Geoffrey Cowan and Nicholas Cull, eds. “Public Diplomacy in a Changing World,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 616, March 2008. Cowan and Cull (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California) have assembled a collection of essays that “seeks to explain the concept of public diplomacy, to put it into an academic framework, and to examine it as an international phenomenon and an important component of statecraft.” The essays examine public diplomacy theory, tools of public diplomacy, national case studies, and development of scholarship in the field. “The editors and contributors,” Cowan and Cull write, “present the collection . . . as an early attempt to examine the current state of the field; to stimulate research and open debate; and to provide a resource of interested scholars, practitioners, and students.” Includes:
– Geoffrey Cowan (USC, Annenberg School) and Amelia Arsenault (USC, Annenberg School), “Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration: The Three Layers of Public Diplomacy,” 10-30.
– Nicholas Cull (USC, Annenberg School), “Public Diplomacy: Taxonomies and Histories,” 31-54.
– Eytan Golboa (Bar-Ilan University, Israel), “Searching for a Theory of Public Diplomacy,” 55-77.
– Manuel Castells (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), “The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance,” 78-93.
– Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (Harvard University), “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power,” 94-109.
– Ernest J. Wilson III (USC, Annenberg School), “Hard Power, Soft Power, Smart Power,” 110-124.
– Peter van Ham (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, “Clingendael”), “Place Branding: The State of the Art,” 126-149.
– Monroe E. Price (Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania), Susan Haas (Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania), and Drew Margolin (USC Annenberg School), “New Technologies and International Broadcasting: Reflections on Adaptations and Transformations,” 150-172.
– Giles Scott-Smith (Roosevelt Academy, the Netherlands), “Mapping the Undefinable: Some Thoughts on the Relevance of Exchange Programs within International Relations Theory,” 173-195.
– Nancy Snow (California State University, Fullerton), “International Exchanges and the U.S Image,” 198-222.
– Michael J. Bustamante (Council on Foreign Relations) and Julia E. Sweig (Council on Foreign Relations), “Buena Vista Solidarity and the Axis of Aid: Cuban and Venezuelan Public Diplomacy,” 223-256.
– Yiwei Wang (Fudan University, China), “Public Diplomacy and the Rise of Chinese Soft Power,” 257-273.
– Bruce Gregory (George Washington University), “Public Diplomacy: Sunrise of an Academic Field,” 274-290.
Kathy R. Fitzpatrick. The Collapse of American Public Diplomacy: What Diplomatic Experts Say About Rebuilding America’s Image in the World — A View From the Trenches, paper presented at the International Studies Association Conference, San Francisco, March 26-29, 2008. Fitzpatrick (Quinnipiac University) summarizes and assesses findings from her 15-page survey completed in 2007 by 213 members of the Public Diplomacy Alumni Association (previously the USIA Alumni Association). Her survey documents the views of 48 percent of the association’s members on what should be done to rebuild public diplomacy, public diplomacy during the Cold War, public diplmacy’s mission and values, and issues relating to structure, leadership, and effective practices. Available on the PDAA’s website.
Alan C. Hansen. Nine Lives: A Foreign Service Odyssey, Vellum Books, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 2007. Hansen’s memoir looks at public diplomacy through the lens of his personal experiences in Spain, Pakistan, and seven Latin American assignments as a U.S. Information Agency Foreign Service Officer from 1954 to 1987. His anecdotal account profiles USIA’s work and the strengths and limitations of public diplomacy in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.
Alan L. Heil, Jr., ed. Local Voices / Global Perspectives: Challenges Ahead for U.S. International Media, Public Diplomacy Council, 2008. In this collection of twenty essays and moderated discussions, scholars, broadcasters, and public diplomacy practitioners address challenges facing government international broadcasting. Contributors include: Paul Blackburn, Brian Conniff, Robert Coonrod, Nicholas Cull, Kim Andrew Elliott, Morand Fachot, James Glassman, Mark Helmke, Kevin Klose, Gary Knell, Mark Maybury, Graham Mytton, Salemeh Nematt, Adam Clayton Powell III, Walter Roberts, William Rugh, McKinney Russell, John Trattner, Jeffry Trimble, Sanford Ungar, Myrna Whitworth, and Barry Zorthian. Copies may be ordered through the Public Diplomacy Council at pdi410@gwu.edu mailto:pdi410@gwu.edu> .
