International political marketing: a case study of United States soft power and public diplomacy

• Political marketing can be categorized with three aspects: the election campaign as the origin of political marketing, the permanent campaign as a governing tool and international political marketing (IPM) which covers the areas of public diplomacy, marketing of nations, international political communication, national image, soft power and the cross‐cultural studies of political marketing. IPM and the application of soft power have been practiced by nation‐states throughout the modern history of international relations starting with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Nation‐states promote the image of their country worldwide through public diplomacy, exchange mutual interests in their bilateral or multilateral relation with other countries, lobby for their national interests in international organizations and apply cultural and political communication strategies internationally to build up their soft power. In modern international relations, nation‐states achieve their foreign policy goals by applying both hard power and soft power. Public diplomacy as part of IPM is a method in the creation of soft power, as well as, in the application of soft power.
• This paper starts with the definitional and conceptual review of political marketing. For the first time in publication, it establishes a theoretical model which provides a framework of the three aspects of political marketing, that is electoral political marketing (EPM), governmental political marketing (GPM) and IPM. This model covers all the main political exchanges among six inter‐related components in the three pairs of political exchange process, that is candidates and party versus voters and interest groups in EPM ; governments, leaders and public servants versus citizens and interest groups in GPM, including political public relations and lobbying which have been categorized as the third aspect of political marketing in some related studies; and governments, interest group and activists versus international organizations and foreign subjects in IPM. This study further develops a model of IPM, which covers its strategy and marketing mix on the secondary level of the general political marketing model, and then, the third level model of international political choice behaviour based the theory of political choice behaviour in EPM. This paper continues to review the concepts of soft power and public diplomacy and defines their relation with IPM.
• It then reports a case study on the soft power and public diplomacy of the United States from the perspectives of applying IPM and soft power. Under the framework of IPM, it looks at the traditional principles of US foreign policy, that is Hamiltonians, Wilsonians, Jeffersonians and Jacksonians, and the application of US soft power in the Iraq War since 2003. The paper advances the argument that generally all nation states apply IPM to increase their soft power. The decline of US soft power is caused mainly by its foreign policy. The unilateralism Jacksonians and realism Hamiltonians have a historical trend to emphasize hard power while neglecting soft power. Numerous reports and studies have been conducted on the pros and cons of US foreign policy in the Iraq War, which are not the focus of this paper. From the aspect of IPM, this paper studies the case of US soft power and public diplomacy, and their effects in the Iraq War. It attempts to exam the application of US public diplomacy with the key concept of political exchange, political choice behaviour, the long‐term approach and the non‐government operation principles of public diplomacy which is a part of IPM. The case study confirms the relations among IPM, soft power and public diplomacy and finds that lessons can be learned from these practices of IPM. The paper concludes that there is a great demand for research both at a theoretical as well as practical level for IPM and soft power. It calls for further study on this subject.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Federalism and the Management of External Relations in Nigeria: Lessons from the Past and Challenges for the Future

Despite successive military regimes, state and local governmentsin Nigeria have been able to engage in limited forms of foreignaffairs activity. both directly abroad and indirectly throughinstitutions of the national government. The trend since independencehas been to make foreign affairs an exclusive responsibilityof the federal government. Generally, though, the military regimeshave been better able than the civilian governments to limitconstituent diplomacy. Under the Third Republic, therefore,state and local governments are likely to assert themselvessomewhat more in foreign affairs than they have recently.     

Russia's energy diplomacy with China: personalism and institutionalism in its policy-making process

ABSTRACT

Russia's growing energy cooperation with China is central to several of Moscow's top foreign-policy objectives. Analyzing what drives Russia's energy diplomacy with China can therefore shed important light on the dynamics of Russian foreign policy-making. We go beyond other recent studies of this topic by examining the role of domestic political influences and the countries’ bilateral interactions. We show that personalist elements influence both Russia's policy-making and its diplomacy with China. The personalism has made it hard for Russia to coordinate the relevant decision-making institutions and get the most from its energy strength. The economic gains from recent energy deals, particularly to Russia's Far East, have been less than expected, and Russia has met only limited success in achieving its foreign-policy priorities in the Asia-Pacific region. Moving forward, Russia must further institutionalize its decision-making process, limit the role of personalism, and better coordinate the activities of its energy firms with the goals of its central agencies and local governments.     

