Mapping the Undefinable: Some Thoughts on the Relevance of Exchange Programs within International Relations Theory

Giles Scott-Smith
Additional contact information
Giles Scott-Smith: Roosevelt Study Center and Roosevelt Academy, the Netherlands

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008, vol. 616, issue 1, 173-195

Abstract: This article examines the importance of exchange programs as channels of political influence and the value that can be gained from examining their impact via various theoretical positions in international relations (IR). Although there are clear possibilities for linking the study of public diplomacy with IR theory, so far this has not occurred to any real extent. Following World War II, a whole swathe of social scientific and behavioralist research, mainly in the fields of communications and psychology, laid the basis for understanding the political implications of public diplomacy and exchanges. Using these studies as a springboard, the article moves on first to consider their continuing relevance and then to insert exchanges within reflections on IR fields such as regime theory, Gramscian-based critical theory, constructivism, epistemic communities, and transnational networks. The article concludes with some observations on the relevance of exchanges as forms of cultural–political interchange and the use of case studies for confirming their importance as an object of study for IR.

Keywords: public diplomacy; international relations theory; transnational networks; opinion leader (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716207311953 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:616:y:2008:i:1:p:173-195

DOI: 10.1177/0002716207311953

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().