Conclusion: Connecting Foreign Policy and Communication

Abstract

This chapter concludes the study by sharing three highlights revealed by the pathways of connection. First, there is a need to contextualize the understanding of soft power. The contextualization refers to two different phenomena: the practice environment and the political environment. The former argues that a country’s public diplomacy strategy or even a design of project is highly influenced by the bureaucratic memory. The latter underlines the fact that political environment is also crucial to evaluating public diplomacy. If public diplomacy is a policy tool, we cannot exclude other political variables from our analysis. Second, public diplomacy studies need to focus on developing new tools and methods to argue for the “impact” of the practice. It is imperative for scholars and practitioners to demonstrate their influence on foreign policy. Last, a move beyond the disciplinary boundaries is argued to be necessary for the creation of knowledge that has “practical” implications. The chapter is concluded by final remarks.