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
G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 6th ed., (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). There are many reasons Berridge’s (University of Leicester) substantially revised and expanded diplomacy textbook draws high praise from scholars and practitioners. (1) New material on health diplomacy, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, diplomatic implications of the Trump presidency, and innovative uses of embassies. (2) Clear prose and concepts illuminated by numerous examples. (3) Discussion questions in each chapter. (4) Recommendations for additional reading. Updates on the chapters, ideas for thesis topics, and advice on essay and dissertation writing can be found on Berridge’s website hosted by the DiploFoundation. Berridge devotes a chapter to “public diplomacy,” a term he views as propaganda rebranded — a fashionable “modern name for white propaganda directed chiefly at foreign publics.” He questions the idea that public diplomacy differs from propaganda because “at its best” it invites influence and engagement from foreign publics. “[L]istening to foreigners is one thing, giving equal weight to what they say is quite another.” His chapter looks at why the term was adopted, activities it embraces, and roles of embassies and diplomats. Public diplomacy is more important, he argues, because the reasons for it and the means available to practitioners have multiplied. The leading role in state-sponsored public diplomacy is frequently given to foreign ministries. It is one of many responsibilities of embassy staffs. And it “is probably now the most important duty of ambassadors.”
Yoav Dubinsky, Sport-tech Diplomacy at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Dubinsky (University of Oregon) explores the emerging concept of “sport-tech diplomacy” understood as “the use of sports-related technologies for nation branding and public diplomacy purposes.” His paper distinguishes intersections between sports, technology, and public diplomacy at Tokyo 2020 in four domains: public safety, games operations, cultural diplomacy, and backlash. Dubinsky provides an overview of the relevant literature, an explanation of his methodology, his assessment of sport-tech issues in the Tokyo Games, a discussion of functional strengths and limitations of sport-tech diplomacy, and five lessons for scholars and practitioners in using nation branding and country image frameworks.
Fundamental AI Research Diplomacy Team (FAIR), “Human-level Play in the Game of Diplomacy by Combining Language Models with Strategic Reasoning,” Science, November 22, 2022. Facebook owner Meta’s FAIR team (17 authors) is intent on creating artificial intelligence systems capable of using language to communicate intentionally with humans. Its AI agent Cicero routinely beats humans in the board game Diplomacy. Unlike adversarial zero-sum games for two-players such as chess, Diplomacy is a strategy game set in pre-World War I Europe that requires seven players to communicate, negotiate, convince, compete, and coordinate their actions. Meta’s AI Cicero, entered anonymously in 40 games played by humans (August 19 – October 13, 2022), doubled the average score of human players and ranked in the top 10% of players who played more than one game. See also “Another Game Falls to an AI Player,” The Economist, November 23, 2022; and Pranshu Verma, “Meta’s New AI Is Skilled at a Ruthless Power-seeking Game,” December 1, 2022, The Washington Post.
Marc Grossman and Marcie Ries, Blueprints for a More Modern U.S. Diplomatic Service, ASU Leadership, Diplomacy, and National Security Lab, Arizona State University. Most US diplomacy reform reports state problems in need of solutions and desired goals, leaving ways and means to be sorted out later. In this exceptional 212-page report, US Ambs. (ret.) Grossman, Ries, and executive director Charles Ray compile roadmaps that operationalize reform recommendations. Building on the Harvard Kennedy School’s A U.S. Diplomatic Service for the 21st Century, (2020) and other reports, their blueprints include the informed reasoning of experienced practitioners, draft legislation to amend the 1980 Foreign Service Act, draft text to amend executive branch regulations, and a substantially revised Presidential Letter of Authority, Accountability, and Responsibility to Chiefs of Mission (COM). There is much to applaud and critique in these detailed blueprints. They warrant close attention by practitioners, scholars, policy analysts, lawmakers, White House and Congressional staffs, and students looking for thesis topics. Partial summaries follow.
Blueprint 1, Mission and Mandate: Clarity, Strength, and Professionalism, (Principal Author, Amb. (ret.) Michael C. Polt). Proposals include (1) new professional standards for career and “occasional non-career” diplomats; (2) measures to reform the Foreign Service culture, deepen its capabilities, strengthen career-long professional education and training, and create a robust Engage America program; (3) enhanced COM risk management, diversity, and whole of government authorities; and (4) an amended NSC Memorandum-2 designating the State Department as chair of the NSC’s Interagency Policy Committees.
