Citizen diplomacy in post-modern times


Globalization, the Internet, cheap travel, student and cultural exchanges. The world is becoming a smaller place and people all over the world are increasingly interconnected. Thanks to the new technology, now people from different countries can undertake peer-to-peer relations.
This is a great achievement in terms of human development, as it enhances the possibility to build cultural relationship beyond state boundaries, to promote understanding among different cultures, and to allow people to express themselves in first person.
Quite obviously this has political effects as well. As J. Nye puts it, “ face-to-face relations have more cross-cultural credibility than do government broadcasts” (Nye, 2010), as it can promote a good image of a country in a foreign country with a minimal state‘s intervention so enhancing credibility.
J. Nye puts a great deal of emphasis in the role of ordinary people in shaping international relations. We can note this when he states that “effective public diplomacy involves listening as well as speaking, that is why exchanges are more useful than broadcasting” (Nye, 2004, 111), or when he argues that even though political leaders are friendly, their leeway may be limited if their public have a negative perception of the other country (ibid. 105).
However more recently Nye has acknowledged that public diplomacy conducted by people, the so called citizen diplomacy, is becoming increasingly difficult in a global information age. He makes the instance of the pastor who threatened to burn the Koran in Florida (Nye, 2010).
Another striking example of citizen diplomacy going wrong is the case of the Danish cartoons published in 2005, which undermined the relations with the Muslim world.
This little framework shows that citizen diplomacy can be a double-edge weapon in terms of building international relations and promoting cross-cultural understanding.
The world is becoming an increasingly difficult place to live in, and whether citizen diplomacy represents a post-Westphalian development or the reinforcement of the Westphalia system is to be judge in the following time.
However the paradox of citizen diplomacy demonstrates that the project of modernity, rooted in the Enlightenment period and which emphasises human rationality, is showing its weaknesses; rationality is loosing its luxury position giving way to a chaotic world.
Der Derian rightly noted that “modern history never seemed fully to awake from the Enlightenment dream” (Der Derian, 2000, 778), and probably this is due to the fact that we are progressing in terms of technologies but our consciousness can‘t keep up with it.
The fact that the new technology has broken time and space barriers means also that we have less time to rationalize events all over the world, and the fact that we can respond and react simultaneously to these events means also that emotionality can take over rationality.
Diplomacy must involve a great deal of rationality in order to be effective and the fact that ordinary people have been granted the prominet position of citizen diplomats means that they have to be more rational in conducting their “diplomatic” actions if they really want to promote understanding across the world.


Der Derian J., 2000, “Virtuous War/Virtual Theory” in International Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 4, pp. 771-788.

Nye J., 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/opinion/05iht-ednye.html

Nye J., 2004, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics”, Public Affairs, New York.