Realising Australia's international education as public diplomacy

Australia's international education serves as public diplomacy, essentially engaging and influencing public audiences in ways that progress Australian foreign policy priorities and national interests. The multidimensional and increasingly globalised nature of international education presents enormous opportunity for vital exchange and interactions between and with students, academics and communities via onshore and offshore modes of delivery. Positive experiences of student mobility and the development of intellectual, commercial and social relationships can build upon a nation's reputation, and enhance the ability of that nation to participate in and influence regional or global outcomes. This is ultimately the essence of soft power. While Australia has made significant commercial gains through international education, it has fallen short of realising the soft power potential inherent in the volume and depth of interactions, relationships and achievements resulting from it, particularly in the Asian region, where Australia's international education sector continues to be most active. This article argues that there is a soft power benefit in recognising international education as public diplomacy, though acknowledges that challenges exist in connecting the soft power aspirations to reality. Findings suggest that there is room for more coherent public diplomacy leadership and inter-agency coordination, improved evaluation and expanded dialogue both within the sector and the broader community.     

Challenges for global environmental diplomacy in Australia and the European Union

One of the predominant issues on the agenda of diplomats and politicians is how to address the consequences of shifts in perception about threats to the environment and the actual short and long‐term characteristics and effects of environmental degradation. Another challenge is that such issues as climate change impact on many areas including trade, economic and fiscal policies, employment, transport, agriculture and regional development. Furthermore, decisions taken at a national level cannot be isolated from international concerns, as in the case of the Kyoto Protocol.

This article maps out some of the differences between Australia and the European Union in relation to the role of developing countries in tackling climate change, the use of market mechanisms to tackle environmental problems and the implementation of punitive compliance systems. We explore the challenges facing Australia and the EU in sustainable development, why the EU has a reputation as a leader in this field, how Australia has engaged the challenge and why the similarities in the approach of Australia and the EU are more striking than the differences.     

Talking about bushfires: Difference and division in Australia's environmental crisis

In late 2019 and early 2020, bushfires consumed vast swathes of land across southern parts of Australia. The scale and intensity of the fires was unprecedented and the extent of destruction was without parallel. This article asks to what extent anthropology's focus on culture and cultural processes can inform our understanding of the complex politics generated by a situation such as this. It is argued that local people, who were directly affected by the fires, and the political elite, who commented on them from a distance, had different understandings of – and attached different meanings to – these extraordinary events. These cultural differences were especially evident on the question of the extent to which climate change was responsible for generating this environmental disaster.     

The appeal of appearing green: Soviet-American ideological competition and Cold War environmental diplomacy

This paper argues that the Cold War, for all its environmental costs, brought in its train a hidden benefit: the creation of an international ideological competition that made meaningful environmental agreements more likely. After reviewing the history of Soviet environmental initiatives, the paper discusses the rise of international environmental agreements and the abrupt decline after 1991.     

Washing urban water: diplomacy in environmental art in the Bronx,New York City

Lillian Ball's art project WATERWASH creates a new ecological imaginary in the South Bronx. Building on a tradition of ‘maintenance art’, the work exhibits the power of soil, plants and microorganisms to clean water – in effect maintaining urban water. An overarching goal of WATERWASH is to educate local people about the metabolism of urban water, causes of river pollution, and to familiarize them with the capacity of soil and plants to respond to that problem. As part of its creation, the project provided diverse groups of people with opportunities to participate, including a group of Bronx youth who assisted in planting the wetland. Several of these apprentices will be involved in future monitoring of the effectiveness of the wetland in mitigating parking lot runoff. I use Isabelle Stengers' notion of ‘diplomacy’ to interrogate the efforts of the artist in negotiating and creating an occasion in which people with divergent interests can both recognize and maintain the relationships of care that sustain them. In effect, this effort extends the feminist discourse of maintenance work to include that undertaken by the ‘other-than-human’.     

Defending Byzantine Spain: frontiers and diplomacy

The centrality of the Reconquista in the historiography of medieval Spain has meant that there has been little examination of the evidence for interaction on and across political boundaries in pre‐Islamic Spain. This article re‐examines existing theories about the defence of the Byzantine province of Spania that had been established by Justinian in the 550s and was taken by the Visigoths in 625. The two existing and opposing models for the extent, defence, and – therefore – the importance of the province to the empire do not explain the evidence convincingly. Rather, a fluid zone of interaction was established in which diplomacy and ‘propaganda’ was the primary means by which opposition was articulated.     