Blueprint 2, Professional Education and Training, (Principal Authors, Ambs. (ret.) Joyce Barr and Daniel Smith). Proposals include (1) substitution of the term “training complement” for the military’s “training float,” (2) creation of a training complement for the Civil Service, a mandatory 8 percent training compliment for the Foreign Service, and legislative language to protect both from outyear operational demands; (3) opportunities for early career rotational assignments and expansion of mid-career education and training; (4) expanded professional education at US military colleges rather than duplicate educational programs at the Foreign Service Institute; and (5) a mandatory professional development tour for entry into the Senior Foreign Service and mandatory capstone course for new senior officers.
Blueprint 3, A More Modern, Flexible, Transparent, Diverse, and Strategically Focused Personnel System,(Principal Author, Amb (ret.) Jo Ellen Powell). Proposals include (1) a global analysis of domestic and overseas Foreign Service positions; (2) a $2.5 million budget for advertising and a firm to develop a public service Foreign Service recruitment campaign; (3) funding for in-house recruiters and expedited background investigations; (4) retention of political, economic, public diplomacy, management, and consular career tracks (despite multiple reports calling for abolishing “cones”); (5) competition for promotion within cones at entry and middle levels and a shift to class wide competition for promotion in senior ranks; and (6) ways to achieve cross cutting skills at mid-level ranks and language skills beyond current competency levels.
Blueprint 4, Diplomatic Reserve Corps, (Principal Author, Amb. (ret.) Patrick Kennedy). Proposals include (1) an extraordinarily detailed plan and proposed legislation to create a 1,000-member State Department ready reserve and surge capacity with four components (a senior diplomatic retiree reserve, a reserve of retired professionals at lower ranks, and a senior reserve and lower rank reserve drawn from experts in civil society, the private sector, and local government agencies); (2) a five-year plan to allocate positions, train, and fully implement the Reserve; and (3) an information campaign conducted by State’s Global Public Affairs Bureau to inform Americans about the Reserve.
HwaJung Kim and Jan Melissen, “Engaging Home in International Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, 2022. In the late 2000s, Ellen Huijgh and a small handful of scholars began pathbreaking work on the domestic dimension of public diplomacy. (See Huijgh’s collected essays in Public Diplomacy at Home, Brill, 2019 and HJD’s 2012 special issue listed in Gem from the Past below.) Today, diplomacy’s public dimension is central to diplomatic practice, and diplomacy at home is emerging as a matter of importance for foreign ministries and diplomatic services. In this HJD special issue, Kim (Ewha Womans University, South Korea) and Melissen (Leiden University) compile essays intended to advance trending research on diplomacy’s domestic engagement and “enhanced state-society dialogue on foreign affairs.” Their motivating assumption is an understanding of the home dimension of diplomatic practice informs contemporary “shifts in professional culture and what is commonly assumed to be the hard core of diplomacy.” Articles include:
HwaJung Kim and Jan Melissen, “Introduction.” (open access).
Anna Geis (Helmut Schmidt University), Christian Opitz (Helmut Schmidt University), and Hanna Pfeifer (Goethe University Frankfurt), “Recasting the Role of Citizens in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy: Preliminary Insights and a New Research Agenda.”
Minseon Ku (Ohio State University), “Summit Diplomacy as Theatre of Sovereignty Contestation.”
Yun Zhang (Niigata University, Japan), “The Disintegration of State-Society Relations and its Moderating Effects on Japanese Diplomacy Towards China,”
Scott Michael Harrison and Quinton Huang (Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada), “Citizen or City Diplomacy? Diplomatic Co-Production and the Middle Ground in Municipal Twinning Relationships.”
Anna Popkova (Western Michigan University) and Jodi Hope Michaels (Global Ties Kalamazoo), “Who Represents the Domestic Voice? Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Citizen Diplomacy.”
Štěpánka Zemanová, (Prague University of Economics and Business), “Grassroots Student Diplomacy: The Junior Diplomat Initiative (JDI) in Prague, Geneva, Paris and Tbilisi.”
Alisher Faizullaev (University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent), “On Social Diplomacy.”
