Chapter 1. Introduction
1.4 Literature Review
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To put it in a nutshell, people-to-people diplomacy could unleash a new wave of innovation and economic growth in the century of global transfusion.
1.4 Literature Review
I. Public Diplomacy a) Public Diplomacy
Public diplomacy (PD) is a fairly common subject of academic research in Western schools of international relations, that is why the quantity of publications on this topic is abundant.
PD is defined in different ways by different scholars, but the broad understanding of the term used in its birthplace – the USA is used to describe “the government’s efforts to conduct foreign policy and promote national interests through direct outreach and communication with the population of a foreign country” (Nakamura, 2010; p.1).
Robert S. Fortner in the book entitled “Public Diplomacy and International Politics: The Symbolic Constructs of Summits and International Radio News” (1994; p. 37) names language as the main tool of the public diplomacy. Since the end of the World War I linguistic constructs allowed to “conjure up” images in response to either stimuli, or evocative thinking. In his opinion, the wording of the USA President Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” was the key element in communicating ideas of peace settlement and foundation of the League of Nations. Furthermore, the invention of radio facilitated the development of propaganda, which later outgrew into the public diplomacy.
Nevertheless, in contrast to propaganda and information warfare PD is not designed for destroying the adversary’s moral by psychological means, so that the opponent begins to doubt the validity of his beliefs and actions (Ellul, 1973).
Thus, “Making Diplomacy Work: Intelligent Innovation for the Modern World” (Hare, 2015) distinguishes the aims of public diplomacy as follows:
• to differentiate one’s country from others;
• to increase people’s familiarity with one’s country via accessing information about it through global communication systems;
• to engage with overseas publics;
• to project a clear message to overseas public for promoting common understanding of international issues.
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Engagement and communication with foreign general public, according to Nye (2004), is exercised on the three levels:
• Regular relationship (clarification of positions and actions in a state’s foreign policy to the counterparts and their nations);
• Strategic communication (discussion of the highest priority issues);
• Long-term communication (building international ties with people responsible for the decision-making process in foreign states.)
Supporting such position and pointing out that PD is the tool lying beyond the borders of traditional state-to-state diplomacy, Malone (1988) claims that the inevitable condition to understand others is to comprehend the motives, culture, history, and psychology of other nations through dialogue. Recognition via feedback from foreign public is important for public diplomacy to be successful, but it should be coupled with a certain amount of positive feelings and a great deal of relevance to prospective partners.
Within the scope of a positive feedback creation, Sussman (2010; p. 24) comes to the conclusion that public diplomacy is “an image-building tool, designed for the purpose of helping to improve negative public opinion abroad”, and it is the task for decision-makers to tame the informational flaws and utilize cultural resources, so that they would work for the national interests.
Although, public diplomacy could also be an interpretative tool. The 2013 Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation proclaims “[o]ne of priorities of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation is the information of international general public regarding official positions of the Russian Federation towards main international issues, foreign policy initiatives and activities of the Russian Federation, the plans and processes of internal socioeconomic development, and scientific and cultural achievements. Russia would be attaining objective perception by the World community with the help of public diplomacy mechanisms, using the capabilities of modern information and telecommunication technologies.”
b) New public diplomacy
Elaborating on the 21st century vision of PD, Zaharna, Arsenault, and Fisher (2013) recognize the complexity of the interconnected world we live in, where many challenges straddle borders and continents. Development of telecommunications created multi-hub, multi-directional frameworks that link communities around the world. As a result, public diplomacy adopts an approach based on cooperation and collaboration with these interconnected communities, while relational strategies become a core imperative for PD. The authors called this phenomenon the
“connective mindshift”.
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According to Potter (2009; p. 39), the environment in which public diplomacy takes place changed radically, which resulted in the emergence of the new public diplomacy. The rethinking of the concept during the past decades was due to:
• the increased importance of public opinion;
• the spread of democracy throughout the world;
• the rise of a more intrusive and global media;
• more diaspora communities;
• a broadened definition of security;
• increased global transparency brought about by advances in communications and the related phenomenon of a more activist civil society;
• the rise of a global culture leading to a reflexive desire to protect cultural diversity;
• an alteration to the definition of state power.
