Assessment Report By The U.s. Government Accountability Office (gao) Analysis Of The Bush Administration, U.s. Public Diplomacy Position

The United States is the country which conducts the largest scale of public diplomacy activities in the world. From 2000 to 2008, Bush Administration launched a great deal of multi-sectional collaboration of public diplomacy activities led by the White House, the Department of State and the Board of International Broadcasting Management. No matter from the scale of those activities, budget setting or management of the project, these activities can be regarded as symbols of a climax of the U.S. public diplomacy development after the Cold War.U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), originally as the United States Government Accounting Office, is responsible for the Congress. Its main responsibilities are supervising the administrative behavior of the Government, assessing the performance of governmental activities and giving suggestions for improvement. Based on the assessment materials released by GAO and independent third-party agencies' relative investigation, this paper attempts to adopt restored analysis of American public diplomacy during the eight years of the Bush Administration. And conclusions are reached that during Bush Administration (2000-2008), the actual budget increase for public diplomacy was relatively limited and frequent changes of related institutions and personnel, resulted in limited effect of public diplomacy in general. GAO has pointed out these were due to the gap between the strategic and operational level. Furthermore, the interaction between GAO and the Bush Administration shows that the Congress in the process of monitoring continuously adjust their positioning, to improve the behavior. The power of Parliament's foreign affairs during the Bush administration is in a small rise.