Citizen diplomacy

Short description: Issues of diplomacy

Citizen diplomacy is the political concept of average citizens engaging as representatives of a country or cause either inadvertently or by design.[1] Citizen diplomacy may take place when official channels are not reliable or desirable. For example, 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 diplomats can be students, teachers, athletes, artists, business people, humanitarians, adventurers or tourists.[2] They are often motivated by a responsibility to engage with the rest of the world in a meaningful, mutually beneficial dialogue.[3]

Citizen diplomacy can complement official diplomacy or subvert it. Some nations ban track-two diplomacy when they run counter to official foreign policy.

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 References
* 3 Further reading
* 4 See also
* 5 External link

## History

Robert W. Fuller was one of the first people to call themselves a citizen diplomat, after he used his position as the president of Oberlin College to plan cultural exchanges to alleviate the Cold War. 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 to promote peace.[4] The term citizen diplomat did not enter wider usage until 1981.[5]

The phrase "citizen diplomacy" was the watchword of the Citizen Exchange Corps, founded by Stephen Daniel James and Denise James, which conducted cultural exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Anti-nuclear groups like Clamshell Alliance and ECOLOGIA have sought to thwart US policy through "grassroots" initiatives with Soviet and (later) former Soviet groups.

## References

1. ↑ "You Are A Citizen Diplomat". http://diplomacy.state.gov/discoverdiplomacy/references/169794.htm. Retrieved August 23, 2016.
2. ↑ "Who else can be a diplomat? Everyone!" (in en-US). 2022-10-11. https://diplomacy.state.gov/who-else-can-be-a-diplomat-everyone/.
3. ↑ "U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy". http://www.uscenterforcitizendiplomacy.org/. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
4. ↑ Roberts, Sam (2025-07-25). "Robert W. Fuller, Who Championed Dignity Over ‘Rankism,’ Dies at 88" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/books/robert-w-fuller-dead.html.
5. ↑ "The History of Citizen Diplomacy". https://www.globaltiesdetroit.org/news/List/The-History-of-Citizen-Diplomacy.

## Further reading

* Attias, Shay. (2013). Israel's new peer to peer diplomacy. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 7(4), 473–482.
* Gelder, Melinda. Meeting the Enemy, Becoming a Friend. Bauu Institute: Dec 2006. ISBN 0972134956
* Gopin, Marc (2009). To Make the Earth Whole: The Art of Citizen Diplomacy in an Age of Religious Militancy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7425-5863-2.
* Mattern, Douglas (2006). Looking for square two: moving from war and organized violence to global community. Salt Lake City, Utah: American Book Pub. ISBN 978-1-58982-357-0.
* Patterson, David S. (2008). The search for negotiated peace: women's activism and citizen diplomacy in World War I. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-96141-7.
* Phillips, David L. (2005). Unsilencing the past: track two diplomacy and Turkish-Armenian reconciliation. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-84545-007-6.

## See also

* Facebook diplomacy
* Peacemakers

## External link

* U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy

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