Revolution 2.0 in Egypt: Pushing for Change,Foreign Influences on a Popular Revolt

This article presents a case study of a movement for democratic change in Egypt. In particular, it reviews the uses of social media that helped to facilitate the revolution that led to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's regime in February 2011. It looks at the movement in Egypt and the uses of social media from the perspective of public diplomacy, particularly in the context of U.S. efforts to drive public opinion in the Middle East. It reviews how the groups and individuals considered instrumental in the events that led to Mubarak's resignation are connected to the actors in U.S. “democracy promotion.” The article further discusses how social media, by dint of its characteristics, conveniently lends itself to democracy promotion. It highlights the risks involved in an instrumental approach to democracy promotion that treats the tools of social media as means to effect immediate policy gains country by country.     

政府整体绩效评价:理论假说及其实证检验——以2008年度广东省为例

政府绩效评价是公共管理及政府管理创新的前沿课题。作为一个全新的范畴,政府整体绩效评价具有典型的本土特色。社会主义历史条件下,我国地方政府整体绩效评价构成了民意表达的基本路径,具有民主导向与技术完善的双重功能。本文提出了政府整体绩效评价结果导向的理论假设,并依据既定的技术方案,基于独立第三方立场和公众满意度导向,利用2008年度针对广东省地方政府整体绩效评价及公众满意度调查的系统数据,检验理论假设的科学性与合理性。研究表明,我国地方政府整体绩效评价是公民对政府表现的综合评价,其过程承担民意表达的功能,其结果将成为民主政治发展和行政体制改革的内在动力。     

Peace Diplomacy and the Domestic Dimension of Norwegian Foreign Policy: The Insider's Accounts

By focusing on the internal conditions and rationale behind the development of Norwegian peace diplomacy (as seen by Norwegian diplomats and nongovernmental organisation representatives), this study argues that the high level of the country's engagement in international peace efforts and its success in pursuing a ‘niche diplomacy’ can be attributed to two factors. First, it is the ability of the Norwegian government to capitalise on the society's belief that Norwegians are a ‘Peace Nation’ with a missionary obligation. Second, it is the existence of the so‐called ‘Norwegian Model’, which allows creating efficient interactions between government, civil society and research institutions in specific foreign policy efforts. Both factors combined make Norwegian peace diplomacy a model example representing New Public Diplomacy, where domestic civil society remains both an audience (‘Norway as a Peace Nation’ notion) and a driver (Norwegian model of cooperation) of state public diplomacy efforts.     

论中国县级政府在公共物品提供中的职能定位

中国政府职能划分普遍存在“职责同构”现象,地方政府与中央政府在公共物品提供上存在职责不清现象。作为与居民联系最密切的县级政府,在职能划分上存在诸多困境。本文在分析了中国县级政府的职能困境和比较国外县级政府在公共物品提供方面的经验作法後,提出了县级政府在公共物品的供给土应准确进行职能定位。     

Convincing the World of China’s Tradition to Pursue Universal Harmony

As China??s comprehensive national power grows, its efforts to reduce the ??China threat?? perception have become more challenging. In line with the Chinese leadership??s current theme of peace and harmony in China??s foreign policy line, Chinese scholars have been highlighting the same theme in their research on China??s traditional strategic culture. Their research criticizes Western cosmopolitanism and praises the peaceful nature of China??s traditional ??tianxia?? concept. The exploitation of traditional strategic culture to provide re-assurance to the international community has now been raised to the official level, as reflected by the White Paper on ??China??s Peaceful Development?? released by the State Council??s Information Office on September 6, 2011. This probably means that it will be a major element of China??s public diplomacy for the foreseeable future. These efforts, however, may not have a significant impact because of rising nationalism in the region and the moderate escalation of existing territorial disputes involving China and its neighbors.     

Sub-state diplomacy: Understanding the international opportunity structures

Developing explanations for how sub-state governments are active internationally is central to understanding their unexpected growth as international actors. Building upon Lecours’ work [2002, Paradiplomacy: reflections on the foreign policy and international relations of regions, International Negotiation, Vol.7, pp.91–114], this article develops an expanded historical institutionalist analysis of the international agency of sub-state governments. Its original empirical contribution is utilizing this approach to examine within case variation across four contrasting policy domains in a case study of Wales. Reflecting the European Union sub-state mobilization literature, levels of constitutional powers are constrained in their capacity to account for Welsh sub-state international agency. Instead, the article highlights strong variation in the opportunity structures shaping sub-state diplomacy across policy domains. The article argues that institutional continuity and change, the prevalence of ‘path dependence’, can differ significantly between policy domains in sub-state diplomacy, argues for an expanded multi-level framework recognizing the impact of non-governmental organizations and international institutional opportunity structures and confirms historical institutionalism’s ability to enrich understanding of agency-structure relationships.     

