Talk:Public diplomacy

First use of the term public diplomacy

I always thought it was Woodrow Wilson in 1916, but I found this article: "The earliest use of the phrase ‘public diplomacy’ to surface is actually not American at all but in a leader piece from the London Times in January 1856. It is used merely as a synonym for civility in a piece criticizing the posturing of President Franklin Pierce. ‘The statesmen of America must recollect,’ the Times opined, ‘that, if they have to make, as they conceive, a certain impression upon us, they have also to set an example for their own people, and there are few examples so catching as those of public diplomacy.’ The first use quoted by the New York Times was in January 1871, in reporting a Congressional debate. Representative Samuel S. Cox (a Democrat from New York, and a former journalist) spoke in high dudgeon against secret intrigue to annex the Republic of Dominica, noting he believed in ‘open, public diplomacy.’ It was a use which anticipated the major articulation of the phrase thirty-five years later in the Great War. During the Great War the phrase ‘public diplomacy’ was widely used to describe a cluster of new diplomatic practices. These practices ranged from successive German statements around submarine warfare policy, through public declarations of terms for peace, to Woodrow Wilson’s idealistic vision – as expressed in the opening point of his ‘fourteen points’ speech of 8 January 1918 – of an entire international system founded on ‘open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.’ Many writers at the time preferred the phrase ‘open diplomacy’ for this, but ‘public diplomacy had its adherents and seems to have been given further currency by reporting French use of the phrase ‘diplomatie publique.’" http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdfs/gullion.pdf Gaintes (talk) 14:37, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

While the discussion on propaganda is excellent material, it leaves the impression that the term "public diplomacy" refers only to media arms, like Radio Free Europe. This is a large component of what's referred to as public diplomacy but it's not the whole picture. Things like meeting with foreign business leaders or academics, hosting seminars, and arranging student exchange programs are also considered public diplomacy by the State Department. The way I understand it, it's an almost perfect equivalent to "public relations".

I will attempt to make these points in the article. Isomorphic 14:20, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Remittances?

I'm snipping this:

The growth in remittances – money earned from working overseas that is returned home – is "spreading newfound wealth to the far corners of the developing world". Remittances have soared to more than $70bn a year world-wide, according to the IMF, which is greater than total government aid to developing countries and larger than all the foreign direct investment by US companies in emerging markets last year. More than $13bn a year is sent out of the US alone, making America the world’s largest source of remittances. Global migration and the gulf between the world’s rich and poor economies help fuel the remittance business. Large banks in Mexico, El Salvador and Turkey are taking notice and are selling "remittance bonds" or loans backed by cash that overseas workers deposit in the banks for their relatives.

  Increasingly, "economists believe remittances can deliver far-reaching benefits to a country, even if there are social costs, e.g. families sending their best and brightest overseas. By pooling their money, overseas workers are funding larger civic projects and businesses." However, a study of 22 migrant communities in Mexico in the early 1990s, led by Douglas Massey of the University of Pennsylvania, found that families used less than 10% of the remittances for saving or starting new businesses; typically they spent more than half on daily living expenses, consumer goods and health care. Some argue that forcing people to leave the country for "high-paying" jobs is not real development and that remittances can limit a country’s growth, since governments learn to rely on the easy incomes as a way to avoid deeper reforms.
Because unless I'm missing something, it doesn't have anything at all to do with public diplomacy. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)