Advancing Public Diplomacy from a Global Citizenship Perspective: An Empirical Study on How State and Non-state Actors Address Foreign Citizens in a Globalised World

Tóm tắt

Abstract: The growing relevance of global citizenship forces governments to rethink the procedures of conducting foreign policy and to acknowledge the plurality of actors in international relations. Besides being a target group of public diplomacy, citizens themselves constitute actors. They form associations or serve as small-scale ambassadors when exchanging thoughts and ideas with people from other countries and cultures. Thus, citizens have to be seen as a crucial factor in public diplomacy that has to be recognised in both the academic analysis of public diplomacy and the practice of the concept.

Based on the first comprehensive and empirically grounded study on this concept in Germany, this paper analyses how public diplomacy actors address foreign citizens and how public diplomacy is conducted today. It points out that theoretical considerations on global citizenship contribute to advancing the concept of public diplomacy and vice versa.