THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2024 41 to practitioners, policymakers, and even those new to the field. As editor, Gilboa deftly organizes Research Agenda around three new trends in public diplomacy scholarship: the growing diversity of PD actors, the creative reformulation of PD as a discipline, and long overdue redefinitions of PD instruments. Part I, with its focus on state and non-state actors, reveals how international organizations leverage institutional assets in the service of public diplomacy interests. Here, too, are insights into the growing coordination between corporate and government PD actors, as well as the extent to which digital empowerment has put ordinary citizens at the nexus of globalization, democracy, and civil society development. Part II will appeal to public diplomacy scholars and practitioners in search of a historical overview of the discipline as well as a review of emerging trends and practices. These include new ways to think about soft power, the overlap between PD and public relations, changes to the relationship between PD actors and their audiences, and the relatively new development of a theory of management for PD professionals. Part III explores how the digital age has transformed the use of traditional instruments of public diplomacy. These shifts include the emergence of non-human actors and stakeholders, the value of face-to-face exchanges in an increasingly digital context, the impact of digital technologies on diplomatic norms and values, and the integration of live and digital elements in the new “hybrid” public diplomacy. Happily, as Gilboa notes, there is a growing consensus that public diplomacy deserves serious attention as a legitimate science, or method of inquiry, and that the findings of this science merit serious attention from foreign affairs policymakers, especially when it comes to confronting contemporary challenges to national power and legitimacy in the digital media space. However, while research has arguably lessened confusion about the value of public diplomacy to foreign policy, there remains “a considerable gap between scholars and officials and theory and practice.” Gilboa’s desire to build a set of navigable bridges between scholarship and practice has been thwarted by the emergence of more and more “islands of theory.” The multiplicity of disciplinary approaches to PD threatens to overwhelm efforts to make sense of them. Gilboa’s solution? More “theory construction … not only to guide research, but also to unify and consolidate” it. In short, says Gilboa, we need “a unifying theory of theories of public diplomacy.” Unfortunately, this is where practitioners and scholars inevitably part ways. While scholars can indulge in the pursuit of meta constructs, practitioners and policymakers are on the hook for concrete answers. c Gregory, Cull, and Gilboa each make a powerful case for the emergence of a multidisciplinary, innovative, and expansive practice equal to the challenges of a digital age. They elevate, in turn, the centrality of diplomacy’s public dimension, public diplomacy’s essential role in the defense of national security, and the importance of examining PD from multiple disciplines and theoretical frameworks. Their serious and knowledgeable attention to public diplomacy is a great service in an environment in which the practice is poorly understood outside its narrow band of devoted practitioners. Alas, none of the three provides much in the way of solutions to persistent deficits in leadership and resources. The problem remains that so much is expected of PD actors and institutions: to positively influence global public attitudes toward government policies and behaviors; serve as the standard-bearer of national political values; and shore up state legitimacy in contested media spaces. And yet public diplomacy remains the most undervalued element of foreign policy—no other instrument of national power is called on to do so much with so little. n Unfortunately, this is where practitioners and scholars inevitably part ways. While scholars can indulge in the pursuit of meta constructs, practitioners and policymakers are on the hook for concrete answers.
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