Under such close relations between the concept in question with social affairs, Snyder (2013) states that at the core of PD lies a paradox: public diplomacy is fundamentally a creative endeavor and depends on creative people using creative tools, which are applied to achieve essentially political ends. To reach public audiences it needs to harness the art, languages, the academy, journalism, civil society, the Internet – nearly everything that is not connected to state authorities.
Though, Paul Sharp (2009) denies contradiction between traditional diplomacy and the public diplomacy and its new version. As far as he is concerned, new PD may pose a challenge to certain conceptions of diplomacy, and even to certain types of diplomats, but it does not pose an existential challenge to diplomacy per se. In other worlds, two phenomena are relative in core mission and stimuli.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the series of pamphlets entitled “Better Policies” (Promoting Green and Inclusive Growth in Canada, 2016) has touched upon seven objectives for the new public diplomacy:
• attract investments and mutually beneficial science and technology collaboration;
• to encourage beneficial immigration;
• to increase tourism;
• to promote scholarly exchanges on different academic levels (students, professors etc.);
• to promote good governance through the rule of law, respect for diversity, accountable and transparent government;
• to create support for international trade;
• to ensure a country’s security policy;
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• to promote national identity and reflect it onto international audiences.
Upon the diversity of objectives and functions, one may trace that the new public diplomacy is active on three levels or models (Kelley, 2009; p.80): information, influence, and involvement.
Russian scholar Dolinsky (2011) explicated Kelley’s contention and connected the models of PD with communication styles. As a result, he detects which model is oriented on reaction, and which model preoccupies preemptive actions from policy-makers.
Advocacy of Interests Model Consultative Model
Information Influence Involvement
Communication style Transparent Propagandistic Transparent Timeframe Long-term/
short-term
Long-term/
short-term Long-term
Orientaton Reactive Proactive Reactive/ Proactive
Table 2. Models of Public Diplomacy (Dolinsky, 2011)
Since 2004 the digital information has become the vital part of the new public diplomacy, thanks to Web 2.0 technologies (Marchukov, 2014), for a user gained an opportunity not only to read text materials, but also to express one’s opinion concerning their contents via leaving a comment or ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ buttons. The named technologies gave rise to nascent social-networks, videoblogging, which later provided for Public Diplomacy 2.014 origination.
The new approach to PD envisaged usage of social networks, blogs, mobile game applications involvement in the foreign policy tasks realization, especially in the counterterrorism operations (Glassman, 2008).
Taking into account all shifts in international relations perception, the role of global society in political agenda, and technologies development, the new public diplomacy comprises several groups of actors which play a decent role in shaping international image of a state (Shaduntz, 2014):
• individuals;
• non-governmental organizations;
• non-commercial organizations;
• media;
• states;
• inter-governmental organizations;
• transnational corporations.
14 The term Public Diplomacy 2.0 was introduced in 2008 by James K. Glassman, the then US Under Secretary of State in his speech entitled “Public Diplomacy 2.0: A New Approach to Global Engagement”
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c) Soft Power
Power is an essential element of human existence and one can find signs and manifestations of power in every dimension of social life, from interpersonal relations through economic transactions, to cultural or political disputes. Power has a variety of forms and features.
Professor Joseph Nye developed the concept of soft power in 1989, when he was writing the book “Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power” (1990), in which he separated the state power into two strands – ‘hard power’ and ‘soft power’.
In “Soft power: The means to success in world politics” (2004) he describes the soft power, as appealing to other’s values, interests and preferences which can, in certain circumstances, replace the dependence on carrots and sticks15.
A state, an organization or a single person can exercise power with means other than violence and force. Persuasion, example, seduction, and myth: these are the resources of soft power (Pallaver, 2011). It is being able to convince or persuade others to follow your example, to want what you want, rather than coercing them. Soft power is about a world in which international institutions matter, in which war is not the only way to settle conflicts and in which the ones to succeed are the most powerful, in terms of natural, economic and financial resources and are not necessarily the best equipped.