William Inboden, The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink, (Dutton, 2022). Inboden (University of Texas, Austin) has written a sweeping and deeply researched narrative of the Reagan presidency’s engagement with the world during the last decade of the Cold War. For many former practitioners, the 1980s were the high-water mark of 20th century US public diplomacy. In making the “battle of ideas” one of his book’s central themes, Inboden takes this into account. “Every previous American president saw the Cold War primarily as a great power conflict undergirded by a contest of ideas,” he writes. “Reagan reversed this. He saw the Cold War primarily as a battle of ideas, overlaid on a great power competition.” Although his book focuses on “high politics” with more breadth than depth on most issues, readers will find carefully researched references to U.S. Information Agency director Charles Z. Wick’s “Project Truth;” Reagan’s Westminster speech on democracy and human freedom; his support for a quasi-governmental organization to promote democracy through grants to labor unions, business groups, and political parties; Walt Raymond’s “Project Democracy; democratization initiatives of the National Endowment for Democracy and its long-time president Carl Gershman; and US international broadcasting’s Voice of America and RFE/RL.
Journal of Public Diplomacy, Volume 2, Issue 2, Winter 2022. This welcome fourth issue of JPD is now available online with contents that include research articles, practitioners’ essays, and book review essays.
Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California) and Juan Luis Manfredi Sánchez (Georgetown University), “Virus Diplomacy: Leadership and Reputational Security in the Era of COVID 19.”
Carla Cabrera Cuadrado (University of Valencia), “Purpose and Cultural Awareness in PD: Toward a Golden Circle of Public Diplomacy,”
Isabelle Karlsson (Lund University), “Debating Feminist Foreign Policy: The Formation of (Unintended) Publics in Sweden’s Public Diplomacy.”
Rodrigo Márquez Lartigue (Panamerican University), “Beyond Traditional Boundaries: The Origins and Features of the Public-Consular Diplomacy of Mexico.”
Wilfried Bolewski (former German Ambassador, Paris), “Effective City Diplomacy Inspired by Corporate Diplomacy: A European Perspective.”
Carla Dirlikov Canales (US State Department), “Notes from the Field: An Arts Envoy’s Account of US Cultural Diplomacy in the 21st Century.”
Luiza Brodt (Novosibirsk State University), “[Book Review Essay] Inventing a Shared Science Diplomacy for Europe: Interdisciplinary Case Studies to Think With History.” Léonard Laborie, & Pascal Griset, Zenodo, 2022, 274 pp., open access (eBook), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6590097.
Nancy Snow (Tsinghua University), “[Book Review Essay] U.S. Public Diplomacy Toward China: Exercising Discretion in Educational and Exchange Programs.” Edited by Di Wu, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Sonali Singh (Jai Prakash Mahila College, India), “[Book Review Essay] Connecting Through Cultures: An Overview of India’s Soft Power Strength.” Edited by Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and Sachchidanand Joshi, Wisdom Tree, 2022.
Jane Knight, Knowledge Diplomacy in International Relations and Higher Education, (Springer, 2022). In this deeply researched study (available in e-book and hard cover versions), Knight (University of Toronto) addresses three questions. (1) How is international higher education changing and strengthening relations between countries? (2) Can cultural, scientific, public diplomacy, and soft power frameworks illuminate “international higher education, research, and innovation” (IHERI)? (3) Can “knowledge diplomacy,” a term she defines and describes, be used to clarify the role of IHERI in international relations and how it differs from related concepts. Scholars and practitioners will find much to agree with and debate in this book’s contributions to the literature on diplomacy, higher education, and international relations. Two examples stand out. First, Knight helpfully takes the meaning of higher education in diplomacy beyond such traditional methods as scholar/student exchanges, student recruitment, and bilateral higher education agreements. Her IHERI domain includes a complex web of new initiatives — “education cities, knowledge hubs, regional centers of excellence, international joint universities, multilateral thematic and disciplinary research networks, international private-public partnerships, regional-based universities, international satellite campuses,” and much more. Second, she drills down on conceptual meanings and distinctions in what she rightly calls “terminology chaos” in the diplomacy and higher education literature: cultural diplomacy, cultural relations, public diplomacy, science diplomacy, science cooperation, education diplomacy, education relations, innovation diplomacy, exchange diplomacy, academic diplomacy, citizen diplomacy, knowledge diplomacy, science and technology diplomacy and soft power. Her arguments reward close reading. They advance the dialogue on the societization of diplomacy. And they open the door to contrasting views and further research.
