Abstract
Whisky. Haggis. Bagpipes. Drums. DJs. Comedians. On 16 October 2002, the British Council Sweden and British Embassy Stockholm welcomed Swedish VIPs to the simulation of a night out in Scotland. Distilled – Live Scotland in Sweden was one of several initiatives designed to create relationships and partnerships between the two countries that would bring benefits through tourism, trade and educational exchanges. The creation of trusting, long-term relationships through these ‘soft’ events is central to the New public diplomacy. Scholarship and practice have converged on a consensus. Talking at people creates antagonism; talking with and listening to people are morally preferable and politically more effective. This consensus also rests upon liberal and cosmopolitan theories of communication and notions of networked or project politics, an international system featuring problem-solving collaborations rather than enduring ideological programmes. However, just as this consensus formed, so the political context of public diplomacy has come to be defined by accountability and measuring success. It is not enough to try to wins hearts and minds: public diplomacy teams must prove scientifically what won the hearts and minds, what difference the winning of the hearts and the minds made politically and economically, and over what time period. Events like Distilled might create a warm glow and the chance for Scottish and Swedish people to get to know one another, but can any future influence be proven? Would international collaborations have happened without any public diplomacy input?
Pamment’s study offers a new understanding of how regimes of public accountability have shaped public diplomacy strategy and practice in the past decade. He explores how foreign ministries in the US, UK and Sweden have approached the challenge of influencing foreign publics, what success they have had, and the methods they have used to demonstrate effectiveness. He takes the reader through case studies that illuminate how each country put theory into practice. The comparative approach is useful. Highlighting Sweden’s habit of creating meeting spaces only makes clearer how the US has failed to move beyond a transmission model. Sweden produces experiences that create embodied feelings of Swedishness, while the US continues to project messages expressing ideals and values of Americanness. Highlighting how cultural institutions have historically been instrumentalised in US public diplomacy brings into question the dangers in UK public diplomacy of bringing the BBC and British Council within a single national strategy. Meanwhile the bureaucratic rationalisation of UK and US public diplomacy, the time and resources spent on demonstrating public ‘value’ at all times, offers instructive lessons for those running other foreign ministries. The importance of national political context in determining how public diplomacy is realised is evident from the way in which each country’s politicians and civil servants conceptualise influence or the importance they put on national image (Sweden) or demonstrating outcomes like trade deals (the UK).
This book makes two further contributions. The first is Pamment’s organisational sociology of methods. Not only is it notable to observe the methodologies used by ministry staff to measure impact, including the impact of joint initiatives involving cultural institutions, NGOs and businesses. It is also striking how differently each ministry uses audience research. Even if an ambitious and original research team in the US State Department managed to demonstrate long-term effects of a particular cultural diplomacy programme, Pamment’s analysis suggests it would probably be ignored because US foreign policymakers are largely illiterate and uninterested when it comes to social science data and findings. However, this might not matter if local embassies are left to generate their own initiatives. As the UK case suggests, there is a tension between systematic measurement and accountability on the one hand, and creativity and responsiveness on the other.
The second contribution is to present the reader with a manifesto for a world in which public diplomacy enables better international relations. Pamment argues public diplomacy should be the process of managing relations between countries and this should be oriented towards knowing others better. The logical outcome of his argument would be a whole web of continual listening, engaging, and nudging each other. Leading states would then take into account and be more sensitive to each other’s wishes, creating a more benign and cooperative international system. Public diplomacy impact research would be valued not for how successfully it demonstrates behavioural outcomes in target populations, but by how well policymakers use the research to understand other countries’ interests and values. Those who use audience research more effectively will be best placed to lead in addressing global problems because they will have the greatest understanding of which countries are likely to cooperate and why.
What undercuts this vision is the continued primacy of self-interest in international relations. Pamment acknowledges that state intentions have not changed much in the past century and that public diplomacy is still largely approached by practitioners as propaganda, as the manipulation of other states, via their publics. Couldn’t Pamment’s global ecology of mutual understanding become a propaganda tool too? The country with the most high quality audience research will be best placed not just to understand overseas publics but to manipulate them too. If all leading states were researching each other’s publics continuously and intensely on all issues, would the whole be a more reflexive and accommodating system? Or would it be a hall of mirrors where each country learns to simulate its own transparency, and construct and manage its domestic public opinion? Audience research and impact evaluation methods can be tools for control. They are never neutral.
The New Public Diplomacy forces us to ask what international relations and international political communication are for. In this way, Pamment has embedded public diplomacy in the basic dilemmas of international relations. The broader new public diplomacy consensus may in practice see the use of theories and rhetoric or engagement and mutuality for the old realpolitik aims. It remains to be seen whether the new public diplomacy consensus can persuade foreign policymakers to understand national interests in a different light.