William P. Kiehl. “Humpty Dumpty Redux: Saving Public Diplomacy,” American Diplomacy, March 4, 2008. Kiehl, a retired USIA Foreign Service Officer, updates thinking in his November 2003 article, “Can Humpty Dumpty be Saved?” He calls for adequate funding and staffing, creation of an Office of Strategic Communication (OSC) within the Executive Office of the President, and a new independent Agency for Public Diplomacy that would report to the President through the OSC.
Rita J. King and Joshua S. Fouts. Dancing Ink Productions. King (CEO and Creative Director) and Fouts (Chief Global Strategist and former director of USC Annenberg’s Public Diplomacy Center) have created a consulting and strategy firm that works with a mix of clients “to contribute meaningfully to the evolution of global culture in the imagination age.” Their projects explore possibilities for global cultural connections in Second Life, the blogosphere, and other virtual platforms. Check out the Dancing Ink Productions homepage and their posts, “Our Vision for Sustainable Culture in the Imagination Age,” February 25, 2008), “Beyond Borat,” March 9, 2008, and “The Emergence of a New Global Culture” (March 29, 2008).
Greg Mitchell. So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits — and the President — Failed on Iraq, Union Square Press, Sterling Publishing Co., 2008. Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, adds to the growing shelf of critical assessments of press coverage of the Iraq war by media voices and journalism professors. Includes many of his E&P columns and new material in his critique of media and government culpability during the years between the run-up to the war in 2003 and the “surge” in 2007.
Stuart Murray, “Consolidating the Gains Made in Diplomacy Studies: A Taxonomy,” International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 9, Issue 1, February 2008, 22-39. Murray (Bond University, Australia) examines a broad range of diplomacy studies from the traditional (state-to-state) to the non-traditional (diplomacy practiced by NGOs and corporations). Murray creates three schools of diplomatic study: Traditional (state institutions), Nascent (non-state), and Innovative (state and non-state). Includes references to the work of Andrew Cooper, Jeffery Cooper, Brian Hocking, Christer Jonsson, Jan Melissen, Iver Neumann, David Newsom, and Paul Sharp among others.
National Endowment for Democracy, Center for Media Assistance (CIMA). The Center supports independent media assistance programs and democratic development through building networks and conducting research. Its bibliographic database and lists of working group and research reports are available on its website. Recent publications include: Shanthi Kalathil, Scaling a Changing Curve: Traditional Media Development and the New Media, March 3, 2008, Ann C, Olson, The Role of Media-support Organizations and Public Literacy in Strengthening Independent Media Worldwide February 5, 2008: and Community Development Radio: Its Impact and Challenges to Its Development, Working Group Report, October 9, 2007.
Geoffrey Allen Pigman and Anthony Deos. “Consuls for Hire: Private Actors, Public Diplomacy,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Vol. 4, 1, 85-96. Pigman (Bennington College) and Deos (Jott Communications) assess the expanding roles and methods of global public relations firms, political communication professionals, and other private actors in public diplomacy. The authors examine how states, governments of regions, and political actors are seeking to assert identity and gain recognition by interacting with private firms “to construct diplomatic strategies of representation and image management.” They conclude there is no dominant model of interaction. Rather there is a spectrum ranging from embedded public relations professionals to outsourcing and the independent “privately undertaken public diplomacy” of organizations such as Business for Diplomatic Action.
This and other articles are available online in the journal Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Volume 4, No. 1, February 2008 — “A quarterly review of branding and marketing for national, regional, and civic development.” Simon Anholt is the Managing Editor.
Michael C. Polt. “Toolbox: Strengthening American Diplomacy,” The American Interest, Vol. III, March/April, 2008, 101-103. Ambassador Polt (a career U.S. Foreign Service Officer on loan to the German Marshall Fund) offers six recommendations in an “action memorandum” to the next president of the United States. Polt’s recommendations: (1) “reconceive embassies” around the world, (2) treat U.S. diplomacy as a serious profession, (3) reaffirm the diplomatic corps’ role as the principal agent for achieving a president’s foreign policy agenda, (4) create a single, substantial, and consistent foreign affairs budget for all U.S. efforts abroad, (5) create regional Ambassadors’ Councils, and (6) trust professional diplomats. Available to subscribers. Abstract online.
