Place Branding and Public Diplomacy

, Volume 6, Issue 1, pp 18–26 | Cite as

Towards a theory of influence for twenty-first century foreign policy: The new public diplomacy in a globalized world

  • Alex Evans
  • David Steven
Invited Article
First Online:
Received:
Revised:

Abstract

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.

Keywords

public diplomacy foreign policy strategy global issues governance 
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Copyright information

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2010

Authors and Affiliations

  • Alex Evans
    • 1
  • David Steven
    • 1
  1. 1.River Path Associates

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