The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations

The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations

Jan Melissen

Publisher: Palgrave MacMillanFormat: Paperback

The events of 11th September 2001 triggered a global debate on public diplomacy. Managing the public perception of their state has become an issue in foreign ministries from all countries, ranging from Canada to New Zealand and from Argentina to Mongolia. Many ministries of foreign affairs now develop a public diplomacy policy of their own, and few would like to be caught out without at least paying lip-service to the latest fashion in the conduct of international relations. Their association with public diplomacy can be seen as a symptom of the rise of soft power in international relations or, at another level, as the effect of broader processes of change in diplomatic practice, calling for transparency and transnational collaboration. The new public diplomacy is thus much more than a technical instrument of foreign policy. It has in fact become part of the changing fabric of international relations. Both small and large countries, whether under democratic or authoritarian regimes, and including the most affluent and those that can be counted amoung the world's poorest nations have in recent years displayed a great interest in public diplomacy.Foreign publics now matter to practitioners in a way that was unthinkable 25 years ago. This book joins the debate on the new public diplomacy by analyzing it from a number of thematic and national angles.

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