Project for Excellence in Journalism. The State of the News Media 2008, March 2008. Trends discussed in PEJ’s (Tom Rosenstiel, director) fifth annual report “tracing the revolution of news” include: (1) News is shifting from being a product (newspaper, website, newscast) to becoming a service. (2) News websites are no longer final destinations; sites restricted to their own content become cul de sac’s of limited value. (3) The prospects for user-created content and “citizen news” appear more limited than once thought. Rather than rejecting the gatekeeper role of traditional journalism, citizen journalists and bloggers are “recreating it in other places.” (4) The agenda of American news media “continues to narrow, not broaden.”
Yale Richmond. Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Odyssey, Berghahn Books, 2008 (ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Book). Richmond, a retired cultural officer in the U.S. Foreign Service and author of Cultural Exchange and the Cold War (2003), looks at the practice of public diplomacy during the Cold War through his assignments in Germany, Laos, Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union — and his subsequent work with the Helsinki Commission and the National Endowment for Democracy. In a book that is part memoir and part history, Richmond’s perspectives focus on the enduring values of cultural diplomacy, the limitations of “a propaganda approach to public diplomacy,” and numerous examples of “what works and what doesn’t” in public diplomacy.
Janet Steele. “The Voice of East Timor: Journalism, Ideology, and the Struggle for Independence,” Asian Studies Review, September 2007, Vol. 31, 261-232. Steele (a professor of journalism at George Washington University, Fulbright scholar in Indonesia, and author of Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia, 2005), examines relationships between journalists and the development of national identity in East Timor. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, she analyzes ways journalists have defined themselves, examines challenges facing journalism in East Timor, and concludes with perspectives on the future of Timorese journalism.
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC). Cracks in the Foundation: Leadership Schisms in al-Qa’ida from 1989-2006. The CTC’s report analyzes the history of al-Qaida’s debates over strategies and goals using documents from the Department of Defense’s Harmony Database. Contains many new documents not previously available to academic and practitioner communities.
Michael Walzer. Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory, Yale University Press, 2007. Selected, edited and introduced by David Miller (Oxford University), this collection of Walzer’s (Princeton University) most important essays is of broad general interest. Miller’s introduction is a substantial overview of Walzer’s fifty year career. Includes a recent interview with Walzer and essays containing his critical assessments of civil society, pluralism, toleration, Jurgen Habermas’s communicative action theories, and the morality of terrorism and responses to terrorism that will be of interest to those teaching public diplomacy. Essays include: “A Critique of Philosophical Conversation,” “The Civil Society Argument,” “Deliberation and What Else,” “The Politics of Difference: Statehood and Toleration in a Multicultural World,” and “Terrorism and Just War.” (Courtesy of Donna Oglesby)
Gabriel Weimann. “Online Terrorist Prey on the Vulnerable,” YaleGlobal Online, March 5, 2008. Weimann, professor of communication at Haifa University and author of Terror on the Internet (2006), looks at how a maturing Internet is being used by terrorist organizations for narrowcasting to target and exploit the vulnerabilities of groups such as marginalized women and children.
Hugh Wilford. The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, Harvard University Press, 2008. Wilford (California State University, Long Beach) provides a deeply researched examination of the CIA’s covert funding of intellectuals, students, artists, journalists, labor organizations, religious leaders, and emigre organizations to project American political and cultural influence from the 1940s to the 1960s. Drawing on the records of these organizations and secondary sources (most CIA records remain classified), Wilford seeks to portray a comprehensive account of the CIA’s network “by telling both sides of the story” — from the perspectives of intelligence history and the social history of the client organizations. CIA official Frank Wisner’s remark comparing the network of organizations to a “mighty Wurlitzer” organ “capable of playing any propaganda tune he desired” provides the book’s title.
Robin Wright. Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East, The Penguin Press, 2008. The Washington Post’s veteran foreign correspondent draws on thirty-five years of reporting in the region to provide both historical narrative and thoughts about the future of a Middle East in transition. Useful for its discussion of regional media, satellite television, democratic activism, women’s activism, tensions between reform and reaction, and struggles among autocrats, democrats, and theocrats.
Gem from the Past
Jarol B. Manheim. Strategic Public Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy: The Evolution of Influence, Oxford University Press, 1994. In this early academic study of public diplomacy, Professor Manheim (George Washington University) draws on qualitative and quantitative research methods to provide a systematic analysis of public diplomacy as strategic communication, the use of political communication strategies by other countries in the U.S., the evolution of U.S. public diplomacy, and the role of political communication consultants. Contains case studies on the uses of “strategic public diplomacy” by Kuwait, Pakistan, Mexico, Japan, and South Korea.