Conclusions and Recommendations on Public Diplomacy in Europe

Abstract

Europe easily qualifies as the world’s region with the greatest variety of public diplomacy (PD) practices, a rich field of activity that is begging for more theoretical reflection as well as historical inquiry. Conceptual and theoretical investigations help generate the kind of dialogue between the interdisciplinary study of PD and relevant work within International Relations (IR) that is necessary both to strengthen its theoretical foundation and inform international studies. Reaching out to constructivism and the normative power approach to theorizing upon PD, as in this book, helps to connect fields of academic work that can reinforce one another. Of equal and evident relevance is further historical research. As the foreword to this collection of essays indicates, the kinds of practices that are now associated with the term PD have a long historical pedigree among the states of Europe. The origins of PD do, however, go back to international relations well before the European diplomatic experience. In the Ancient Near East, the public variant of addressing other polities was no stranger to diplomacy. Evidence of that can be found in the Bible, which relates of envoys purposefully addressing foreign peoples in their own vernacular.¹ Closer to the present and in Europe, there is still a lot of PD history to be explored, and the insights to be gained from such research could shed a surprisingly interesting light on how the nations of Europe went about cultivating their international reputation.