The Mountie looked inordinately tall as he stepped forward to pose for photographs. His Red Serge jacket caught the eye from a distance, even though the knots of visitors gathering at the entrance to the building. Up close, his medal ribbons indicated that he was the real deal and not just a handsome actor in a hired costume. Off to one side, a stilt walker in the glittery Cirque du Soleil costume had attracted her own following, but a line formed regardless and pairs of visitors waited politely for their own private moment with an enduring visual icon of Canadian-ness. It could have been a scene from a parade in the shade of the parliament in Ottawa, but it was not. It was Shanghai in the summer of 2010 and Canada was just one of 190 countries seeking to present themselves to the ordinary people of China as participants in what was to be the largest mass participation event in history to date, the Shanghai Expo. Canada had embraced the opportunity, committing over forty million dollars to build a pavilion and becoming the first country to formally commit to exhibiting at the fair. The Mountie stood at the gate of an impressive wholeâthere was the Canadian pavilion building with its eye-catching angular steel and cedarwood flanks created by the firm of Saia Barbarese Topouzanov of Montreal; there was an interactive exhibit entitled The Living City which showcased ideas of sustainable civic development; there was a film from the National Film Board which edited images from multiple Canadian cities to produce a hybrid Canadian urban experience; there was a restaurant which introduced fairgoers to both Poutine and Moosehead beer. Cirque du Soleil were integral to the operation, as was the honorary chairman of the pavilion, a Canadian familiar to every Chinese household, Mark Roswell. Known by his stage name Darshan (big mountain), Roswell was noted for his mastery of Mandarin and traditional Chinese comic form. In some ways, it was a moment of well-staged entertainment, but it was also a moment of diplomacy as complete as any moment attending that summerâs other Sino-Canadian milestonesâPremiere Hu Jintaoâs State Visit to Canada or Governor General MichaĂ«lle Jeanâs visit to Chinaâexcept in that it was not designed to engage a foreign government, but, rather, a foreign public. It was a moment of public diplomacy and a step towards ensuring that aspect of security that comes from being well thought of in the world: reputational security.1
This book will explore the contemporary Canadian experience of public diplomacy. It is intended for two audiences: students, scholars, and practitioners with an existing interest in Canadian foreign policy who seek to understand its public dimensions, and for a second audience familiar with public diplomacy from a literature which has tended to focus on United States or British cases, who are interested to better understand the Canadian experience. This introduction will attempt to serve both audiences.
Public diplomacy is an essential component of contemporary foreign relations. The term originated in the mid-1960s, when theorists in the United States sought a way to speak about out-reach to foreign publics that would leave the term âpropagandaâ free to be thrown at the Communist Bloc. Its first use was in the title of the Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy at Tufts University near Boston, founded as a memorial to the former journalist who had exemplified the practice while running global outreach for President Kennedy. It has since evolved through use by practitioners and scholars into a convenient portmanteau phrase for the range of instruments used by an international actor to conduct foreign policy by engaging a foreign public. Whatever its coinerâs intent, public diplomacy is no longer synonymous with propaganda because propaganda is always conceived as a mechanism for getting to a particular result. Public diplomacy has the capacity to be a two-way street, to benefit both sides of a relationship and to allow for growth. Yet it is clear from the practice of public diplomacy that some elements (perhaps all, in the hands of some actors) risk tumbling back into propaganda. This is part of the reason why scholarship and public discussion of public diplomacy are so important. The term jumped beyond its US origin only in the 1990s as part of the process of understanding the mechanism by which the Cold War had come to an end. As the role of the media in international relations grew, so interest in public diplomacy increased. The attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, sealed its relevance. Suddenly, the western world needed a frame to understand how to reach out to public opinion as part of a campaign against terrorism. Public diplomacy became a key part of that discussion. As my co-editor Michael Hawes argues in his chapter, Canada has an admirable tradition of public diplomacy but has allowed that to slip. It is essential that the country learn all it can to revive the best in its past global engagement. A restoration requires a full understanding of the nature of public diplomacy.
While the term âpublic diplomacyâ is new, its practice is as old as organized statecraft. In its classic form, public diplomacy may be divided into five essential components: listening, advocacy, cultural diplomacy, exchange diplomacy, and international broadcasting. Each element has its relevance in the world today and its own place in Canadaâs approach.