Ilan Manor and Ronit Kampf, “Digital Nativity and Digital Diplomacy: Exploring Conceptual Differences Between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants,” Global Policy, 2022: 13: 442-457. In this perceptive open access paper, Manor (Tel Aviv University) and Kampf (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) examine differences in the use of social networking sites (SNS) by younger diplomats (digital natives) and senior diplomats (digital immigrants). Can these differences, they ask, limit the ability of foreign ministries (MFAs) to leverage digital technologies for public diplomacy purposes? Their findings are based on a literature review and a survey of 133 diplomats from six MFAs. The authors found little support for a hard expertise binary between generations. Operational proficiency varies within native and immigrant cohorts. They did find, however, key conceptual gaps. Digital natives are more likely to perceive the Web as networks in which individuals generate content through dialogue, as a space for sharing life and work information with clusters of friends, and as a space for listening. The reverse is true for digital immigrants. These gaps, they argue, have three broad policy implications. First, provide digital training that focuses not only on operational skills but also on integrating SNS into policy formulation and implementation. Second, explore implications of generational gaps for the use of other technologies (e.g., virtual reality, big data analysis). Third, encourage digital immigrants to employ technologies in innovative ways. The authors point to areas for further research: a larger sample size, personal interviews as opposed to questionnaires, and practices in languages other than English. To these they might consider implications of generational differences in stakeholders beyond MFAs (e.g., native/immigrant gaps among lawmakers who provide diplomacy funding).
Elaine McCusker, Defense Budget Transparency and the Cost of Military Capability, American Enterprise Institute, November 2022. AEI Senior Fellow and former acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller) McCusker argues the US defense budget of close to $800 billion per year is not an accurate indicator of America’s military spending. Her reasons: defense spending bills are “loaded with programs, policies, and even entire pieces of legislation that have nothing to do with defense,” and must-pass defense bills are targets for congressional special interests. Her evidence includes spending on medical research not needed for battlefield medicine, environmental restoration, US-based schools and education, climate programs, security assistance, and humanitarian aid. McCusker contends the Defense Department spends millions on humanitarian and development assistance properly in the domains of the State Department and USAID – work for which defense military and civilian personnel may lack expertise and education. “Should the Pentagon continue to take on new and expanded missions?” “What are the implications of doing so?” Questions diplomats and scholars have been raising for decades.
Open Doors 2022 Report on International Educational Exchange, Institute of International Education (IIE) in Partnership with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange (ECA), U.S. Department of State, November 2022. IIE’s web portal provides access to newly released key findings, data highlights, and data sets on international students studying in the United States. Key findings include the following. During the 2021/22 academic year, 948,519 international students studied in the US, a 4 percent increase over the previous year. New enrollments are comparable to pre-pandemic levels. Ninety percent returned to in-person classes. China and India represent a majority (52%). Graduate students increased by 17 percent and were higher than the pre-pandemic total. More than half of all international students studied in stem fields (54%).
Christopher Paul, Michael Schwille, Michael Vasseur, Elizabeth M. Bartels, and Ryan Baur, The Role of Information in U.S. Strategic Competition, RAND Corporation, 2022. Christopher Paul and his RAND colleagues assess key concepts, contrasting views, and challenges to the conduct of information operations in strategic competition – their framing term for a category of “gray zone” conflict on a spectrum between cooperation and open hostilities. Although strategic competition draws on all elements of national power (the authors provide lengthy lists of activities in diplomatic, information, economic, and military domains), the focus of the report, written for the US European Command’s Information Directorate (J39), is on operations in the information environment. Key challenges to practitioners include: legacy commitment by senior officials to a peace/war dichotomy rather than a competition continuum, ambiguities in gray zone aggression, difficulty in assigning attribution especially in cyberspace, difficulty in deterring gradualism in strategic competition, the threat of escalation to nuclear conflict, episodic mindsets in what is an enduring category of competition, and problems in interagency coordination and assigning government responsibilities. Possible solutions lie in restructuring and reauthorizing for the competition continuum, whole of government involvement, invoking a campaigning mindset, strengthening relations with partners and allies, proactive and transparent means, increased risk tolerance, and empowering civil society in partner countries. Reports by RAND and other federally funded research organizations, enabled by massive US defense budgets, have long benefitted military operations and training. Calls for a federally funded research center to assess comparable challenges, new technologies, and operational solutions in US diplomacy go unheeded.
