Research
Options for Public Diplomacy
Small Powers' Competitive Edge
Scotland is relatively well placed for a further elaboration of present public diplomacy policies. Many of the established players in international affairs are facing serious difficulties when it comes to engaging with critical and assertive audiences abroad. Public diplomacy is a game that is not necessarily played best by big states that have been around in the diplomatic game for the past few centuries. In the eyes of non-official audiences, a state's power is not necessarily an advantage, as a long history of foreign policy-making may actually be accompanied by bureaucratic inflexibility, while diplomatic tradition may reinforce the prolongation of outmoded working habits.
A variety of non-state actors, small nations aspiring to greater autonomy or statehood, as well as regions with legislative powers, new states on the international scene and a considerable number of transition countries, are actually comparing quite favorably with those generally more experienced in and better equipped for traditional diplomacy. In spite of their much more limited power base, many small and non-state actors have proved to be particularly dedicated and imaginative when it comes to the cause of their overseas reputation. Scotland falls within the latter category, even though its apparatus for independent representation overseas (and therefore its public diplomacy capacity to build on local knowledge) is rather limited in comparison with that of other sub-state entities in Europe and North America, such as Catalonia, Flanders, or Québec.
Scotland faces a clear choice: it can either leave things as they are in the field of its external reputation management policies; or it can explore alternative options for public diplomacy that go beyond tried and tested approaches. Its government can continue focusing on practices that strengthen the nation's rather static image and tourist appeal in the rest of the UK and overseas; or invest more in the export of what its society and culture have to offer to other nations. The latter option, to be sure, would be more in tune with the present trends in public diplomacy that can be discerned elsewhere in Europe.
It is in the interests of Scotland and other countries to follow closely where the debate about public diplomacy is heading. Rather than projecting ready-made images abroad or peddling 'the right messages', and sending better ones when the old messages no longer work, nations today benefit more from a public diplomacy that reinforces their actual engagement with the world. 'New public diplomacy' deals with themes and issues that constitute the true fabric of a country's society and culture. It is first of all about transnational dialogue, exchange and, in the words of the British Council, 'mutuality'. In that sense public diplomacy today is moving somewhat in the direction of cultural relations, with an emphasis on receiving as much as sending, relationships rather than messages. The reverse trend, meanwhile, can be observed for cultural relations, which have moved beyond the realm of the arts, and where practitioners are also becoming network facilitators and initiators of debates on societal issues beyond the traditional cultural sphere of their field operations.
One can conceive of Scotland or any other country's public diplomacy as their input in a transnational conversation. Scotland's government, its civil society organizations and individual Scots can in other words make a meaningful contribution to debates taking place overseas. By doing so they can show what they have to offer, what sort of solutions they propose to address issues in their domestic social laboratory, and in what novel and unexpected ways their culture communicates to people outside Scotland. It is such public diplomacy that is in tune with the pulse of the times. It is more sophisticated and reaches beyond the realm of marketing, promotion and advertising, the world of slogans, brand power or unique selling points. And to make it work, diplomats and civil servants working in this field know that they are more effective by facilitating, rather than controlling, transnational dialogues.
Beyond Projection
Ultimately, public diplomacy is about influencing the perceptions of individuals and organizations about one's own country, and others' engagement with one's own society. It is in other words about 'getting other people on your side'. Consequently, public diplomacy is more than a conversation between nations that are locked in a competition about their reputations. It is increasingly about the negotiation of ideas among groups of people, organizations and individuals in different societies - those who matter a great deal but who are much harder to reach than any type of actor in international affairs. The elusiveness of civil society groups, their degree of participation in current international affairs, and their extraordinary transnational mobilizing capacity, pretty much sum up what sort of challenge governments face when dealing with 'the people'. One of the most common but fatal errors of contemporary public diplomacy is probably the underestimation of overseas' public 'target groups'.
Elsewhere (see Melissen, The New Public Diplomacy, 2007), I have made a first stab at comparing public diplomacy with practices such as lobbying, propaganda, public relations and nation branding. For practitioners it is crucial to understand the ABC, the limitations and the possibilities of these various practices. Clear distinction between them is more than just food for academics and a degree of cross-pollination between the various disciplines is highly desirable for those who work in the field of public diplomacy. Insights about techniques from these fields may contribute considerably to improving practice. The debate on public diplomacy is not served by self-contained discourses taking place within the parameters set by single disciplines.
Among the above-mentioned approaches, theoreticians of 'nation branding' probably stand out most for defending their own turf, but strict intellectual loyalty to a single field of analysis makes it harder to see particular policy recommendations as mere options on a wide spectrum. The seductive promises of nation branding have received a greater following in parts of the 'new' Central and Eastern Europe, as opposed to the 'old' nations on the western half of the European continent. Whereas few countries west of the former Iron Curtain have been systematically sidetracked by the lure of a marketing shortcut to international success, some of their partners in Central and Eastern Europe have learned the hard way about the limitations of re-branding their image abroad, as consultants' most ambitious claims and promises have not survived in the real world. Not a single country has been re-branded as a result of a deliberated and coordinated exercise directed by external consultants. Countries that have been hailed as shining examples of successful place branding (including Ireland and Spain, or even Finland) see their own successes as the result of processes that were largely spontaneous, or in any case not planned as such, and ultimately beyond their own control. And as the countries of Central Europe entered the Western fold, it became increasingly clear that the projection of a self-styled and rather artificially crafted concept of identity was not at ease with the free and multifaceted dialogue in today's global marketplace of ideas.
