European Public Diplomacy: Soft Power at Work

245 Pages·2013·1.606 MB·English

by  Mai’a K. Davis Cross, Jan Melissen (eds.)

Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy
Series Editors:
Kathy Fitzpatrick , Quinnipiac University, USA
Philip Seib , University of Southern California, USA
Advisory Board:
Mai’a K. Davis Cross, ARENA Centre for European Studies, Norway
Nicholas J. Cull, University of Southern California, USA
Teresa LaPorte, University of Navarre, Spain
Donna Lee, University of Kent, United Kingdom
Jan Melissen, Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael and University
of Antwerp, Netherlands
Abeer Najjar, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
William A. Rugh, Former US Ambassador to Yemen and United Arab Emirates, USA
Cesar Villanueva Rivas, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico
Li Xiguang, Tsinghua University, China
At no time in history has public diplomacy played a more significant role in world
affairs and international relations. As a result, global interest in public diplomacy has
escalated, creating a substantial academic and professional audience for new works in
the field.
This series examines theory and practice in public diplomacy from a global perspec-
tive, looking closely at public diplomacy concepts, policies, and practices in various
regions of the world. The purpose is to enhance understanding of the importance of
public diplomacy, to advance public diplomacy thinking, and to contribute to improved
public diplomacy practices.
The editors welcome submissions from scholars and practitioners representing a range
of disciplines and fields (including diplomacy, international relations, international com-
munications, public relations, political science, global media, marketing/advertising)
and offering diverse perspectives. In keeping with its global focus, the series encourages
non–US-centric works and comparative studies.
Toward a New Public Diplomacy: Redirecting U.S. Foreign Policy
Edited by Philip Seib
Soft Power in China: Public Diplomacy through Communication
Edited by Jian Wang
Public Diplomacy and Soft Power in East Asia
Edited by Sook Jong Lee and Jan Melissen
The Practice of Public Diplomacy: Confronting Challenges Abroad
Edited by William A. Rugh
The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American Public Diplomacy,
1989–2001
Nicholas J. Cull
Beyond Cairo: US Engagement with the Muslim World
Darrell Ezell
Collaborative Public Diplomacy: How Transnational Networks Infl uenced American Studies
in Europe
Ali Fisher
Religion and Public Diplomacy
Edited By Philip Seib
Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood
Daya Kishan Thussu
European Public Diplomacy: Soft Power at Work
Edited By Mai’a K. Davis Cross and Jan Melissen
European Public Diplomacy
Soft Power at Work
Edited by
Mai’a K. Davis Cross
and
Jan Melissen
EUROPEAN PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
C opyright © Mai’a K. Davis Cross and Jan Melissen, 2013.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-34329-1
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
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this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
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ISBN 978-1-137-34330-7 ISBN 978-1-137-31514-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137315144
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Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: November 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
C O N T E N T S
Foreword v ii
Nicholas J. Cull
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
Mai’a K. Davis Cross and Jan Melissen
One C onceptualizing European Public Diplomacy 1
Mai’a K. Davis Cross
Two West European Public Diplomacy 13
James Pamment
Three New Members’ Public Diplomacy 39
Beata Ociepka
Four P ublic Diplomacy’s Domestic Dimension in the
European Union 5 7
Ellen Huijgh
Five C ity Public Diplomacy in the European Union 85
Teresa La Porte
Six The European External Action Service and
Public Diplomacy 113
Simon Duke
Seven A Network Perspective on Public Diplomacy in
Europe: EUNIC 137
Ali Fisher
Eight The European Union’s Social Power in
International Politics 157
Peter van Ham
Nine N ormative Power and the Future of
EU Public Diplomacy 183
Ian Manners and Richard Whitman
vi Contents
Conclusions and Recommendations on Public
Diplomacy in Europe 205
Jan Melissen
Notes on Contributors 213
Index 219
F O R E W O R D
Nicholas J. Cull
Of all the scholarly tribes to have addressed the issue of public diplomacy
the first and the most loquacious to date have been the historians. Yet,
with a few notable exceptions, neither Europe nor the European Union
has been a subject of this historical inquiry.1 Scholarship has focused princi-
pally on the United States and its approach to the Cold War and most espe-
cially the early phase of that conflict. Europe figures loosely as a target of
American persuasion and the terrain of the so-called Cultural Cold War. 2
The absence of such a discourse should not however be read as indicative
that the experience of the European Union, its predecessors, and the region
as a whole has nothing to offer the discussion around public diplomacy, or
for that that matter that the discourse on public diplomacy has nothing to
contribute to the future development of the European Union. This fore-
word is offered as a modest attempt to encourage exactly that exchange.
The concept of public diplomacy has distinctly American origins. The
term acquired its contemporary meaning—a method by which an interna-
tional actor can conduct foreign policy by engaging a foreign public—only
in 1965 when a retired ambassador and newly minted college dean named
Edmund Gullion struck on the phrase as a convenient alternative to the old
and ugly term propaganda. The new term enabled Americans to continue
to condemn those wicked Russians for their propaganda and simultaneously
flesh out the shiny new American term, public diplomacy, with benign
meanings. Despite this origin in euphemism the term really did evolve into
a distinct set of practices that in the mind of its practitioners (if not its pay-
masters) had its own nonpropagandistic mores privileging exchange and
listening rather than crude self assertion. Despite the novelty of the term
the constituent elements of public diplomacy—listening, advocacy, cultural
diplomacy, exchange, and international broadcasting—had been part of
sound statecraft for centuries. Europe has no shortage of examples.
viii Foreword
The first and foundational way in which any international actor should