Listening is an international actorâs attempt to engage an international audience by systematically collecting information from and about them and feeding what is learned into the policy-making process. While the greatest diplomats seem to do this instinctively, many larger powers seem to forget to listen. The work is typically conducted within embassies, though in some circumstances, independent agencies such as market researchers or media analysts may be employed to inform a particular policy. Canadian listening in the past has included attention to the position of the country in national brand and soft power indices. Significant players in contemporary listening include the Swiss, who, since 2001, have operated a research-driven approach under the auspices of a unit within the foreign ministry called PrĂ©sence Suisse/PrĂ€senz Schweiz. Listening in public diplomacy is sometimes focused narrowly on the process of evaluating a campaign; proof of effectiveness is always helpful at budget time and, hence, this kind of listening is a growing preoccupation for public diplomacy agencies around the world. The need for a genuine culture of listening in Canadian public diplomacy is one of the issues raised by veteran Canadian diplomat Daryl Copland.
Advocacy is an international actorâs work to explain a particular policy to an international audience. It includes a wide range of methods including speeches, press releases, andâin recent yearsâonline campaigns. Trends within advocacy include large-scale, single-country campaigns promoting national brands, such as the Indian tourist ministryâs Incredible India campaign, which began in 2002, or the UKâs GREAT campaign, launched in 2011. We are also seeing multi-actor advocacy collaborations around particular issuesâfor example, the alliance between non-governmental organizations and nations which mobilized so successfully against landmines in the 1990s. Contemporary challenges in advocacy include the problem of credibility in a world segmented by social media. Credibility is boosted when the speaker and audience are linked by similarity. Social media has allowed people to receive much of, if not all of, their information about the world from people very similar to themselves in terms of ideology or demography. Thus, the challenge public diplomats faceâcommunicating with an audience necessarily not like themâis greater than ever. For some countries, advocacy is the most important element of public diplomacy, and indeed, during the premiership of Stephen Harper, the entire process of foreign ministry public engagement was known as advocacy. Major campaigns during the Harper years included work to rally US opinion behind the Keystone XL pipeline program. Some recent Canadian cases of advocacy using digital tools are addressed in the chapter by Evan Potter.
Cultural diplomacy is an international actorâs engagement of a foreign public by facilitating the export of some element of that actorâs artistic or public life or to accomplish a foreign policy project through work in the cultural realm. Historical forms of cultural diplomacy have ranged from missionary activity to complex networks of international schools. Many countries have sought to teach their language to foreigners; others have set up agencies to promote their arts or sporting attainment internationally. Most western powers have long-established specialized agencies for cultural diplomacy, such as Germanyâs Goethe Institute, Britainâs British Council, and Japanâs Japan Foundation. Exceptions include the Republic of Ireland, which found that people tended to like the country anyway and felt that the government could do little to top the impact of Irish bars and annual St Patrickâs Day festivities. The great advantage of cultural diplomacy is that it can function and win friends in situations when direct political contacts are all but impossible. Its disadvantage lies in the necessity of working in the medium-term and of delivering demonstrably politically useful results through cultural avenues. The chapter by Sarah E. K. Smith considers the evolution of Canadaâs arts diplomacy in New York City. Other significant elements of Canadian cultural diplomacy have included the export of films created by the National Film Board of Canada, Canadian hosting of and participation in international expositions, and promotion of Canadian attainment in the field of literature. The Canada Council for the Arts works to assist with translation and travel through its Arts Abroad grants program.2 Complications in cultural work are addressed in the case study of the Dead Sea scrolls presented by Bernard Duhaime and Camille Labadie. It is encouraging to see a renewed Canadian government interest in this approach, as evidenced by a report from the Senate published in June 2019 entitled: Cultural Diplomacy: At the Front Stage of Canadaâs Foreign Policy.3
Exchange diplomacy is an international actorâs attempt to cultivate a foreign public by arranging for representatives of that public to spend time experiencing the actorâs way of life or vice versa. Countries commonly offer both educationally oriented exchanges and exchanges with a more explicit policy objective which might seek out leaders, like the International Visitor Leadership Program launched by the United States following the Second World War, or the UKâs Chevening Scholarships. There are also military-to-military exchanges which support cooperation within alliances like NATO and build relationships beyond. Exchanges differ from other forms of public diplomacy in the extended time frame necessary to show results; conversely, they pay off in terms of the strength of the bonds created and the ease with which they support mutual learning. Canada has a variety of exchange mechanisms including the Canadian Education Exchange Foundation (CEEF), a not-for-profit corporation which arranged international exchanges for the count...