Connecting Public Diplomacy and Foreign Policy

Extract

The term public diplomacy was coined in the 1960s, but it only achieved widespread use in the 1990s, after Joseph Nye's coining of the term “soft power.” As a result of the field's novelty, public diplomacy scholars are still searching for theories from disciplines ranging from communication to public relations, from international relations (IR) to marketing. The interdisciplinary nature of the study of public diplomacy sometimes overshadows the connection between public diplomacy and foreign policy.

Efe Sevin's book reminds the readers that “public diplomacy carries the label of diplomacy” (26); as such, it is not merely a communication process, but an intentional tool of foreign policy to achieve certain objectives. This connection is often overlooked in the literature, which has focused more on the communication aspect of public diplomacy initiatives. Sevin treats public diplomacy as “an extension of traditional diplomacy” (37).

There is widespread agreement in the literature that public diplomacy contributes to achieving foreign policy goals and advancing national interests. However, the question of “how” it does so has not yet been adequately dealt with. Attempting to trace how public diplomacy initiatives can help advance a country's foreign policy objectives and national interest, which are operationalized as self-declared foreign policy goals (9), Efe Sevin builds a theoretical framework called the “six pathways of connection” (Chapter 3). The framework mainly concerns the intermediary phase of causal mechanisms (the conversion) between engagement with foreign publics (the intervention) and the achievement of foreign policy goals (the outcome). Sevin introduces three layers in the causal mechanism phase, namely, public opinion, relationship dynamics, and public debates, as well as six pathways of connection across these layers. The layer of public opinion is based on the concept of soft power. The larger impact of this layer relates to the ability of the initiatives of public diplomacy to generate attraction (a favorable view of the practicing country), while the “narrower (or focused) impact” is building trust in the practitioner country among the target audience by creating a benefit of the doubt concerning the country's motives. The second layer, relationship dynamics, aims to “redefine the roles of the practitioner country” (66) by familiarizing the societies of the home and host countries with each other (socialization pathway) and achieve direct influence through building and maintaining relationships with key individuals (elites and policymakers) to affect the foreign policies of the target country. The third layer, public debates, concerns agenda-setting over the long term and framing in the immediate term. Using Yun and Toth's (2009) sociological public diplomacy, Sevin suggests that these three layers mirror IR theories of realism, liberalism, and constructivism, respectively.