Public Diplomacy and the Politics of Uncertainty

Public Diplomacy and the Politics of Uncertainty PDF Author: Pawel Surowiec
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030545520
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
This edited book explores the multi-layered relationships between public diplomacy and intensified uncertainties stemming from transnational political trends. It is the latest wave of political uncertainty that provides the background as well as yields evidence scrutinised by authors contributing to this book. The book argues that due to a state of perpetual crises, the simultaneity of diplomatic tensions and new digital modalities of power, international politics increasingly resembles a networked set of hyper-realities. Embracing multi-polar competition, superpowers such as Russia flex their muscles over their neighbours; celebrated ‘success stories’ of democratisation – Hungary, Poland and Czechia – move towards illiberal governance; old players of international politics such as Britain and America re-claim “greatness”, while other states, like China, adapt expansionist foreign policy goals. The contributors to this book consider the different ways in which transnational political trends and digitalisation breed uncertainty and shape the practice of public diplomacy.

Public Diplomacy and the Politics of Uncertainty

Public Diplomacy and the Politics of Uncertainty PDF Author: Pawel Surowiec
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030545520
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Get Book

Book Description
This edited book explores the multi-layered relationships between public diplomacy and intensified uncertainties stemming from transnational political trends. It is the latest wave of political uncertainty that provides the background as well as yields evidence scrutinised by authors contributing to this book. The book argues that due to a state of perpetual crises, the simultaneity of diplomatic tensions and new digital modalities of power, international politics increasingly resembles a networked set of hyper-realities. Embracing multi-polar competition, superpowers such as Russia flex their muscles over their neighbours; celebrated ‘success stories’ of democratisation – Hungary, Poland and Czechia – move towards illiberal governance; old players of international politics such as Britain and America re-claim “greatness”, while other states, like China, adapt expansionist foreign policy goals. The contributors to this book consider the different ways in which transnational political trends and digitalisation breed uncertainty and shape the practice of public diplomacy.

War and Chance

War and Chance PDF Author: Jeffrey A. Friedman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190938048
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Uncertainty surrounds every major decision in international politics. Yet there is almost always room for reasonable people to disagree about what that uncertainty entails. No one can reliably predict the outbreak of armed conflict, forecast economic recessions, anticipate terrorist attacks, or estimate the countless other risks that shape foreign policy choices. Many scholars and practitioners therefore believe that it is better to keep foreign policy debates focused on the facts - that it is, at best, a waste of time to debate uncertain judgments that will often prove to be wrong. In War and Chance, Jeffrey A. Friedman shows how foreign policy officials often try to avoid the challenge of assessing uncertainty, and argues that this behavior undermines high-stakes decision making. Drawing on an innovative combination of historical and experimental evidence, he explains how foreign policy analysts can assess uncertainty in a manner that is theoretically coherent, empirically meaningful, politically defensible, practically useful, and sometimes logically necessary for making sound choices. Each of these claims contradicts widespread skepticism about the value of probabilistic reasoning in international politics, and shows how placing greater emphasis on assessing uncertainty can improve nearly any foreign policy debate. A clear-eyed examination of the logic, psychology, and politics of assessing uncertainty, War and Chance provides scholars and practitioners with new foundations for understanding one of the most controversial elements of foreign policy discourse.

City Diplomacy

City Diplomacy PDF Author: Sohaela Amiri
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030456153
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
This edited volume provides an inclusive explanation of what, why, and how cities interact with global counterparts as well as with nation states, non-governmental organizations, and foreign publics. The chapters present theoretical and analytical approaches to the study of city diplomacy as well as case studies to capture the nuances of the practice. By bringing together a diverse group of authors in terms of their geographic location, academic and practitioner backgrounds, the volume speaks to multiple disciplines, including diplomacy, political science, communication, sociology, marketing and tourism.

Chinese Public Diplomacy

Chinese Public Diplomacy PDF Author: Falk Hartig
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131761108X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This book presents the first comprehensive analysis of Confucius Institutes (CIs), situating them as a tool of public diplomacy in the broader context of China’s foreign affairs. The study establishes the concept of public diplomacy as the theoretical framework for analysing CIs. By applying this frame to in-depth case studies of CIs in Europe and Oceania, it provides in-depth knowledge of the structure and organisation of CIs, their activities and audiences, as well as problems, challenges and potentials. In addition to examining CIs as the most prominent and most controversial tool of China’s charm offensive, this book also explains what the structural configuration of these institutes can tell us about China’s understanding of and approaches towards public diplomacy. The study demonstrates that, in contrast to their international counterparts, CIs are normally organised as joint ventures between international and Chinese partners in the field of education or cultural exchange. From this unique setting a more fundamental observation can be made, namely China’s willingness to engage and cooperate with foreigners in the context of public diplomacy. Overall, the author argues that by utilizing the current global fascination with Chinese language and culture, the Chinese government has found interested and willing international partners to co-finance the CIs and thus partially fund China’s international charm offensive. This book will be of much interest to students of public diplomacy, Chinese politics, foreign policy and international relations in general.

Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age

Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age PDF Author: Natalia Grincheva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351250981
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age explores online museums as sites of contemporary cultural diplomacy. Building on scholarship that highlights how museums can constitute and regulate citizens, construct national communities, and project messages across borders, the book explores the political powers of museums in their online spaces. Demonstrating that digital media allow museums to reach far beyond their physical locations, Grincheva investigates whether online audiences are given the tools to co-curate museums and their collections to establish new pathways for international cultural relations, exchange and, potentially, diplomacy. Evaluating the online capacities of museums to exert cultural impacts, the book illuminates how online museum narratives shape audience perceptions and redefine their cultural attitudes and identities. Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age will be of interest to academics and students teaching or taking courses on museums and heritage, communication and media, cultural studies, cultural diplomacy, international relations and digital humanities. It will also be useful to practitioners around the world who want to learn more about the effect digital museum experiences have on international audiences.

The Digitalization of Public Diplomacy

The Digitalization of Public Diplomacy PDF Author: Ilan Manor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 303004405X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
This book addresses how digitalization has influenced the institutions, practitioners and audiences of diplomacy. Throughout, the author argues that terms such as ‘digitalized public diplomacy’ or ‘digital public diplomacy’ are misleading, as they suggest that Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs) are either digital or non-digital, when in fact digitalization should be conceptualized as a long-term process in which the values, norms, working procedures and goals of public diplomacy are challenged and re-defined. Subsequently, through case study examination, this book also argues that different MFAs are at different stages of the digitalization process. By adopting the term ‘the digitalization of public diplomacy’, this book will offer a new conceptual framework for investigating the impact of digitalization on the practice of public diplomacy.

The New Public Diplomacy

The New Public Diplomacy PDF Author: J. Melissen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230554938
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
After 9/11, which triggered a global debate on public diplomacy, 'PD' has become an issue in most countries. This book joins the debate. Experts from different countries and from a variety of fields analyze the theory and practice of public diplomacy. They also evaluate how public diplomacy can be successfully used to support foreign policy.

The Politics of Uncertainty

The Politics of Uncertainty PDF Author: Ian Scoones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000163407
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Why is uncertainty so important to politics today? To explore the underlying reasons, issues and challenges, this book’s chapters address finance and banking, insurance, technology regulation and critical infrastructures, as well as climate change, infectious disease responses, natural disasters, migration, crime and security and spirituality and religion. The book argues that uncertainties must be understood as complex constructions of knowledge, materiality, experience, embodiment and practice. Examining in particular how uncertainties are experienced in contexts of marginalisation and precarity, this book shows how sustainability and development are not just technical issues, but depend deeply on political values and choices. What burgeoning uncertainties require lies less in escalating efforts at control, but more in a new – more collective, mutualistic and convivial – politics of responsibility and care. If hopes of much-needed progressive transformation are to be realised, then currently blinkered understandings of uncertainty need to be met with renewed democratic struggle. Written in an accessible style and illustrated by multiple case studies from across the world, this book will appeal to a wide cross-disciplinary audience in fields ranging from economics to law to science studies to sociology to anthropology and geography, as well as professionals working in risk management, disaster risk reduction, emergencies and wider public policy fields.

Strategic Narratives

Strategic Narratives PDF Author: Alister Miskimmon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317975197
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Communication is central to how we understand international affairs. Political leaders, diplomats, and citizens recognize that communication shapes global politics. This has only been amplified in a new media environment characterized by Internet access to information, social media, and the transformation of who can communicate and how. Soft power, public diplomacy 2.0, network power – scholars and policymakers are concerned with understanding what is happening. This book is the first to develop a systematic framework to understand how political actors seek to shape order through narrative projection in this new environment. To explain the changing world order – the rise of the BRICS, the dilemmas of climate change, poverty and terrorism, the intractability of conflict – the authors explore how actors form and project narratives and how third parties interpret and interact with these narratives. The concept of strategic narrative draws together the most salient of international relations concepts, including the links between power and ideas; international and domestic; and state and non-state actors. The book is anchored around four themes: order, actors, uncertainty, and contestation. Through these, Strategic Narratives shows both the possibilities and the limits of communication and power, and makes an important contribution to theorizing and studying empirically contemporary international relations. International Studies Association: International Communication Best Book Award

Information Wars

Information Wars PDF Author: Richard Stengel
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802147992
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
A “well-told” insider account of the State Department’s twenty-first-century struggle to defend America against malicious propaganda and disinformation (The Washington Post). Disinformation is nothing new. When Satan told Eve nothing would happen if she bit the apple, that was disinformation. But today, social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious. In a disturbing turn of events, authoritarian governments are increasingly using it to create their own false narratives, and democracies are proving not to be very good at fighting it. During the final three years of the Obama administration, Richard Stengel, former editor of Time, was an Under Secretary of State on the front lines of this new global information war—tasked with unpacking, disproving, and combating both ISIS’s messaging and Russian disinformation. Then, during the 2016 election, Stengel watched as Donald Trump used disinformation himself. In fact, Stengel quickly came to see how all three had used the same playbook: ISIS sought to make Islam great again; Putin tried to make Russia great again; and we know the rest. In Information Wars, Stengel moves through Russia and Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and introduces characters from Putin to Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Mohamed bin Salman, to show how disinformation is impacting our global society. He illustrates how ISIS terrorized the world using social media, and how the Russians launched a tsunami of disinformation around the annexation of Crimea—a scheme that would became a model for future endeavors. An urgent book for our times, now with a new preface from the author, Information Wars challenges us to combat this ever-growing threat to democracy. “[A] refreshingly frank account . . . revealing.” —Kirkus Reviews “This sobering book is indeed needed to help individuals better understand how information can be massaged to produce any sort of message desired.” —Library Journal