Intermap

By Craig Hayden

At their September 28 meeting, the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy announced a report they had commissioned from a research team at UT Austin. Its subject of evaluation and measurement for public diplomacy is undoubtedly important and a significant priority for governments engaged in public diplomacy around the world. This report owes its existence to the efforts of the Advisory Commission’s former Executive Director, David Firestein – an intelligent and articulate advocate for public diplomacy concerns. Frankly it’s surprising that it took this long for the Commission to get to this subject, but it’s a significant step in the right direction. The report itself, however, is not perfect.

Matthew Armstrong wasted no time in offering a thorough and at times stinging assessment of the report. Having read both the report and Armstrong’s commentary, I’ve come to a few conclusions:

1. The report is a commendable and surprisingly systematic attempt to devise a flexible evaluation tool.

2. It’s not ground-breaking in its recommendations – but then again I don’t think it was intended to be. It’s designed to provide a tool for policy evaluators to consider programs based on previous experiences.

3. I think Armstrong’s negative comments about the project’s formative research expressed a frustration many public diplomacy watchers share about previous evaluation work.

4. I also think Armstrong’s critique: that the report offers nothing new in terms of criticism of US PD is fine, but that wasn’t the point of the report.

5. The report authors were not able to interview and survey enough people to do a thorough analysis of US strategic thinking and culture about public diplomacy. Then again, I’m not sure they needed to. See above.

6. The PD-MAP is a neat tool. But it’s strangely idiosyncratic and at times arbitrary in its recommendations for how to measure outcomes. It’s not well cited – which is important when you consider all the different dynamics they are trying to measure.

7. I’m starting to appreciate John Brown’s position more on public diplomacy research (!). See below.
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by Craig Hayden

So I was at the Confucius Institute at the University of Maryland this week doing some research for my book on comparative public diplomacy. I had a great discussion with the directors of the program. They offered a number of insights and were very welcoming. I’d like to share something that came out of the meeting that adds some perspective to recent US attempts to rehabilitate US public diplomacy strategy. The individuals I spoke with seemed pretty sure what they did was not public diplomacy – and were somewhat ambivalent about the term cultural diplomacy. For the Confucius Institute – their “mission” was primarily defined as education and educational partnership.
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by Craig Hayden

So I’ve had some time to digest the conversation on McHale’s proposed new framework for US public diplomacy strategy. Upon reflection, as Rhonda Zaharna describes in her insightful and clarifying new book, Battles to Bridges: US Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy after 9/11, the framework is yet another example of how “grand strategy,” “strategy,” and “tactics” get muddled in the conceptualization of public diplomacy objectives and the world-view that it is based upon.

The sticking points in public reactions to this framework take on two distinct dimensions: conceptual and structural.
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