Reputational Security: The Imperative to Reinvest in America’s Strategic Communications Capabilities, Gates Global Policy Center and College of William and Mary Global Research Institute, November 11, 2022. In this recent addition to the abundance of advisory reports on US public diplomacy and strategic communication, the Gates Forum at W&M summarizes lessons learned from American practice, blind spots and opportunities provided by an ally (Japan) and competitors (Russia and China), and the merits of policy options going forward. The report consists of eight research papers: a synthesis report and seven background papers by W&M and outside contributors. The synthesis report identifies six so-called “pain points” that undermine America’s reputational security and a variety of generative recommendations divided into structural and operational categories. Some are innovative. Most are grounded in changes to White House, State Department, and US international broadcasting arrangements. Many are rooted in the long history of America’s episodic commitment to diplomacy’s public dimension. All require bipartisan political support and roadmaps to achieve success. See also Joe B. Johnson, “New Report on U.S. Strategic Communication Moots a Czar or New Agency,” Public Diplomacy Council of America.
Samantha Custer (W&M) with inputs from background paper authors, “Reputational Security: The Imperative to Reinvest in America’s Strategic Communications Capabilities.”
Samantha Custer, Bryan Burgess, Austin Baehr, Emily Dumont, (W&M), “Assessing U.S. Historical Strategic Communications: Priorities, Practices, and Lessons from the Cold War through the Present Day.”
Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “Public Diplomacy and the Road to Reputational Security: Analogue Lessons from US History for a Digital Age.”
Samantha Custer, Austin Baehr, Bryan Burgess, Emily Dumont, Divya Mathew, and Amber Hutchinson (W&M), “Winning the Narrative: How China and Russia Wield Strategic Communications to Advance Their Goals.”
Maria Repnikova (Georgia State University), “China-Russia Strategic Communications: Evolving Visions and Practices.”
Jessica Brandt, (The Brookings Institution), “Autocratic Approaches to Information Manipulation: A Comparative Case Study.”
Nancy Snow (Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University), “A Reliable Friend and Strategic Partner in the Indo-Pacific Region: Japan’s Strategic Communications and Public Diplomacy.”
Samantha Custer with PEPFAR Case Study by Eric Brown (W&M), “(Re)investing in Our Reputational Security: Alternative Models and Options Strengthen U.S. Strategic Communications.”
Recent Items of Interest
“Appointment of James P. Rubin as Special Envoy and Coordinator of the Global Engagement Center,” December 16, 2022, US Department of State; Morgan Vina and Gabriel Noronha, “Are Special Envoys Getting Special Treatment From Congress?” December 30, 2022, The Hill.
Matt Armstrong, “Arming for the War We’re In: The Propaganda of ‘Propaganda,’” December 13, 2022; “The Freedom Academy: An Old Idea Resurfacing,” November 22, 2022, MountainRunner.
Jennifer Bachus, “New [State Department] Bureau, New Cyber Priorities in Foreign Affairs,” November 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.
Lili Bayer, “Orbán’s New Public Enemy: A Twitter-savvy US Ambassador Calling Out Conspiracies,” November 15, 2022, Politico.
“Broadcasting to the USSR: History and Precedent,” (One hour video with Mark Pomar, Gene Parta, Michelle S. Daniel, and Vasily Gatov – moderated by Nick Cull), December 5, 2022, Public Diplomacy Council of America.
Bruce K. Byers, “Language and Cultural Immersion Build Effective Communication,” November 2022, American Diplomacy.
“The City Diplomacy List,” November 10, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Nicholas Coghlan, “The Anti-Diplomat: Working in a Garage-Turned-Embassy Office,” October 23, 2022, Diplomatic Diary.
Robert Domaingue, “Why the State Department Needs an Office of Diplomatic Gaming,” November 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.
Renee Earle, “Remembering Mikhail Gorbachev and the 1991 Coup,” November 2022, American Diplomacy.
Editorial Board, “Where Are All the U.S. Ambassadors?” December 5, 2022, The Washington Post.
Paul Farhi, “Voice of America Removes Story That Embarrassed Vietnam’s Prime Minister,” November 15, 2022, The Washington Post.
