Diplomacy, democracy, and change: The Foreign Policy Communication Community and the public in the post-Cold War era

This study updates to the post-Cold War period the World War I-era debate between John Dewey and Walter Lippmann about the communication of foreign policy to the American public. Lippmann considered that foreign policy's “unseen environment” was too complex for the public and that foreign policy should remain within the domain of experts. Dewey considered Lippmann's position profoundly undemocratic and articulated a vision of a “Great Community,” in which experts consulted the public and shared their knowledge with the citizenry.; Part I traces the intellectual history of thinking about the American public and foreign policy, focusing on the ideas of Lippmann and Dewey in the context of twentieth-century concepts of the public, democracy, and international affairs. This section of the study concludes that Lippmann-leaning formulations, skeptical of widespread public interest and involvement in foreign policy, dominated scholarly thinking, constructing an intellectual paradigm which persisted throughout most of the Cold War.; Part II, the heart of the study, features discussion and analysis of 39 focused, in depth interviews conducted in 1996–1997 with United States Government public affairs officers, journalists, and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGO's) involved in disseminating information about post-Cold War foreign policy. This section describes and defines the post-Cold War Foreign Policy Communication Community, (FPCC), an influential grouping, whose commentary and opinions shape American thinking about international affairs. The interviews reveal that most FPCC representatives articulate themes reminiscent of John Dewey and critical of Walter Lippmann's views about a technocrat-led democracy.; The post-Cold War recasting of the public/foreign policy debate reveals a “communitarian turn,” representing a resurgence of Dewey-style thinking after a long period in which Lippmann-style concepts prevailed. However, the study also posits that this Deweyan turn is not yet fully articulated and that traces of the dominant paradigm persist in the intellectual palimpsest comprising twentieth-century views about the appropriate role for the public in foreign policy.