Cultural diplomacy: India does it differently

Abstract

This article reviews the singularities of Indian doctrine and practice of cultural diplomacy, beginning with the observation that this term and the notions of ‘soft power’ and ‘public diplomacy’ commonly associated with cultural diplomacy elsewhere do not have much purchase in India, where the spirit and letter of ‘international cultural relations’ are the preferred currency. The essay explores the historical grounding for this preference, as well as the attitudes and practice that flow from it. Another singularity is the role and importance of the Indian diaspora: overseas populations of Indian origin have been both a significant segment of the target audience for international cultural relations – as if a certain idea of India had to be projected abroad to a part of itself – and a significant ‘co-producer’ in projecting that image. A third is the emergence of a new avatar of the diasporic Indian, now identified with capitalist entrepreneurship.     

The European contribution to global environmental governance

The European Union has become an increasingly central player in international environmental politics. Its role, especially as a protagonist to the United States, has been highlighted by the way in which it successfully led the campaign for ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The 2005 UK presidency has made climate change one of its twin priorities along with African development, and it is with this in mind that the article discusses the way in which the Union can be considered an international environmental actor in its own right and the various contributions that it makes to global environmental governance. While the EU is well known as a trade actor the complexities of its role as an environmental actor, operating under shared competence between the member states and the Community, are less well understood. Despite the inherent difficulties it has been surprisingly effective, although in areas such as climate change there is a need for strong presidential leadership.
The EU's most evident field of activity has concerned the many multilateral environmental agreements in which it has come to play a leading role. However, this does not exhaust its contribution to global environmental governance that extends to the dissemination of norms and the incorporation of partners in its accession and neighbourhood policies. Sustainable development is also a key area of internal and external Union endeavour at the WTO and elsewhere, although there are continuing contradictions arising from its agricultural and fisheries policies. Finally, the Union's credibility will rest upon its ability to implement its environmental commitments and this is nowhere more evident than in its new emissions trading system. This is the centrepiece of the EU's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and it is the need to co-ordinate the Union's diplomacy in the extension of the climate change regime, to include the United States and the developing countries, that the UK presidency must address.     

European cultural diplomacy: diaspora relations with Kazakhstan

Abstract

Cultural diplomacy using diasporic communities as facilitators of interaction between states has long been important. This article suggests a typology of networks of communication derived from a case study of long-established diasporas living in post-independence Kazakhstan and their relationship with their European ‘homelands’. The typology juxtaposes the official stance of homeland governments expressed in formal and legal provisions with the lived experience of the diaspora communities. The study highlights the benefits of developing vibrant ‘valued’ networks of communication embracing both local diasporas and homeland embassies and agencies. In such cases, diplomatic benefits accrue to the homeland and local communities are empowered. Similarly, failing to capitalise on positive sentiment with some infrastructural support may leave an ‘expressive’ network as one of neglected potential.     

精英、舆论与外交:华盛顿会议期间的国民外交代表

1921年底,余日章和蒋梦麟作为国民外交代表参与华盛顿会议。他们对中国政府代表团进行舆论监督,力促政府代表早日提出山东问题。当会外谈判成为现实后,他们又力促政府代表早日解决山东问题;并利用各种渠道构建一个舆论宣传网络,努力维护中国的国家形象,揭露日本侵略中国权利的实际情形。余日章、蒋梦麟在华盛顿会议期间的国民外交活动堪称1920年代初期中国精英利用公众舆论影响政府外交的一个典型。     

New perspectives on instrumentalism: an empirical study of cultural diplomacy

Museums are increasingly recognised as having a role to play within international relations, to facilitate cultural exchange, assert national identity and foster mutual understanding. Whilst international work is perceived to be politically motivated and diplomatically advantageous, it can be highly beneficial to cultural institutions. In this paper, ‘cultural diplomacy' is shown to be a strategy used by museums to enable organisational development and economic growth. This paper demonstrates how national museums adopted a political rhetoric and used strategic lobbying to formulate a new cultural policy, which expanded the scale and scope of their international work. By defining the parameters and principles of this policy, the institutions wield power, thus challenging the conventional perceptions of policy-making and contradicting commentators who accuse museums of political subservience. Throwing the notion of instrumentalism into disarray, this paper calls for a theoretical and conceptual rethinking, to revamp understanding and bring it in line with practice.