgyz Republic; and Tuck Evans, PAO, US Embassy, Guatemala. The Commission’s Senior Advisor Deneyse Kirkpatrick moderated a Q&A. The document is a transcript of their remarks.
Vivian S. Walker, Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, and Jay Wang, “Exploring U.S. Public Diplomacy’s Domestic Dimensions: Purviews, Publics, and Policies,” US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, April 2022. This Commission report summarizes ideas and challenges in the US government’s increasing use of public diplomacy programs and resources to engage domestic audiences. It is based on a virtual workshop with 45 practitioners, scholars, policy analysts, and journalists in October 2021. The report includes three scene setter remarks: Jennifer Hall Godfrey (former State Department senior official for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs), “Engaging Americans through Public Diplomacy;” Nicholas J. Cull, (University of Southern California), “Public Diplomacy’s Domestic Dimension: Some Historical Notes;” and Richard Wike (Pew Research Center), “American Public Opinion and International Engagement.” Following are three working group reports. Vivian S. Walker (the Commission’s Executive Director) summarizes views on the scope, authorities, and strategic outcomes of domestic engagement. Kathy R. Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida) discusses the meaning of domestic publics and ways public diplomacy goals could be addressed through outreach to them. Jay Wang (Center on Public Diplomacy, USC Annenberg) summarizes policy and resource questions. The report floats good ideas and raises important unanswered questions. Particularly useful are Nick Cull’s cautions that connect needed rethinking of a hard binary between foreign and domestic with awareness of potential risks grounded partisan politics and historical concerns over domestic engagement.
“U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development, Fact Sheet,” U.S Department of State, March 28, 2022. Numbers tell a story. The combined White House request for State and USAID spending in FY 2023 is $60.4 billion, a 3% increase from FY 2022. The request for national defense spending is $813 billion (including $773 billion for the Pentagon), a 4% increase from FY 2022 and $30 billion more than approved by Congress for this year. State’s budget Fact Sheet itemizes a range of diplomacy and development priorities, including $7.6 billion to “recruit, train, and develop” a workforce that is more reflective of the diversity of the United States. Missing, as fp21 points out, is any mention of Secretary Blinken’s modernization agenda. The absence of any specific mention of public diplomacy is perhaps further evidence that State’s global public affairs and exchanges are mainstreamed in national discourse on diplomacy.
Zed Tarar, “Analysis | Is It Time to Delete Parts of the State Department,” The Diplomatic Pouch, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, March 29, 2022. Tarar, a US Foreign Service officer serving in London, continues to publish imaginative blog posts with this argument for organizational subtraction. He borrows UVA professor Leidy Klotz’s idea that removing elements and frictions from systems can unlock latent productivity gains to make a case for subtraction’s advantage over additive solutions in the Department of State. His examples include reducing the number of Senate-confirmed positions, removing deputy assistant secretary positions, and State’s outsourcing of the task of cost-of-living adjustments. He points to the merger of USIA and State as one possible example of an addition that failed to create efficiencies. Tarar concludes by arguing that the goal is not subtraction per se or reducing complexity; “rather it is to unlock otherwise latent potential.”
“Truth Over Disinformation: Supporting Freedom and Democracy,” USAGM Strategic Plan 2022-2066, February 2022. The US Agency for Global Media’s new strategic plan is comparable in substance and format to its predecessor 2018-2022 plan. USAGM’s mission (supporting freedom and democracy) and long-term strategic goals (expanding freedom of information and expression, sharing America’s democratic experience and values), and lists of “impact” and “agility” objectives are similar with nuanced differences in language and context. There is a new impact objective: “Reach and engage underserved audiences, including women, youth, and marginalized populations.” USAGM’s strategic plans, written from a public relations perspective, are informative summaries of what US government media services are doing and what they hope to achieve. They are useful for the general reader, and they provide a long-term outlook that can assist in dealing with the unexpected. But the longer the time horizon, the more unlikely it is that broad strategies can help with practitioner choices on issues shaped by chance, unexpected contingencies, multiple issues, and what others do. Missing in this document is discussion of a strategy to address a repeat of the chaos that occurred when USAGM’s world turned upside down during the eight months of Michael Pack’s tenure as CEO in the Trump administration.
