Theories Of Cultural Diplomacy

1. How is the phenomenon of cultural diplomacy perceived?

With the winds of the twenty first century, diplomacy is experiencing a division of thought. Primarily – those who believe in the “old diplomacy” prefer to have the same standards – foreign policy is carried out by professionals and is mainly controlled by the government. Additionally, there are those who believe in the “new diplomacy”. Spread of democracy, technological progress and liberal markets have enabled non-governmental organizations or other independent actors that operate on the cultural and public diplomacy fields. Even more, there are noticeable divisions between the American and French attitude. Americans perceive cultural diplomacy as only a supplement for the public diplomacy

Perception of cultural diplomacy can be categorized in three dimensions. First one is the humanist one. Supporters of humanist ideals support a notion of connection between a harmonious development of a human individual and culture while giving the state a role of vanguard to protect what the human intellect has created. The second theory of cultural diplomacy is the social one. According to the supporters, culture is tightly connected with the active participation of an individual as a citizen in a society while providing an insight of self-assessment and identification (can also be attributed to constructivism) for the individual and the societal groups. The thirds outlook on cultural diplomacy is the ideological one. Proponents of the ideological approach have a notion of supremacy of the already functioning state machine for which the culture should “serve” without infringing on the status-quo of the state apparatus. To sum up, it is evident of what these different perceptions have in common – the effort of the states to attain more power and implement their foreign policies by utilizing culture as an efficient tool together with non-governmental organizations or the voluntary participation of its citizens that would increase the cooperation with other countries without the need to resort to

Different cultures, generations, different business sectors and ethnicities are all intertwined by the global web of cultural diplomacy. Even more, it helps us to anticipate and bypass cultural clashes by procuring a framework of solutions for cooperation. The language of art, music overcomes the barriers where words and discussions fail to reconcile people with themselves, promotes mutual understanding, peace and builds stronger multinational partnerships. The intensity and scale of cultural diplomacy depends on a country and varies according to its available resources for the cultural diplomacy and foreign policy ambitions. Of course, cultural diplomacy is not the only field of diplomacy (economy, defence), but the significance of it cannot be