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The History of Citizen Diplomacy

November 11, 2020

Citizen Diplomacy is a timeless concept - originating in the United States during the late 1900s, Citizen Diplomacy helped end the Cold War, and it continues to be a vital part of our world and cross-border connectedness today.

Physicist Robert Fuller pioneered citizen diplomacy during the 1970s and 1980s in an effort to alleviate the Cold War, launching multiple citizen diplomacy projects in an effort to mediate tensions between the USSR and the US. These efforts included arranging televised discussions between Soviet and American scientists, calling himself a citizen diplomat (Salamon, 2004). Along with the rise of citizen diplomacy, author and political commentator David Hoffman coined the term ‘Citizen Diplomacy’ in 1981 in an article on Dr. Fuller’s work (Odoh, 2014). Emphasizing that citizens “...have the rights and even the responsibility to help realise the country’s national interests through their interactions to complement official diplomatic activities” (Odoh, 2014), citizen diplomacy has continued to grow since the Cold War, becoming a way for individuals in the US and around the world to become directly and indirectly involved in international relations.

Despite the increasing awareness of citizen diplomacy after Hoffman’s initiation of the term and Fuller’s citizen diplomacy efforts, many diplomacy advocates realized that too few Americans were practicing citizen diplomacy:

“Nearly 10 years ago, a group of citizen diplomacy advocates met to discuss a problem in America—our country’s image around the world was declining and too few Americans were embracing cultural exchange and people-to-people engagement or ‘citizen diplomacy’ as a way to change those trends. For Americans who wanted to learn more about other cultures or be globally engaged right here at home, there was no central resource from which to find an opportunity that fit their interests.” (PYXERA, 2017).

In order to address this issue, the US Center for Citizen Diplomacy (USCCD) at PYXERA Global was founded in 2006 to create an accessible collection of thousands of resources for global engagement and to highlight the citizen diplomacy movement (USCCD, n.d.). The USCCD “promotes, expands, and celebrates opportunities for all individuals to be exemplary citizen diplomats and affirms the value of purposeful global engagement” and envisions a world in which “all individuals engage in person-to-person interactions that result in greater understanding between people and cultures” (USCCD, n.d.).

Since 2006, the USCCD has effectively connected individuals in the US and abroad by creating a national database of over 2000 organizations that provide opportunities for Americans to engage in citizen diplomacy, convened a national summit that was attended by participants from 39 states and 41 countries, granted national awards highlighting work done to increase diplomacy, and created an ever-growing network of citizen diplomats all over the world (USCCD, n.d.).

Through the efforts of organizations such as the USCCD and Global Ties Detroit, and support from the U.S. Department of State through International Visitor Leadership Programs, citizen diplomacy has continued to exponentially grow in America and around the world, becoming a timeless and effective way to create mutually beneficial relationships across borders.

- Stephanie Stan, Global Ties Detroit Programming and Communications Intern, Fall 2020

Are you curious about how you can participate in citizen diplomacy? Watch this video from PYXERA Global on ways you can be a global citizen diplomat - today and every day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a9AYm3Lccg

Sources:

Odoh, S. D., & Nwogbaga, D. M. (2014). Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Citizen

Diplomacy in the Conduct of Nigeria’s Foreign Policy. IOSR Journal of Humanities and

Social Science, 19(10), 09-14. doi:10.9790/0837-191080914

Salamon, J. (2004, July 10). Tilting at Windbags: A Crusade Against Rank. Retrieved November

09, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/books/tilting-at-windbags-a-crusade-against-rank.html

Understanding Citizen Diplomacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 09, 2020, from

https://www.centerforcitizendiplomacy.org/

You Are a Citizen Diplomat. (2017, September 27). Retrieved November 09, 2020, from

https://www.pyxeraglobal.org/you-are-a-citizen-diplomat/

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