Wednesday, 10 November 2010

Public Diplomacy in contemporary world politics

The importance of Public Diplomacy in contemporary world politics

In addition to strengthening foreign military ties and trade relations through bilateral and multilateral agreements, it has long been recognised that winning over foreign public opinion is important and can help to make cooperation at states level much easier. Diplomacy is no longer an isolated ‘Government to Government’ process, whereby foreign ministers and diplomats control all interaction between states. Governments across the globe (have always, and will continue to) seek to influence foreign public opinion via ‘Government to People’ communications strategies. Such as broadcasting information by radio and television; engaging in direct dialogue between diplomatic officials and local citizens; promoting domestic cultural activities overseas and building long-term individual relationships through student exchange programmes and scholarships.


Jamaican students show off their scholarship letters, which were presented yesterday (Aug.17) at a reception held at the Chinese Embassy in Kingston.
A total of 11 students have been awarded full scholarships under the Chinese Government Scholarship Programme to pursue masters and doctoral degrees in China.

As Dr Nicholas J. Cull, Professor of Public Diplomacy at University of Southern California writes ‘public diplomacy is a two-way street’ (http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&folder=7&paper=3028). In addition to communicating a message that will win-over the foreign audience, the communicator must in return listen to the audience’s response, or at least convey that their opinions have been heard. If opinions are ignored, public participation will dissolve and the communication exercise will be ineffective or even cause adverse reactions.

Besides the possibility of losing public support by adopting a one way communication process, the practice of public diplomacy is neither welcomed nor embraced by all states. Some states perceive public diplomacy as a tool for promoting western ideology, propaganda and subversion, and for those citizens who choose to participate they face serious repercussions from their governments.

But whilst public diplomacy is mainly concerned with influencing foreign public opinion, we have recently seen Americas President Obama use public diplomacy to speak directly to the Iranian people and their government, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY_utC-hrjI with the intention of presenting a new open image aimed at winning over the government of Iran.

For several decades America portrayed a strong dominant image across the globe and until 2001 had reduced resources and expenditure on public diplomacy. However, we now have a reversal and a softer image under the current leadership.

President Obama, greets the Indian delegation present at the airport to see him off in the traditional Indian way of namaste as he leaves for Indonesia at the end of their tour of India, at the airport in New Delhi, India, on Nov 9.
Saurabh Das/AP

Public diplomacy is a multidimensional tool that is used by most countries to pursue their foreign policy agendas. Consequently, public diplomacy remains important in contemporary world politics.

4 comments:

  1. As usual Merlyn, I love your writings.

    Yes, public diplomacy remain important nowadays, and the example of the Chinese scholarship granted to the Jamaican students is a really good example of how "good" public diplomacy can be.

    Nonetheless, there is still one thing going wrong, with what Berridge calls the "white propaganda". There is the example in Japan, where the North Korean government subvention "Korean school" for the immigrant who fled the Korean War in the 1950s. Now Korean in Japan are marginalise within the Japanese society, for being different with a different education. They also face identity problem for not being neither Southern nor Northern Koreans (BBC World News, Roland Buerk, 14.01.2011; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11534233). So now, innocent people are caught in the diplomatic row between two states, through the use of the public diplomacy.

    The other example is terrorist groups who find their recruit in the Western World, where some of them were born and even educated.

    So, yes public diplomacy plays an important role through scholarship, education and knowledge, but it can also be used to harm or manipulate people, ultimately leading to hatred, fear and misunderstanding.

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  2. That's a very good, detailed account of contemporary public diplomacy. Perhaps you could say a bit more about why PD is seen as so important today and explain why Cull believes it needs to be a "two-way street". Why isn't a one-way flow of information good enough?

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  3. To back up Xavier's comment:
    Thinking about the role of a public diplomacy and the danger of it being manipulated by the means of propaganda, there is a roof to shift the attention to the importance of an education and competence of a citizens in a political arena.
    To my deeply mind, for public being able to decide for itself, citizens have to have a strongly developed ability to make a CRITIQUE on every single novelty, which is found on mass media of any political, cultural and etc. event in order to avoid the impact that the 'advertisement' is keen to make on you.

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