Cultural diplomacy as an external voice of cultural policy. The case of Poland

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explore the main rationale of Polish cultural diplomacy as it was developed by governmental and non-governmental actors at a time of international conflict. Focusing on the years following Poland’s EU accession (2004) and particularly the Polish Year in Russia planned for 2015 and cancelled in 2014, this study contextualises these developments in the post-state-socialist transition to democracy. In this period a convergence between Polish cultural and public diplomacy took place. The main argument is that the internal developments in state cultural policy can be understood as constitutive of the foreign policy strategy of cultural diplomacy, as its domestic determinant. However, as the case of Poland shows, the logic of foreign policy continues to dominate cultural diplomacy. At the time of international conflict state cultural policy struggles to project its voice abroad through cultural diplomacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural diplomacy
• cultural policy
• Poland
• years of culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Thus, public diplomacy as a term is of secondary relevance in this study. I understand public diplomacy as a form of external political communication which in its new version (the so called New Public Diplomacy, NPD) rests on symmetric forms of communication and includes non-state actors. Such a comprehension of public diplomacy goes back to Melissen’s (2005) approach rooted in diplomatic studies and to the research of Eytan Gilboa (2001), framing public diplomacy with media and communication studies. Cultural diplomacy, as a constitutive element of NPD, involves non-state organisations of actors and uses media.

2. Poland’s government decided to use the Polish version of the name of the country (Polska), to avoid the common mistake of confusing ‘Poland’ with ‘Holland’.

3. In all, the sample consisted of 43 articles. The outlets were online versions of one of the biggest broadsheet dailies, which was close to the incumbent party Gazeta Wyborcza, presenting a neo-liberal approach to Poland’s cultural policy; Newsweek as the liberal weekly media, belonging to Ringer Springer; and the weekly national-conservative W Sieci Prawdy, openly supporting the Law and Justice party. The results of searches on Google were included, first and foremost the collection of articles on www.e-teatr.pl. The latter is a vortal (vertical platform online) focused on theatre, providing online documentation of developments in the field of theatre in Poland since 2004. As theatres and their performances were to play a significant role in the Year, and because theatre has been one of the most important actors, not only in cultural life but also in politics in Poland since World War II, the e-teatr collection of articles was incorporated into the sample. The articles on e-teatr were preselected by the vortal editors. All of them stemmed from Poland’s popular news media, also Gazeta Wyborcza and Newsweek, mentioned above, Poland’s press agency PAP and media focused on culture such as Dwutygodnik. The e-teatr collection did not include any right-wing media voices, as the latter hardly commented on the role of artists and cultural institutions and were mainly focused on parties’ stances in foreign policy.

Additional information

Funding

The current study was financed under the grant [No 2016/23/B/HS5/00486], Polish National Science Center.

Notes on contributors

Beata Ociepka

Beata Ociepka is professor of International Relations and International Communication at the University of Wroclaw. She is a head of Public Diplomacy Lab at the Institute of International Studies. Her last book was ‘Poland’s New Ways of Public Diplomacy’, published in 2017 (Peter Lang).