Geoffrey Wiseman, “Expertise and Politics in Ministries of Foreign Affairs: The Politician-Diplomat Nexus,” in Christian Lequesne, ed., Ministries of Foreign Affairs in the World: Actors of State Diplomacy, (Koninklijke Brill, 2022), 119-149. Wiseman (DePaul University) carries forward his contributions to practitioner-oriented diplomatic studies in this compelling examination of interactions of diplomats and political leaders in ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs). In the context of concerns about faltering democracies and politicization of MFAs, he makes three claims. (1) MFAs (and their embassy networks) are important complicated actors constituted by individuals with mixed backgrounds and complex motives and emotions. (2) Diplomats’ interactions with political leaders are consequential for policy formulation and shaping national identities. (3) MFAs and diplomats have an underappreciated capacity for agency and innovation. He develops these claims in exploration of roles MFAs play as policy messengers, shapers, producers, and resisters. The strengths of this well-written chapter are its clear definitions and concepts, evidence from a broad range of cases in pluralistic and authoritarian countries, an extensive bibliography, and numerous pointers to hard questions and agendas for further research.
Marie Yovanovitch, Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir, (Mariner Books, 2022). Ambassador Yovanovitch’s memoir has value well beyond her celebrity role in Donald Trump’s first impeachment. It is her absorbing account of navigating the State Department’s bureaucracy, overcoming gender discrimination, and lessons learned, first in management and consular assignments in Somalia and London, and then as a political officer in Russia and Canada, DCM in Ukraine, and ambassador in Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Ukraine. The first eight chapters fascinate for her blend of the high politics of bilateral relations and challenges of building a Foreign Service career. We gain insights into the nuts and bolts of embassy life, her tribute to Alison Palmer’s pioneering sex discrimination class action lawsuit, the benefits of student and faculty assignments at the National Defense University, Russian disinformation, the importance of mentoring, her own and by others, and how a “rules follower to the core” coped with corruption and political demands. She is generous with praise for those she admires, discreet in comments on peers, and ready to settle a score or two in egregious cases of gender discrimination. The final ten chapters are devoted to her experiences during the Trump administration. Here her patriotism, courage, and grace under extreme pressure shine through.
Yovanovitch’s interest in diplomacy’s public dimension turns largely on democratization, rule of law, and free market projects in the civil societies of authoritarian countries. As a self-described introvert, speeches and media contacts are not her comfort zone, but she rose to the occasion repeatedly when required. A single reference to cultural diplomacy (her speech celebrating the Kharkiv-Cincinnati Sister City connection) is included, because it was during her remarks that she first learned of the 9/11 attacks. This is not a book to learn about her views on exchanges, broadcasting, and the roles of PAOs. But it is an extraordinarily useful resource for understanding political risks and patterns of practice of career diplomats in modern diplomacy.
R. S. Zaharna, “A Humanity-Centered Vision of Soft Power for Public Diplomacy’s Global Mandate,”Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 1, No. 2, 27-48. Zaharna (American University) continues her research on a public diplomacy that goes beyond a competitive state-centric perspective and a “traditional diplomacy of imperialism.” Her goal is to expand a vision of soft power grounded in “humankind’s global heritages and evolutionary capacity for cooperation.” The article combines her argument that public diplomacy has failed the Covid-19 test with a comparative analysis of the soft power ideas of Alexander Vuving and Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Recent Items of Interest
“AFSA Foreign Service Reform Priorities,” April 2022, American Foreign Service Association.
Sohaela Amiri, “Can Los Angeles Help Kyiv?” April 11, 2022; Mark Kristmanson, “Can City Diplomacy Help Ukraine? Continuing the Conversation,” April 22, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Simon Anholt, “The Good Country Index: The End of the Selfish State,” and “The Good Country Index: Edition 1.5,” March 29, 2022, Diplomatic Courier.
Denise Campbell Bauer, “Fostering Franco-American Exchange for Our Shared Future,” April 5, 2022, Smithsonian Magazine.
“Franklin and Diplomacy,” Conversation moderated by Judy Woodruff with Ken Burns, Condoleezza Rice, and Nicholas Burns, PBS one-hour video; “Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns,” May 2022, PBS four-hour documentary.
“Bill Burns and the Bear,” April 9, 2022, The Economist.
Morgan Chalfant and Rebecca Beitsch, “Biden’s CIA Head Leads the Charge Against Putin’s Information War,” March 13, 2022, The Hill.
Geoffrey Cowan, “Our Secret Weapon Against Putin Isn’t So Secret,” March 28, 2022, Politico.
M. J. Crawford and Keome Rowe, “Invest in the Next Generation: Ideas From the Entry-Level Group at Mission Pakistan,” March 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.
Renee Earle, “Don’t Leave the Russian People Behind,” May 2022, American Diplomacy.
“Exploring the Secretary’s Modernization Agenda: A Q&A with Policy Planning Director Salman Ahmed,” March 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.