Communicative Diplomacy for the 3rd Millennium

Abstract

In today's world of revolution in communications and information as well as of global interdependency, a medialised politics became a general reality. One can observe such a trend specifically in the field of international and foreign affairs where state and other actors use communication channels and public relations to a large extent to improve on the content and in particular, on the image of their policies. Here one can also argue that a major share of bilateral and multilateral relations among states is shaped by the international media, or vice versa, that all major “wars” are “fought” through the media.

This article explores the increasing inter-relation between state foreign affairs on one side, and media and public relations, on the other. The article starts off with basic concepts of a “new/democratic diplomacy” (Nicholson, 1988) and a “public diplomacy” (Signitzer in Combs, 1992), and compares them with definitions of “international public relations” (Kunczik, 1997). It attempts to build the general analytical framework on the basis of comparative case studies of developed countries with an established diplomatic tradition and of new democracies still proving themselves on the international fora. In this context, particular attention is given to communication in relation to international organisations like NATO and the EU.     

Uzbekistan's diplomacy in the modern international relations system

The article is dedicated to the issue of Uzbekistan's diplomacy in the 21st century. It shows the evolutional path of Uzbek diplomacy that plays an important role in pursuing national interests on the global scale in the framework of foreign policy. Article shows that Uzbekistan has clearly defined foreign policy priorities; it will follow in the foreseeable future. Such aspects as more active participation in the multilateral cooperation and at the same time retaining healthy pragmatism as a result of pursuing bilateral relations both with neighboring countries and great powers are also underlined. The main advantage and novelty of the article are that the author provides clear‐cut periodization of Uzbekistan's diplomacy—a feature that has never been met in any of Uzbek or foreign researches. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Who cares about human rights? Public opinion about human rights foreign policy

Literature on foreign aid and human rights often presupposes that constituents favor using foreign policy to promote human rights abroad and lead elected policymakers to pursue such policies to retain electoral support. This assumption, although frequently asserted, has not been empirically evaluated. And there are reasons to be skeptical about whether public opinion supports human rights foreign policy compared to other policy objectives. This article explores US public opinion about human rights, by asking two questions: Does the public think human rights should factor in foreign aid decisions and does the context—the strategic or economic relationship between the donor and recipient—affect this? This article uses results from a nationwide experimental survey to evaluate these questions. I find that the majority of respondents support cutting aid to punish human rights violators and that this depends minimally on the importance of the recipient.     

Present at creation: Italian mass support for European integration in the formative years

Abstract.  This article analyzes a period usually neglected in empirical studies of public opinion and European integration: the formative years between the early 1950s and the late 1960s. The analysis is based on one country – Italy – in which the European process was a source of deep political cleavage in the formative phase. The study of the sources and dynamics of support in these years sheds a different light on the determinants of support. More specifically, a pooled multivariate logistic analysis of six surveys conducted between 1952 and 1970 shows two things. First, it shows that public support in Italy was driven mostly by considerations that were affective and political rather than economic and utilitarian. Second, it explains under which conditions the political factors behind support (and opposition) for European integration in the 1950s and 1960s changed over time, mostly in reactions to international events and to developments in European institutionalization. The article points to the bottom-up nature of change in public support for European integration; changes in public opinion affected party positions, rather than vice versa.     

Are they listening? Public opinion,interest groups and government responsiveness

What is the role of interest groups in the transmission of issues between the public and government policy? While government responsiveness to voters has received widespread scholarly attention, little is known about the role of interest groups in the transmission of public opinion to government. It is argued here that interest groups importantly influence government responsiveness to public opinion, but that the effect varies by type of interest group: while cause groups increase the responsiveness of governments to their electorate, sectional groups decrease government responsiveness. Drawing on a new and unique dataset, this article examines the relationship between public opinion, interest groups and government expenditure across 13 policy areas in Germany from 1986 until 2012 and shows that interest groups indeed have a differential effect on the responsiveness of governments. The article’s findings have important implications for understanding political representation and the largely overlooked relationship between public opinion, interest groups and government policy.     

The Danes and Europe: From EC 1972 to Euro 2000 – Elections, Referendums and Attitudes

Within Europe, the Danish electorate is the one that has most often expressed its opinion about the European Union in elections and in national referendums. Votes and attitudes are analysed for the five elections to the European Parliament between 1979 and 1999 and in the six referendums – from the first on membership of the EC in 1972 to the September 2000 referendum on acceptance of the euro, the European single currency. The article gives an overview of the development of Danish public opinion in relation to the European Union from 1960 to 2000, the turnouts at referendums, and the elections and results for the European Parliament. It is shown that since Denmark joined the EU, public opinion has fluctuated greatly, although the balance among Danish European Parliament members has remained stable. The reasons for the frequent use of referendums in Denmark and a thematic outline of the six referendums are put forward. The article concludes with a comprehensive analysis of public attitudes towards the referendum on the euro in 2000. It is shown that regional electoral patterns have vanished, but underlying attitudes are manifested in the public.     