Reinforced by globalization and the latest revolution in communication technology, all the signs are that, however valuable their contributions, the global debate about 'getting other people on your side' is unlikely to go much further in the direction of transplanting or mutating corporate approaches. Particularly in parts of the world where countries are interdependent and interconnected at a whole range of levels, it looks as if the 'master planners of foreign perceptions' will draw the short straw. In places like Europe and North America, an ever-changing palette of issues, ideas and meandering identities are being negotiated in an ongoing flow of transnational dialogues. Such ideational environments tend to have a high degree of immunity to self-invented identities that are concocted and projected by consultants partnering up with governments trying to make sense of the demands of soft power.
Continuing Challenges for Practitioners
Scotland finds itself in the fortunate league of nations and states with a capacity for public diplomacy, as well as multiple forms of participation and exchange with the wider world. Like others with limited resources Scotland's government is faced with the need to prioritize its engagement with foreign audiences, first of all in terms of the themes that are meant to make Scotland stand out from the pack. The rest of the UK is priority country number one in its public diplomacy, and engagement with northern and continental Europe is bound to come next. Among the issues that permit Scots to contribute to European and global conversations are obvious themes such as excellence in higher education and Scotland's experience with devolution. But this is only the beginning, and if Scotland is serious about its place in international relations, the government in Edinburgh will have to take the lead in much harder thinking about its niches and what it is that Scotland wants to say to the world.
One of the blessings of Scotland's relatively late manifestation on the international scene as a result of devolution is that its public diplomacy is not troubled by the hidden bureaucratic challenge of traditional diplomatic culture. It is good to remember that the new public diplomacy requires changed diplomatic working habits, a challenge that may feel particularly uncomfortable for old dogs that now have to learn a new trick. How modern communication technology can actually contribute to the new, more dialogical, public diplomacy is an important issue that will not be elaborated here. What can also be observed, however, is that in many countries one-way messaging, as it has been exercised for decades, is still the preferred mode of communication with foreign audiences. Essentially unidirectional public diplomacy is sometimes concealed by the use of new, and presumably intrinsically interactive, communication technology that may in reality, however, add up to little more than old wine in new bottles. The escape to technology as a means to address some of the age-old obstacles is most tempting for those who believe that the media can be excluded as intermediaries. Ironically, such delusions about the possibilities of modern communication technology may thus reignite diplomacy's most traditional reflexes, resulting in a substitution of the former fear and mistrust of the press by a condescending attitude towards these conveyors of opinion.
Quite apart from the potential and pitfalls of embracing the new media, civil servants will find it hard to rid themselves of serious handicaps in their own dealings with the public. As is commonly known, officials of all breeds are suffering from lack of credibility among the wider public, and they sometimes also find themselves to be relatively peripheral players in a multilayered pattern of international and transnational relationships. These are not new observations, but in day-to-day practice they do tend to compound civil servants' difficulties in delivering public diplomacy. The same goes for the widespread bureaucratic predisposition to control external events and the instinctive avoidance of potentially career-damaging risks. Some will no doubt dismiss these issues as mere ghosts from the past, but effective communication with articulate foreign audiences is helped more by the realization that such forces may still be at work than by fooling oneself. Wherever these points can be observed, change in professional culture is required. A sensible starting point for public diplomacy is then not just that it may learn from a variety of disciplines and do a better job by hiring outside advice. It is also about serious professional introspection by officials, the realization that foreign audiences do not generally share their objectives, and the application of a generous dose of modesty about one's own capacity to influence what others think. For governments that may still be somewhere at the bottom of their learning curve for truly engaging with, rather than just addressing, foreign audiences, it is an effort worth making.
The Power of the Better Argument
Public diplomacy will lead more and more diplomats and other civil servants into a world where people come first and where the traditional priorities of diplomacy are sometimes turned upside down. Diplomats and other officials involved in this activity are also confronted with the fact that the public diplomacy game is open to all, and that agile small nations, newcomers on the international scene or fast-moving non-state actors are easily in the same league as the elephants of international politics. They may actually do a better job than governments acting like message-sending machineries or playing the ineffective roles of guardians of national identity. New technology can be of great assistance in developing new forms of dialogue - both at home and abroad - but it should not be confused with the substance of public diplomacy. The debates, issues and challenges that nations see as essential to their own society and culture are the stuff that people overseas want to discuss. It is in those areas that the public diplomacy of countries should aim at developing the power of the better argument.