Designing cultural diplomacy policy: structuring a flagship mechanism

ABSTRACT

Cultural diplomacy (CD) research has focused on various elements of practice, such as the contexts, rationales, players, and methods. However, research explaining the interrelationships among such elements of CD is less common. This scarcity can inhibit an effective and accurate evaluation of CD programs. This article, by acknowledging the significance of this gap and being informed by policy design theory and foreign policy analysis (FPA), constructs a framework to articulate a policy design approach by focusing on comparative cases of flagship mechanisms of CD. It specifically considers flagships characterized by having a persistent presence, formal authorization, and global scope, which represents a structural approach to CD design that is aiming for a holistic view that addresses multiple purposes and is capable of adapting to particular international environments. To explain how this structural mechanism works, this article focuses on the practices of the United States, the United Kingdom, and China as they provide rich empirical data and concrete international and domestic contexts that can be used to interpret and apply the policy design and FPA concepts presented in the analytical framework. The conclusions point to the value of the interdisciplinary analytical concepts blended and potential transferability of the flagship mechanism.

KEYWORDS:

• British Council
• Fulbright program
• Confucius Institute
• Wicked problem

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Based on a search of journal articles published by Taylor & Francis, 5 articles published between 2001 and 2005 contain the words ‘cultural diplomacy’ in their titles. This number rises to 34 between 2006 and 2010, 51 between 2011 and 2015, and 92 between 2016 and 2020.

2. British Council website: https://www.britishcouncil.org/.

3. The Fulbright program website: https://eca.state.gov/fulbright.

4. Confucius Institute website: http://ci.cn/#/Home.

5. Here we focus on culture as content in foreign policy. The influence of ‘political culture’ as contexts will be considered in the later section.

6. Now called the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

7. Calculated based on the data provided on the Hanban website. Although this website is no longer available due to its recent reorganization, the original webpage is archived at: https://web.archive.org/web/20200427183558/http://www.hanban.org/confuciousinstitutes/node_10961.htm. Accessed in April 2020.

8. 162 countries had established CIs by April 2020. Data source: ibid.

9. Howlett and Mukherjee (2014) use ‘non-design’ to describe the irrational activity and process in policy design, e.g. log-rolling and opportunism.

10. Fukuyama (2018) uses ‘isothymia’ and ‘megalothymia’ to describe these two scenarios.

11. In 2020, there was a CI reorganization, and the Center for Language Education and Cooperation replaced Hanban as the new managing agency.

12. The Fulbright Program refers this approach as ‘bilateralism’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Biyun Zhu

Biyun Zhu is a lecturer at the Institute for Cultural Practices, The University of Manchester. She received her PhD in Cultural Policy and Arts Management from The Ohio State University. Previously, she earned a master’s degree in Public Policy from King’s College London. She has also researched and worked in government and international organizations including the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and United Nations. Her research draws on knowledge from multiple disciplines including public policy, international relations, history, and management. Her recent work constructed a multi-level policy design framework to understand, communicate, and inform the practice of cultural diplomacy in a changing international environment. Her current projects focus on network-building methodology and evaluation in cultural diplomacy policy.

Margaret J. Wyszomirski

Margaret J. Wyszomirski, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita in the Department of Arts Administration Education and Policy at The Ohio State University where she was a professor from 1998 to 2020. For most of that time, she was Director of the Graduate Program in Arts and Cultural Policy. In 1990, she became the Staff Director of the Bipartisan Independent Commission on the National Endowment for the Arts and then joined the agency as its Director for Policy Planning, Research, and Budget (1991-1994). She has also been a faculty member at Dickinson College, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, the Cornell in Washington Program, Georgetown University, and Case Western Reserve University. She has published and consulted on topics ranging from public art, arts entrepreneurship, public funding for the arts, cultural policy design and transfer, and international cultural relations. Her books include America’s Commitment to Culture (with Kevin Mulcahy); Art, Ideology, and Politics (with Judith Balfe); and Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States (with Joni Cherbo and Ruth Ann Stewart). Currently, she is working on projects concerning professionalism in the arts as well as America’s international cultural relations.