Soft power has several instruments, which help to exert influence and obtain ideas for the policy creation (Kondo, 2015):
• international institutions (if a country uses institutions and follows rules that encourage other countries to channel or limit their activities in ways it prefers, it will not need as many costly carrots and sticks);
• culture (when a country’s culture includes broad and widely perceptible values and its policies promote values and interests that others share, it increases the probability of obtaining its desired outcome because of the relationship of attraction and duty that it creates);
• economic resources (although economic power is traditionally believed to be the tool of hard power, some economic values, like consumption products of good quality and design, or intangible markers, like living standards, the quality of healthcare and life expectancy
15 The "carrot and stick" approach (also known as "carrot or stick approach") is an idiom that refers to a policy of offering a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior. It is named in reference to a cart driver dangling a carrot in front of a mule and holding a stick behind it. The mule would move towards the carrot because it wants the reward of food, while also moving away from the stick behind it, since it does not want the punishment of pain, thus drawing the cart.
The idiom is used in the field of International Relations to describe the realist concept of 'hard power'. The carrot can stand for tax cuts or other benefits, the stick can stand for the use of (psychological) violence and threats by the government.
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may induce public interest to a particular country and advance its standing among other states);
• political values and policies (domestic or foreign policies that appear to be hypocritical, arrogant, indifferent to the opinion of others or based on a narrow approach to national interests can undermine soft power).
To understand the key drivers behind soft power better and how countries accumulate it over time, the variables that define soft power are organized into three major categories (Ernst &
Young, n.d.):
• global image (a measure of a country’s global popularity and admiration, especially that of its culture. Countries possessing more global admiration have far more soft power influence in the world; variables that reflect a country’s global image include its export of media goods, the popularity of its language, the number of Olympic medals it has earned, the number of its citizens who are global icons and the number of its companies that are globally admired);
• global integrity (measures how much a country adheres to an ethical or moral code; the world respects countries that protect their citizens, uphold political and social freedoms, empower their people and treat their neighbors with respect);
• global integration (gauges how interconnected a country is with the rest of the world;
the number of people who come to visit, study or live in a country and how well a country is able to communicate with the world are the key components behind a country’s connectivity with the rest of the globe and its subsequent ability to wield influence).
In addition to the mentioned postulates Andrey Bobylo (2013) gives an important remark that the variety of initiatives and projects should receive the substantial financial support and be of a medium or large scale, lest al the efforts of soft power implementation fail.
d) Smart Power
The term ‘smart power’ was first introduced by Joseph Nye, as he clams, in 2003 meaning
“…smart strategies that combine the tools of both hard and soft power” (Nye, 2009).
Suzanne Nossel (2004) is also thought to be one of the scholars, who coined the term. In her rendering, smart power is “an agenda that marshals all available sources of power and then apply it in bold yet practical ways to counter threats and capture opportunities”.
Proceeding with the smart power elaboration, Nye (2011) explains that its narrative for the 21st century is not linked to maximizing power or hegemony. The strategy seeks to combine resources of all types into successful strategies in the new context of power diffusion (p. 208). In the new IR background the smart power strategy could provide the answers to five questions:
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• what goals or outcomes are preferred? (the answer to this question implicates setting priorities which would structure trade-offs and to understand relations between tangible possessions goals and general structural goals);
• what resources are available and in which contexts? (understanding of the resources availability and the availability modification in different situations);
• what are the positions and preferences of the targets of influence attempts? (an accurate view of the capabilities and proclivities of potential opponents);
• which forms of power behavior are most likely to succeed? (in a given situation, which tactics, i.e. hard power, co-optive behavior of agenda setting, persuasion, attraction, or their combination would succeed at reasonable time and cost);
• what is the probability of success? (analysis of eventual time and costs needed, how the probability of success would affect consequences).
In sum, the smart power is the synonym of the rightful, efficient, exemplary policy, which has interdisciplinary understanding of the conditions on the international arena, that is why it gains popularity among academics and decision-makers (Chikharev, 2011).
The smart power strategy is not a distinguishing feature of one type of IR actors, for either states, or intergovernmental organizations voiced their support to the named power stratagem.