Marci Falck-Bados, “SIS Global Leadership Dinner, Student Speech,” May 2022, American University
Nicholas Cull, “Looking for God at the Dubai Expo,” May 5, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Mark Hannah, “Why Is the Wartime Press Corps So Hawkish,” March 30, 2022, Foreign Policy.
Drew Harwell, “Computer Programmers Are Taking Aim at Russia’s Propaganda Wall,” March 17, 2022, The Washington Post.
Nikki Hinshaw – Recipient of the 2022 Walter Roberts Public Diplomacy Studies Award, April 30, 2022, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GWU.
Joe B. Johnson, “New Nonprofit Promotes U.S. Global Engagement: Two Washington-based Organizations Merge,” April 16, 2022; “PDCA: Strengthening America’s Dialogue With the World,” Public Diplomacy Council of America.
Steve Johnson, “How a Magazine Called ‘Amerika’ Helped Win the Cold War,” May 15, 2022, Politico.
Peter Isackson, “Finding a Way to Diss Information,” March 16, 2022; “Try This Game to Evaluate Levels of Disinformation in Times of War,” March 14, 2022, Fair Observer.
Thomas Kent, “How to Reach Russian Ears,” March 8, 2022, Center for European Policy Analysis; Evelyn Kent, Quinata Jurecic, and Thomas Kent, “Getting Information Into Russia,” March 24, 2022, The Lawfare Podcast.
Mark MacCarthy, “Why a Push to Exclude Russian State Media Would Be Problematic for Free Speech and Democracy,” April 14, 2022, Brookings.
Jan Melissen: Recipient of 2022 ISA Distinguished Scholar Award in Diplomacy Studies, March 28, 2022, University of Leiden.
Simon Morrison, “Canceling Russian Artists Plays Into Putin’s Hands,” March 11, 2022, The Washington Post.
Kiki Skagen Munshi, “Time to Reorient,” (Letter, p. 11), May 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.
“President Biden Announces Key Nominees [to the International Broadcasting Advisory Board and US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy],” March 11, 2022, The White House.
Thomas Rid, “Why You Haven’t Heard About the Secret Cyberwar in Ukraine,” March 18, 2022, The New York Times;“Thomas Rid on Ukraine and Cyberwar,” March 23, 2022, The Lawfare Podcast.
Philip Seib, “Why Russia is Losing the Information War,” May 9, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
“Seven-in-Ten Americans Now See Russia as an Enemy: Attitudes Toward NATO Increasingly Positive,” April 6, 2022, Pew Research Center.
Elizabeth Shackelford, “How to Lead With Diplomacy, and Not Just in Ukraine,” March 24, 2022, Chicago Tribune.
Aaron Shaffer, “It’s a Big Day at the State Department for U.S. Cyberdiplomacy,” April 4, 2022, The Washington Post.
Dan Spokojny, “It’s Official: All Foreign Service Officers Must Learn Data,” March 21, 2022, fp21.
Ian Thomas, “The Value of Soft Power & Cultural Approaches to International Heritage Protection,” April 26, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Vivian S. Walker, “Analysis | ‘Glory to the Heroes’: Ukraine’s War for Narrative Credibility,” March 17, 2022, The Diplomatic Pouch, Georgetown University.
“2022 Walter Roberts Congressional Award Given to Sen. Chris Murphy,” March 31, 2022, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GWU.
Gem From The Past
Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver Neumann, “The Future of Diplomacy: Changing Practices, Evolving Relationships,” International Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3, June 2011, 527-542. About a decade ago, Sending (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs), Pouliot (McGill University), and Neumann (Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo) published a pathbreaking article. Their goal was to locate traditional and nontraditional diplomacy actors in an evolving pattern of social relations. They identified two areas of change: (1) compatibilities and tensions in diplomacy’s evolving relationship between representation and governance, and (2) the territorial-nonterritorial character of relations between diplomatic actors and the constituencies they represent.
Their article surveys the literature of the day and pays close attention to ways the practice of diplomacy informs theory. They also discuss how nontraditional diplomats make nonterritorial authority claims and how representation is increasingly shaped by governance. As today’s scholars and practitioners turn increasingly to the “societization of diplomacy,” this article continues to resonate. “When all is said and done,” they argue, “we can be certain of one trait that the future of diplomacy will inevitably share with its past: it will remain a key practical grounding of ever-changing configurations of social relations beyond the state.” In assessing the evolution of diplomacy practices, we should keep in mind that “diplomacy is a social form deeply embedded in historically and culturally contingent contexts that produce meanings and politics.
An archive ofDiplomacy’s Public Dimension: Books, Articles, Websites (2002-present) is maintained at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. Current issues are also posted by the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, and the Public Diplomacy Council of America.
