Introduction. Public Diplomacy’s Time?

Abstract

This introductory chapter focuses on public diplomacy. Unlike traditional diplomacy involves negotiations between national leaders, while public diplomacy focuses on a nation's relations with foreign publics, including ordinary people, who have the ability to affect a nation's security and other interests. There is broad agreement among public diplomacy scholars and practitioners and other informed observers that in this new age-characterized by terrorism, globalization and the internet-the rising influence of nonstate actors in foreign affairs makes public diplomacy an increasingly important component of international relations. The chapter also focuses on the U.S. experience in public diplomacy, which provides a good laboratory for understanding public diplomacy's past, surveying thinking and practices in public diplomacy today, and contemplating public diplomacy's future. The chapter presents an overview of the book and how the other chapters of the book are organized.Keywords: globalization; traditional diplomacy; U.S.public diplomacy