Mikhnevich (2015) argues that smart power affects international politics within the scope of contextualized collective cognition and comprehension. In that case the states are in critical need to influence other nations to preserve one’s identity. Under such conditions, smart power is an additional factor of the enforced international institutionalization, which one may witness nowadays.
Thus, the scholar defines four areas of smart power application (Ibid; p. 106):
• opposition to the competitive actors’ influence;
• increase of influence on competitive actors;
• increase of influence on non-competitive actors;
• increase of influence within IR system/subsystem.
Notwithstanding the increasing role of trans border cooperation and global internationalization, society development dynamics and decision-making process are formed under the stimulus of the ‘path dependence’ effect. This effect could be understood as “a limitation of choice existing at the moment of speaking, due to historical experience” (Nort, 2010;
p.83). The ‘path dependence’ effect is strongly connected with the stable character of values existing in a community and with the ranking of information flows which would affect the policy
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creation. In sum, the impact of smart power influence is higher when the policy is implemented into the environment with identical cultural codes and social values.
II. International Image of a Country a) International image
Nowadays each country in the world is willing to enhance, reverse, adapt or otherwise manage its international reputation. In the crowded global space, most people and organizations are too busy to learn much about other places, so that they substitute unfamiliarity with stereotypes.
These clichés – positive or negative, true or false – fundamentally affect one’s behavior towards other territories, people, and their products. So, all responsible governments on behalf of their people, institutions, and business entities monitor the world’s perception towards their nation and develop strategies for managing it (Anholt, 2011; p. 294).
Erast Galumov in the “Image vs. Image” (2005) lists characteristics of a state’s image:
• in comparison to a country per se, its image is rather simplistic, but at the same time, it reflects its unique character;
• image is symbolic, for much information about a state could be ‘packed’ into a set of symbols;
• image has concrete character, but it is changeable and adapts to certain conditions;
• to some extent, the image idealizes its object emphasizing its advantages or even inventing them; it casts a veil over a state’s disadvantages;
• image combines both the reality and desiderata, existing and invented features.
Nikolayeva and Bogolyubova (2014) complement the above-mentioned explanation with the notion that the image of a country encompasses several key elements:
• image of its power and authorities;
• image of the political leader;
• image of national economy;
• image of military forces;
• image of information policy;
• image of foreign policy.
At the same time, Kiselev and Smirnova (2006) present their own conception arguing that one should distinguish between ‘state image’ and ‘state vision’. State vision or ‘Me’ vision’ is a general, aggregate, and homogenized picture of a state which forms in the minds of foreign public on the basis of visual attributes lying on the surface, like official documents of a government,
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speeches and statements made by leaders etc. Basically, it could be traced with the help of sociological tools.
In its turn, state image or ‘Me’ image’ is a specially created policy, designed in accordance to expectations, the branding campaign of a particular state. In the scholars’ theory, international image obtains only three-level structure:
• national identity (a state’s unique geographic location, organization of its political and economic system, military power, culture and history, ethnic and confessional population composition, common values);
• international status (membership in international organizations, amicable or hostile relations with other state-actors);
• international role (the functions a state exercise on the international arena, such as a mediator, a peace-keeper, a world policeman etc.).
Analyzing the concept from the perspective of a representative of foreign general public, it is also important to scrutinize the international image under the contentions of the Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen, Fishbein, 1980), which assumes a somewhat rational process in which what one knows about an object affects how one feels towards it. In contrast to other models and theories, which stipulate on the functional and normative attributes of the image, the named theory pays much attention to emotional appeal towards a state. It may derive either from the beauty and attractiveness of its culture and picturesque landscapes, or from pleasant personal experience on
Analyzing the concept from the perspective of a representative of foreign general public, it is also important to scrutinize the international image under the contentions of the Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen, Fishbein, 1980), which assumes a somewhat rational process in which what one knows about an object affects how one feels towards it. In contrast to other models and theories, which stipulate on the functional and normative attributes of the image, the named theory pays much attention to emotional appeal towards a state. It may derive either from the beauty and attractiveness of its culture and picturesque landscapes, or from pleasant personal experience on