Political Skills or Lying and Manipulation? The Choreography of the Northern Ireland Peace Process

The 'real war' and 'propaganda war' fought over Northern Ireland for thirty years polarised party and public opinion. The key dilemma faced by politicians during the recent peace process has been how to wind down the 'war' and win sufficient party and public support for an accommodation between unionists and nationalists which falls so far short of previous expectations. Scripts telling contrasting stories have been prepared to convince rival republican and unionist audiences to support the peace process. In addition, the pro-Agreement parties have attempted to shift opinion towards accommodation through a range of political skills and choreography. Key competing parties and governments have sometimes co-operated back stage while front stage they have on occasion 'play acted' conflict between each other. The political skills, or lying and manipulation, by which the peace process has been driven forward have been uncovered creating public distrust in the political process. Realists see such political deception as an inevitable part of politics and permissible on the grounds that the ends justify the means. Absolutists attack the 'spin, lying and manipulation' of the peace process as an assault on democracy. A third democratic realist position argues that sometimes moral leadership requires doing wrong to do right but the gap between 'truth' and 'spin' should be narrowed. A more open and honest politics would not only be more accountable and democratic but also effective in advancing the peace process.     

The Influence of Foreign Voices on U.S. Public Opinion

Public opinion in the lead‐up to the 2003 Iraq War presents a puzzle. Despite the fact that domestic political elites publicly voiced little opposition to the invasion, large numbers of Americans remained opposed to military action throughout the pre‐war period, in contrast to the predictions of existing theory. We argue that some rank‐and‐file Democrats and independents expressed opposition because of the widely reported antiwar positions staked out by foreign, not domestic, elites. Merging a large‐scale content analysis of news coverage with public opinion surveys from August 2002 through March 2003, we show that Democrats and independents—especially those with high levels of political awareness—responded to dissenting arguments articulated in the mass media by foreign officials. Our results, which constitute the first empirical demonstration of foreign elite communication effects on U.S. public opinion, show that scholars must account for the role played by non‐U.S. officials in prominent foreign policy debates.     

The Sophisticated Public: The Effect of Competing Frames on Public Opinion

Deliberation is the current buzzword among democratic thinkers. Deliberative democracy assumes that deliberation has an effect on the people engaging in the deliberative process. Several studies have demonstrated that this is indeed the case: deliberation increases political knowledge and opinion consistency, as well as mutual understanding and broader tolerance among citizens. In order to verify the findings from these studies and to confront the problems of internal and external validity in the previous studies of deliberation, alternative methodological designs must be applied. Applying an experimental split-sample design using CATI on the Danish electorate reveals how arguments and frames influence public opinion. Across various frames and arguments and political issues, positive (negative) arguments tend to push opinions in a positive (negative) direction. When competing frames are presented to the public, people submit to neither ambivalence nor non-attitudes. Quite to the contrary, people tend to follow their predisposition and provide more consistent opinions. Thus, deliberation composed of various competing frames and arguments facilitates – rather than distorts – sophisticated and considered public opinion.     

The Queensland Health Royal Commissions

Utilisation of public inquiries and royal commissions in Westminster systems of government is a source of continuing interest. That royal commissions continue to be appointed when there is an increasing array of other institutions governments can now employ and given that royal commission reports often have very adverse impacts on the appointing governments, remains a key issue. So the appointment by the Queensland government of not one, but two royal commissions in 2005 into the same topic – the recruitment and performance of doctors recruited abroad working in Queensland public hospitals – provides a special opportunity to analyse the circumstances in which a royal commission mechanism is activated. That one of these royal commissions had to be disbanded because of legal action taken by several of those being investigated is another reason to assess these royal commissions. This is almost without precedent in Australia and has implications for the future conduct of such bodies. Lastly, how the Queensland government was able to minimise the blame from the subsequent royal commission's highly critical report, is also instructive and worthy of assessment .     

Public Service Professionalism for Performance Measurement and Evaluation

For over fifty years, efforts have been made to measure the results of government activities. Most recently, performance measurement and evaluation have been key components of government reforms in many countries in reaction to loss of confidence in governments and budget stringency. Emphasis is on measuring outcomes or results within a general framework of strategic planning and objective setting, and in a context of devolution, managerial decentralization, and privatization. While it seems reasonable that governments should justify their use of public funds by demonstrating the effectiveness of their programs and activities, performance measurement in practice is by no means straightforward and demands considerable thought in its design and implementation.