International Trust and Public Diplomacy

Countries struggle to find ways to be perceived as trustworthy by people around the world because trust is linked to efficiency, business opportunities and political influence. This paper is based on case studies of five Public Diplomacy activities: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s letter in The Washington Post (2013); Denmark’s trust-building effort in Pakistan following the so-called “Muhammad crisis” (from 2010); The British Council’s strategy for trust-building in China (2012); Russian President Vladimir Putin’s letter in The New York Times (2013), and the USA’s trust-building effort in Turkey (from 2006). The best results have been obtained where Public Diplomacy has been linked to successful traditional diplomacy at state-level (Iran) or has created a framework for people-to-people relations (Denmark, UK and USA). A backlash was experienced in the case where a foreign state leader patronized the national leader (Russia). In all cases, respect for people in other countries despite differences in culture seems fundamental for a Public Diplomacy initiative to succeed. A central concept in the paper is International Trust as described by Brewer, Gross, Aday and Willnat (2004).