Collaborative Public Diplomacy and PD’s Domestic Dimension
Diplomacy, as an art of building, maintaining and using relations, has entered new grounds. With the dynamic processes of globalization, governments are losing their monopoly on sovereignty in areas from communication to economy. This is because they are inadequately equipped to independently face the growing number of challenges that transcend borders—from environmental change, financial instabilities, migrations to international crime and terrorism. The collapsing of sovereignties is coupled with mutations of identity, which today are less of a national nature and increasingly more of transnational ideas/values type. This new international context has had a significant impact on the diplomatic practice, posing many new challenges for Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs) around the world. Today, diplomacy has to combine its more traditional functions of inter-state representation, negotiation and protection of interest with messaging and relationship building between societies and groups. It needs to also adjust to the ever blurring line between domestic and international frontiers, where foreign policy has often substantial implications at home. Finally, MFAs must learn to share the diplomatic space, with think tanks, universities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other groups engaged in international activities. With these three challenges combined, diplomatic practice indeed seems more and more the practice of public diplomacy (PD) (Gregory 2012, 372).
Traditionally, PD has been understood as government effort to influence foreign publics in order to attain certain foreign policy goals. Just like the general practice of diplomacy, however, also PD has significantly transformed over time. Changes in the global communication sphere have to some extent downgraded the efficiency of propaganda, promotional campaigns or even direct contacts between government officials and foreign publics (Melissen 2005a). Instead, because of their authentic character, the development of relations between civil society actors abroad and at home comes to the forefront of PD, with the state playing only a facilitative role in the process. Alterations in PD instruments have been accompanied by changes in modes of communication. A movement from monologue, to dialogue, to collaboration has now become a fact (Cowan and Arsenault 2008). In this new context, the definition of PD audience also needs to broaden, with “strategic publics” identified both among foreign publics and at home.
This book is dedicated to the newest developments in the practice of public diplomacy, namely the policy’s domestic dimension. The author defines the phenomena as “government’s ability to engage its own society in foreign policy practices through information, collaboration and identity-defining.” Such engagement requires however a profound change in the way states think about PD. It involves a paradigm shift from monological/dialogical PD to collaborative PD. This is because the domestic society and non-governmental stakeholders can only be truly engaged through collaboration, which is defined in this book as undertaking projects, in a spirit of mutual partnership for common good. Such collaboration at home also transcends into foreign policy and PD practice. Instead of professing image cultivation or spreading ideologies and norms, the aim of the New Public Diplomacy (NPD) is to “explain fully one’s policies and show how they contribute to the delivery of global public goods, such as peace, security, respect for human rights and international law, prosperity, sustainable development, and more” (Proedrou and Frangonikolopoulos 2012, 734). When a genuine collaborative PD is implemented, the policy ceases to be a uniquely state activity (Melissen 2005b, 8) and becomes one of a multitude of domestic actors (including NGOs), which work together with foreign audiences to address transnational challenges.
The study shows that the outliers of public diplomacy’s domestic outreach are countries with the strongest collaborative culture at home. Such culture should be understood not only as the government’s ability to work with domestic civil society but most importantly as the state’s willingness to foster trust between a multitude of stakeholders and promote civil engagement in foreign policy practice. As the role of non-traditional actors increases, countries which know how to meaningfully engage with their domestic publics significantly enhance the efficiency of PD activities abroad. As studies show, this is because:
- a)effectiveness of PD increasingly flourishes in inverse proportion to the degree of visible state interference (Huijgh 2012), thus the need to have convinced non-governmental domestic partners as intermediaries with foreign audiences.
- b)communication with one’s society bridges the growing gap between foreign policy objectives and domestic public sentiment toward the outside world (Zaharna 2010), which in turn increases the credibility of PD initiatives.
The book presents empirical data derived from three country case-studies (Norway, Australia and the USA), which highlight challenges in developing the different platforms of domestic dimension of PD: informative, cooperative and identity-defining. First, as shown on the Norwegian and Australian examples, the broad PD messaging needs to enjoy domestic legitimacy and self-identification with the cause. Second, foreign policy-makers need to learn to involve the domestic public in both formulation and implementation of PD initiatives (Case-study 3: U.S. Government-sponsored educational exchange programs) but also increasingly acknowledge and support PD activities that are undertaken independently by domestic civil society (Case-study 1: Norway as a Peace Nation). Finally, state PD practitioners need to see domestic publics as “strategic publics” with which two-way communication is as important as it is with foreign publics. Comparing these three case-studies allows drawing preliminary conclusions about the variables that predispose countries to take on a more collaborative PD. Among these are the foreign policy tradition, the domestic democratic culture and the relations between government and non-governmental actors.
