| Towards a theory of influence for twenty-first-century foreign policy: public diplomacy |
|
Global issues are diffuse and rest on the decisions and behaviour of millions, if not billions, of people. Governments must respond by changing the way they practise diplomacy, offer development assistance and deploy force. This means making the new public diplomacy a core foreign policy tool. For any issue, there will typically be three goals. The first is to build shared awareness, a common understanding of an issue around which networks of state and non-state actors can coalesce. With that in place, a shared platform can be built to campaign for change. The end point is a shared operating system: a framework for a collective response to a joint problem. These goals can be pursued through distinct public diplomacy strategies that sit on a continuum that runs from consensual and open at the one end to covert and controlling at the other. Together, these strategies form the kernel of a theory of influence for twenty-first-century diplomacy. Look at today’s biggest global issues – climate change, pandemics, energy security, terrorism and other ‘shadow sides’ of globalisation – and it’s striking that the challenges governments find it hardest to deal with are highly diffuse, involving the actions and beliefs of millions (if not billions) of people.¹ Take climate change. The difference between success and failure in this case is about the spending, investment and behavioural decisions made by countless businesses and individuals. Consider AIDS/HIV, where the long-term outlook depends on how successful states are at influencing the most personal issue imaginable: their citizens’ sexual behaviour. Or think of the challenge of good governance in developing countries, where it is the nature of the political culture – as much as organisations and laws – that makes the difference. As issues have become increasingly distributed, the way governments work is having to change too.² Diplomats are breaking out of a comfort zone within which they have focused much of their energy on talking to their peers. Soldiers are confronting the limitations of force, as ‘war among the people’ overtakes the old paradigm of interstate conflict.³ Development specialists are facing the fact that, in fragile states, development cannot simply be ‘bought’ through large transfers of resources.⁴ In all three fields, there is a renewed focus on culture; on the power of ideas and values; and on the complex relationship between hierarchical organisations and informal networks. But there are still hard questions for governments to consider about their role in a globalised world. What influence do they have? How can they best exert it? How do countries integrate all aspects of their hard and soft power? And how can they animate loose coalitions of state and non-state actors in pursuit of a common goal? It is these questions that lie at the heart of today’s public diplomacy. by Alex Evans, Non-Resident Fellow, Center on International Cooperation, New York University, and David Steven, Managing Director, River Path Associates |