| Since its much publicized deployment in the wake of the September 11th attacks and during the subsequent so-called "War on Terror," public diplomacy has generated a substantial body of critical discourse emanating from both the professional and academic spheres. These analyses, however, have been for the most part empirical studies, aimed at strengthening the efficiency of the practice by identifying potential flaws or weaknesses in its current conception or application and offering possible correctives. Significant enquiries into the conceptual origins and evolution of the practice, on the other hand, have generally been rare and limited. This thesis proposes to remedy, in part, this lack by situating public diplomacy within a broader and deeper conceptual context.;The main body of the dissertation will therefore be divided into three genealogical chapters, one for each of the elected concepts cited above. Throughout, and increasingly as the thesis progresses, these various evolutional paths will be correlated, their points of convergence highlighted, so as to gradually situate the birth of public diplomacy at the intersection of their trajectories. The conclusion will offer further reflections on the continued influence of this collection of notions on the more recent development of public diplomacy, and the implications these might entail for its future.;The term "public diplomacy" only entered the lexicon of political and international affairs in the Cold War environment of the mid-1960s. It could however be argued that the essence of the practice --government communication with foreign publics-- is as old as history itself. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to argue that public diplomacy, as the specific form taken by the practice of government communication with a foreign audience in the latter half of the twentieth century, is a distinctive product of the development and ultimate intersection of several discrete though somehow connected concepts in social and political thought. We shall seek to substantiate this claim by identifying three fundamental concepts that lie at the heart of the idea of public diplomacy .public opinion, civil society and the information age-- and charting their historical trajectory and various points of interaction. |
