The Ministry of Foreign Affairs… “must maintain constant coordination with its representations overseas, with other public entities and the organized civil society, as indispensable elements to give coherence to the actions of the country abroad and translate internal targets in the position it should have and the country image we want to project, as part of a Costa Rican public diplomacy, which can be developed, based on our pillars of foreign policy.” National Development Plan 2015-2018, Alberto Cañas Escalante.
Abstract
This article questions the universality of smart power and substantiates the pertinence of a Costa Rican approach when facing the challenge to generate a Public Diplomacy strategy. The theoretical and empirical analysis of the investigation allows determining the suitability of soft power to provide Public Diplomacy with epistemic consistency in a Small State lacking armed forces such as Costa Rica, which currently is considering to create a Public Diplomacy strategy. To test Nye’s hypothesis, a non-probabilistic exploratory approach was conducted between 2013 and 2014 with 40 career diplomatic officials (representing 20 per cent of the total amount of career officials), as an innovative exercise, considering the extensive academic literature review carried out for this study.
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Acknowledgments
The article is the result of the investigation “Public Diplomacy in Small States: Perspectives for Costa Rica,” code 0107-13, of the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. I want to thank José Antonio Sanahuja, of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and María Luisa Portugal de Rodrich, of the Universidad de Piura for having reviewed the text. Also recognize the support given by the Dirección de Investigación and its “Fund for supporting the dissemination of knowledge generated in the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica.”
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Méndez-Coto, M.V. Smart power and public diplomacy: A Costa Rican approach. Place Brand Public Dipl 13, 194–204 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-016-0033-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-016-0033-7