“HSToday Q&A: First U.S. Cyber Ambassador Nathaniel Fick on His Mission for Cyber Diplomacy,” December 14, 2022, Homeland Security Today.
G. John Ikenberry, “Why American Power Endures,” November/December 2022, Foreign Affairs.
Philip Kennicott, “Ukraine Wants a Boycott of Russian Culture. It’s Already Happening,” December, 14, 2022, The Washington Post.
Olga Krasnyak, “Russian Science Diplomacy and Global Nuclear Security in a Time of Conflict,” December 2, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Daniel Larison, “Underfunded Dipomacy is Feature (Not a Bug) of US Foreign Policy,” October 31, 2022, Responsible Statecraft.
Derek Leebaert, “How Foreign Policy Amateurs Endanger the World,” October 26, 2022, Politico Magazine.
Fredrik Logevall, “[Review Essay] The Ghosts of Kennan: Lessons From the Start of the Cold War,”January/February 2023, Foreign Affairs. Frank Costigliola, Kennan: A Life Between Two Worlds, (Princeton University Press, 2023).
Douglas London, “The High Cost of American Heavy-Handedness: Great-Power Competition Demands Persuasion, Not Coercion,” December 20, 2022, Foreign Affairs.
Douglas Martin, “Frank Shakespeare, TV Executive Behind a New Nixon, Dies at 97,” December 16, 2022, The New York Times; Brian Murphy, “Frank Shakespeare, Nixon’s TV Guru Who Redefined Political Ads, Dies at 97,” December 17, 2022, The Washington Post.
Jan Melissen and HwaJung Kim, “The Diplomatic Elite, the People at Home and Democratic Renewal,” November 4, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Maurice Mitchell, “Building Resilient Organizations,” November 29, 2022, The Forge.
Loveday Morris and Will Oremus, “Russian Disinformation is Demonizing Ukrainian Refugees,” December 8, 2022, The Washington Post.
Sudarshan Ramabadran, “G20: How Values, Religions & Civil Societies Can Reinvent PD in Today’s Times,” November 15, 2022, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
Brendan Rivage-Seul, “‘Winning the Competition for Talent’ – The Case for Expanding the Diplomat in Residence Program,” December 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.
Nancy Snow, “On Being a Woman in Public Diplomacy: Some Personal Reflections,” December 2022 (first published November 24, 2021), Place Branding and Public Diplomacy.
Dick Virden, “Ukrainians to Putin’s Empire: Hell No!” November 2022, American Diplomacy.
Richard Wagoner, “Remembering Syndicated Radio Pioneer Norm Pattiz of Westwood One,” December 4, 2022, Los Angeles Daily News.
Bill Wanlund, “Promoting Democracy in Tumultuous Times,” December 2022, The Foreign Service Journal.
Gem From The Past
Ellen Huijgh, ed., “The Domestic Dimension of Public Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy,Volume 7, Issue 4, 2012. This decade old issue of HJD anticipated today’s increased attention to diplomacy’s domestic dimension, not as a fad, but as a reflection of fundamental changes in society that are influencing diplomatic practice. The editor was the late Ellen Huijgh (University of Antwerp). An article by Steven Curtis and Caroline Jaine (London Metropolitan University) examined the domestic dimension of the UK’s public diplomacy. Ellen Huijgh and Caitlin Byrne (Griffith University) compared the experiences of Canadian and Australian diplomats in engaging domestic constituencies. Kathy Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida) used theories of stakeholders and publics in business and public relations to illuminate concepts of strategic publics at home and abroad. The late Teresa LaPorte (University of Navarra) developed the concept of “intermestic” public diplomacy and the criteria of legitimacy and effectiveness to validate non-state actors as independent diplomatic actors. And Yiwei Wang (Tongji University, Shanghai) explored the impact of China’s domestic dimension on its public diplomacy abroad.
In addition to current scholarly interest in diplomacy at home, evident in the current issue of HJD (listed above), practitioners are demonstrating growing interest in diplomacy’s domestic dimension. The American ambassadors in Blueprints for a More Modern U.S. Diplomatic Service (listed above) call for a “robust domestic speaking element . . . linked to diplomats home leave.” Their recommendations to strengthen diplomat-in-residence and professional education, expand senior officer travel in the US, and create a Diplomatic Reserve Corps are all justified in part by their potential to “strengthen the bond between American citizens and their diplomats.”
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.
