Citizen diplomacy (people's diplomacy) is the political concept of average citizens engaging as representatives of a country or cause either inadvertently or by design. Citizen diplomacy may take place when official channels are not reliable or desirable; for instance, if two countries do not formally recognize each other's governments, citizen diplomacy may be an ideal tool of statecraft. Citizen diplomacy does not have to be direct negotiations between two parties, but can take the form of: scientific exchanges, cultural exchanges, and international athletic events. Citizen diplomacy can complement official diplomacy or subvert it. Some nations ban track-two efforts like this when they run counter to official foreign policy.

Citizen Diplomacy is the concept that the individual has the right, even the responsibility, to help shape U.S. foreign relations, "one handshake at a time." Citizen diplomats can be students, teachers, athletes, artists, business people, humanitarians, adventurers or tourists. They are motivated by a responsibility to engage with the rest of the world in a meaningful, mutually beneficial dialogue.

One of the pioneers of citizen diplomacy, physicist

Robert W. Fuller Robert Works Fuller (born 1936) is an American physicist, author, social reformer, and former president of Oberlin College. Biography Robert Fuller attended Oberlin College, leaving without graduating in order to earn his Ph.D. in physics at ...

, traveled frequently to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

in the 1970s and 1980s in the effort to alleviate the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Fuller continued this work in political hot spots around the world and developed the idea of reducing

rankism Rankism is "abusive, discriminatory, and/or exploitative behavior towards people because of their rank in a particular hierarchy". Rank-based abuse underlies many other phenomena such as bullying, racism, hazing, ageism, sexism, ableism, mentalis ...

to promote peace. The phrase "citizen diplomacy" was first coined by David M. Hoffman in an article about Fuller's work which appeared in ''

Co-Evolution Quarterly ''CoEvolution Quarterly'' (1974–1985) was a journal descended from Stewart Brand's ''Whole Earth Catalog''. Stewart Brand founded the ''CoEvolution Quarterly'' in 1974 using proceeds from the ''Whole Earth Catalog.'' It evolved out of the o ...

'' in 1981.

Anti-nuclear The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, natio ...

groups like

Clamshell Alliance The Clamshell Alliance is an anti-nuclear organization founded in 1976 to oppose the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The alliance has been dormant for many years. The group was co-founded by Paul Gunter, ...

and ECOLOGIA have sought to thwart US policy through "grassroots" initiatives with Soviet and (later) former Soviet groups.

References

External links

Business for Diplomatic ActionU.S. Center for Citizen DiplomacyWorld Citizens guide
Types of diplomacy Political concepts Activism by type Citizenship {{Activism-stub

See also

References

Further reading

External links