Latest Must-Reads in Public Diplomacy: November 2024

CPD Faculty Fellow Bruce Gregory has compiled a list of the latest must-reads in public diplomacy. Known affectionately at CPD as "Bruce's List," this list is a compilation of books, journal articles, papers and blog posts on a wide variety of PD topics. Highlights from the latest list include publications on topics spanning ethics in public diplomacy, forward-thinking strategy, and public diplomacy in the digital age. 

Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, Lori Melton McKinnon, and Jami A. Fullerton, “Ethics in Public Diplomacy: Insights from Practitioners,”  Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2024, 1-17. In this article, valuable for its inquiry into views of serving diplomacy practitioners, Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida), McKinnon, and Fullerton (Oklahoma State University) examine the “neglected” topic of ethics in public diplomacy’s study and practice. Their findings are grounded in Fitzpatrick’s 2007 survey of US Information Agency alumni (The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy: An Uncertain Fate, Brill, 2010) and interviews with US public diplomacy practitioners in one large US embassy in Europe in 2022. The authors discuss practitioners’ views in the context of four categories. (1) Overall, the practitioners interviewed perceive ethical best practices to be morally and pragmatically beneficial. Implied in their responses was a belief “their work is inherently ethical,” because they represent US interests and defend democratic values. (2) The “practitioners struggled to identify specific sources” of ethical guidelines. (3) Ethical principles cited as most important included “honesty, integrity, respect, dialogue, and transparency.” (4) Asked to describe challenges to ethical practices, practitioners cited disinformation, building relationships based on truth, boomerang effects of digital tools, State Department clearance processes, and loss of message control when relying on local partners with different goals. The authors recognize their findings cannot be generalized given the small number of interviews and other limitations in the study. But the issues raised can inform needed further research. The authors conclude a formal code of ethics would clarify what is implicit in diplomatic practice and advance the professional standing of practitioners.  

Jan Melissen, “Strategic Functions of Future Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication, November 6, 2024. HJD’s Editor-in-Chief Jan Melissen introduces this practitioners’ Forum on diplomacy’s strategic functions with reflections on the conceptual and theoretical value of public commentaries by forward-looking diplomacy insiders. His overview examines challenges diplomats face when planning in the context of rapid change; knowledge deficits in ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs); and the impact of domestic politics, multiple bureaucracies, and emotions in polarized publics on whole of government external relations. HJD will continue to publish original academic research, he promises, but practitioners’ Forums can contribute to setting agendas in diplomacy studies and provide research opportunities for scholars. Forum articles by Manuel Lafont Rapnouil and Arjan Uilenreef, policy planning directors in the French and Dutch MFAs, are discussed below. 

Vivian S. Walker, “Reimagining Public Diplomacy for the Digital Age,”  Foreign Service Journal,October 2024, 38-41. In this FSJ feature article, retired Foreign Service Officer Vivian Walker (Georgetown University) reviews three new books with “practitioner, policy, and academic perspectives” on public diplomacy. My American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Change Agents in Foreign Relations (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) examines American public diplomacy’s origins, evolution, and how innovative and rival practitioner communities transformed US diplomacy and foreign relations. In Reputational Security: Refocusing Public Diplomacy for a Dangerous World (Polity, 2024), Nicholas Cull (University of Southern California) reformulates the concept of soft power for a world dominated by geopolitical conflicts and disruptive information technologies. Chapters in A Research Agenda for Public Diplomacy, a compendium edited by Eytan Gilboa (Bar-Ilan University), examine trends and critical questions in public diplomacy scholarship, teaching, and practice. Walker’s informed and generous reviews summarize each book’s central themes. Separately and collectively, she argues, they “make a powerful case for the emergence of a multidisciplinary, innovative, and expansive practice equal to the challenges of a digital age.” Missing in all three, however, are solutions to persistent leadership and resource deficits and advice on how public diplomacy, which she describes as “the most undervalued element of foreign policy,” can be operationalized in bureaucracies.