engage a foreign public is by listening to that public. European folk his-
tory is full of examples of wise rulers who found innovative ways to gauge
public opinion including sampling opinion personally by travelling abroad
in disguise. Hungary’s King Mathias the Just or Poland’s Casimir III got to
know their own people this way, while England’s Alfred the Great reput-
edly infiltrated the ranks of the Danish invader disguised as a minstrel to
better understand their mentality and morale. The second element in public
diplomacy is advocacy—engaging a foreign public through the explana-
tion of policy. Well documented European exemplars include William the
Silent who worked to explain the Dutch Revolt against Philip II’s Spain
through an apologia published in multiple European languages or John
Milton who interpreted the English Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell
to European opinion as “secretary for foreign tongues.” The third element
of public diplomacy is cultural diplomacy: engaging a foreign audience by
facilitating the export of an artistic, linguistic, or other cultural forms asso-
ciated with an actor. European antecedents include the Roman Republic’s
efforts to diffuse its legal culture around the Mediterranean through the
construction of law schools in Beirut and elsewhere or the Byzantine state’s
sponsorship of Orthodox Christian missionary projects in the Balkans and
Eastern Europe. Such policies were changing the international cultural
landscape, long before European nations created their own cultural agen-
cies like the Alliance Fran ça ise, Italian Cultural Institute, British Council,
Swedish Institute, Goethe Institute, or Instituto Cervantes. Along the way
Britons reached out by exporting the rules to sports, Germans worked to
present their vision of ‘k ultur ’ through classic music, 3 and France honed its
Mission civilisatrice. The fourth element is exchange: engaging a foreign pub-
lic by two-way exchange of persons. Here the classic European examples
are the child exchanges practiced for centuries by the Celts (called altramas
[masculine] or altramacht [feminine] in Irish) and the Nordic peoples ( forst-
erage ), which seem to have played a key role in diffusing cultural practices
and stability within their cultural regions. 4 The final element of public
diplomacy is international broadcasting. Europeans pioneered the engage-
ment of foreign publics through the state sponsorship of news beginning
with their imperial broadcasting initiatives of Netherlands, France, and
Britain in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Pre-electronic precedents can be
found in the attempt of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II to pres-
ent his view of the news of the era to the other courts of mid-thirteenth-
century Europe through a newsletter. Finally one of the great insights of
contemporary public diplomacy theory—that nothing succeeds quite like
the “soft power” of attractive culture and morally admirable policies—is
borne out by Europe’s most successful ruler. Perceived moral value was
part of the power of the man sometimes called the father of Europe: the
first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne (r. 800–14).
The abundance of European examples of the components of public
diplomacy is hardly surprising. What is less well known is that these
Foreword ix
activities played an active role in the formation of the European Union
and its predecessor organizations. It began with listening. The architects
of the original European project paid great attention to public opinion at
home and abroad and the impetus underpinning the project owed some-
thing to pressure from the grass roots in core countries; witness the sup-
port within the six member states for the creation of the European Coal
and Steel Community in 1951. The role of advocacy is even more evi-
dent with the persuasive efforts of such advocates of European integration
as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman or indeed the US government of
the later 1940s and 1950s. Films, posters, and other kinds of publicity in
support of European integration were an important part of the informa-
tion work conducted under the auspices of the US European Cooperation
Administration (the agency that administered the Marshall Plan) and the
US Information Agency. 5
Cultural Diplomacy had its own role in laying the foundations for
European integration. Consider for example the role of the French poet
Paul Val ér y in establishing the International Institute on Intellectual
Cooperation in the years following the Great War with his emphasis on
using artists and intellectuals to overcome the differences that had so dra-
matically riven the continent a few years previously. “If we were to allow
the intellect more scope and more real power in the things of this world,”
he argued “it would have more chance of recovering and of recover-
ing more quickly.” Exchange diplomacy had an even more practical role.
Those seeking grassroots origins for European integration could do no
better that to examine the web of people to people exchanges that sprang
up between the populations of Germany and France following the Second
World War—the jumelage or twinning of cities usually as a result of con-
tact between like-minded church leaders or mayors. Mutual visits, sport-
ing fixtures, school exchanges, and other contacts followed. Precedent
for such special relationships between geographically remote European
towns may be found in the bond between the French city of Le Mans
and the German city of Paderborn, which dates back to a twinning of
church diocese as early as 836. 6 Both cultural and citizen exchanges were
given the authority of high policy in the Franco-Germany É l ysé e Treaty
of 1963 with its creation of the Franco-German Office for Youth (l ’Office
franco-allemand pour la jeunesse/Deutsch-Franz ö sisches Jugendwerk ) and other
initiatives.
Even international broadcasting had its role in the process, with the
establishment in 1950 of the European Broadcast Union to facilitate the
exchange of radio and television materials between member states includ-
ing news and entertainment, and thereby strengthen the shared cultural
experience. Its most famous creation is of course the song contest first
mounted by its Eurovision network in 1956 and repeated every year since,
though many Europeans have equally fond memories of its light-hearted
international team game show: J eux sans Fronti è res (known in the UK as
It’s a Knockout ), which ran on television from 1965 to 1999. While EBU