Theoretical Framework and Study Design
In the study of PD, practice often precedes theory. The recent theoretical developments related to the “New Public Diplomacy” and PD’s Domestic Dimension are of no exception. They skillfully describe what has become a reality in the field: a movement from monologue, to dialogue, to collaboration (Cowan and Arsenault 2008). Scholars begin to appreciate domestic engagement in PD initiatives not only as ways for these initiatives to gain credibility and access (Riordan 2005), but also as a way to bridge the growing gap between foreign policy objectives and domestic public sentiment toward the outside world (Zaharna 2010). Although researchers have focused for many years now on how domestic non-governmental actors can influence foreign policy outcomes (Nye and Keohane 1971; Clarke 1998; Edwards 1999; Reimann 2006), only a few direct their attention to the rising role of domestic civil society in the field of PD (Riordan 2005; Cull 2009; Fitzpatrick 2012; Huijgh 2013). Even less consideration is paid to the explanatory power of sociological approaches, which introduce into PD theory concepts such as social capital, identity and inter-group collaboration. The aim of this book is to fill the gap by providing evidence that states that can profoundly engage with their publics and build policy in synchronization with society’s identity enhance the efficiency of their diplomacy activities abroad.
The book takes public diplomacy scholarship forward by adding three case-studies, based on over 80 interviews with practitioners, which scrutinize how the policy’s domestic outreach is understood and exercised in Norway, Australia and the USA. In addition, the study provides the following contributions to the field:
- First, it offers evidence that for PD messaging to be efficient abroad, it needs to enjoy domestic legitimacy and the society’s self-identification with the cause (Case-study 1: Norway as a Peace Nation and Case-study 2: Australia’s Ambivalent Engagement with Asia).
- Second, it argues that successful PD program implementation relies heavily on the level of engagement of the domestic civil society in the policy process (Case-study 3: United States and Government-sponsored exchange programs), which in turn is dependent on the quality of relations between NGOs and government in a given state (Case-study 1 and Case-study 2).
- Third, it introduces a three-dimensional model for PD domestic outreach assessment, arguing that state’s engagements with its own society is a holistic endeavor, which includes an informative, cooperative and identity-defining platform.
- Fourth, by acknowledging that non-state actors begin to initiate PD and interviewing over 30 NGO representatives from three different countries, it provides a glimpse into such practice in the area of development aid.
- Finally, by comparing the three case-studies, the book concludes that states with good working relationship with civil society and a more advanced collaborative culture at home will be the outliers of the new collaborative PD abroad.
By taking as the baseline for analysis the three major contemporary theoretical approaches to international relations (IR), this book has argued that constructivism has been able to deliver one of the most promising approaches to the study of PD. From a constructivist perspective, PD is not a manipulative tool of statecraft but instead a channel of finding common-grounds, building common-identities and strengthening collaboration. The theory’s openness to explore change in the basic mechanism of IR provides space for the inclusion of sociological approaches and gives way to deliberations about the NPD and PD’s Domestic Dimension.
Methodology and Limitations
By presenting three case-studies, the book not only provides insights into diplomatic practice of Norway, Australia and the USA, but more importantly offers the first comparative analysis of PD’s domestic dimension. As observed by Eytan Gilboa (2008, 72) “comparative analysis contributes more to generalization than single case studies because it avoids the danger of overemphasizing the unique features of each case.” While case-studies presented in Chaps. 3, 4 and 5 prepare the grounds for such generalization, Chap. 6 compares these practices and draws conclusions about the state performance in executing PD’s domestic dimension. Such comparison is made against the backdrop of the three platforms of domestic engagement, thus using variables, which include government–NGO relations and the level of societal trust and cooperative culture.
When analyzing the specific country case-studies, the research has been based on primary and secondary sources, as well as on the qualitative method of elite interviewing. The rationale of an elite interview is to “acquire information and context that only that person can provide about some event or process” (Hochschild 2009). For the research purpose, the author has selected a group of 80 Norwegian, Australian and American diplomats and non-governmental activists involved in PD activities of their states. The reason for choosing such a research population is that diplomats and their non-governmental partners, through day-to-day work are ...