Paweł Surowiec

This article introduces the concept of a hybrid mnemonic resource to explain how the Polish illiberal government repurposed collective memory to achieve strategic goals. It explicates the fusion of...

This chapter maps out the ontological notion of ‘hybridity’ against statecraft underpinning the ways in which state and non-state actors exercise soft power in international politics. We argue that hybridity offers a powerful exploratory disposition for the theorisation of the international race for soft power and localised statecraft, geared toward strategic goals of contemporary diplomacy. As such, we use the ontology of hybridity to make sense of a worldview in which statecraft adapts to the changing landscapes in which soft power is deployed. Of particular relevance to our argument are interplays between diplomacy and statecraft, hybrid media landscapes, and communicative practices induced by cultures in which diplomacy is either merely consumed or provides media users with avenues for engagement and participation in it. Our argument rests on three lines of reasoning. First, we consider hybridity as a condition shaping the realm of governance of soft power. Second, we explore ways in which statecraft is reconfigured by hybrid media landscapes. Third, we discuss how hybridisation of communicative practices and cultures affect the relationship between statecraft and soft power. Finally, we make a case for, and define ‘soft power statecraft’ as a concept and an autonomous line of inquiry at the juncture of domestic and international politics.

This article theorises the interplay between public diplomacy and populism. Building on Baudrillard’s simulacra, we advance the hybridity approach to soft power statecraft by analysing a cultural shift in US presidential public diplomacy. Using discourse analysis, we uncover how, rather than aiding the building of relationship with foreign publics, Donald Trump has brought to the field cultural codes alien to public diplomacy, imploding the meanings central to the endogenous norms of diplomacy and turning towards an agonistic relational dynamic with foreign publics. This article reveals how digitalisation affords the expansion of Donald Trump’s populist style, and makes the populist cultural shift highly visible on his Twitter. To reveal this dynamic in granular detail, we propose ‘kayfabe’ as an epistemic lens for the interpretation of the populist style in the conduct of Trump’s ‘simulated public diplomacy’, a defining feature of the current US global leadership. As well as considering socialities re-shaping relational dynamics, this article unpacks tensions stemming from the expansion of populist style into presidential public diplomacy. Finally, we reflect on the epistemic crisis of US public diplomacy within the strategic landscape of political uncertainties associated with the proliferation of populism in the field.

Focusing on the “state” rather than the “nation,” this article explores the interplay between nation branding and Poland’s soft power statecraft. Contextualised by Poland’s European orientation in foreign affairs, this Bourdieusian study focuses on the field of diplomacy and statecraft, particularly its communicative practices for the articulation of soft power. Aided by policy documents and campaign artefacts, this analysis of interviews (n=45) with state actors and newcomers to the field, nation branders, traces their actions, and unfolds the effects of their practices on soft power statecraft. The central argument emerging from the analysis of findings rests on the cultural conditions and ideological effects of nation branding on the field. On the one hand, I find, these effects advance the process of “corporatisation” of Poland’s soft power statecraft. On the other hand, the embeddedness of nation branding in Poland marks a cultural shift in soft power statecraft towards technocratic and transactional promotional culture.

This examination analyses transformations to statecraft accelerated by digital media technologies. This theory-building study moves beyond digitalisation of diplomacy as a means of adapting statecraft to evolving media landscapes, and extends to the governance of soft power capabilities. It challenges static approaches to digital diplomacy and argues for conceptualisations of soft power that account for changes to statecraft. To theorise this dynamic, the concept of ‘soft power statecraft’ and the notion of hybridity in the analysis of ‘GREAT’, Britain’s prominent strategic campaign, reveal trajectories of change elicited by it. The findings, drawn from interviews, policy data, and media artefacts, reveal how ‘GREAT’ embodies a hybridised approach to soft power statecraft at the levels of governance, communicative practices, media landscapes, and cultures. They reveal how these changes translate into statecraft strategies for the articulation of soft power.

This introductory overview opens the series of articles included in the issue entitled Media and Illiberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, and sets the scene for the debate on the relationship between illiberal trends in politics and media landscapes in the region. Drawing on existing scholarship, it traces the roots and the evolution of illiberalism, focusing the discussion within the confines of particularities of media landscapes. Through the introduction of articles addressing manifestations of illiberalism in media landscapes, it argues that “illiberal turn” in Central and Eastern Europe is part of a global political shift, rather than a regional one.

In this article, we examine how media policy changes aid de-democratisation in Poland. Unfolding the logic underpinning the new politics of media regulations, this article argues that media policy paints a nuanced picture of democratic backsliding. Our Foucault-inspired discourse analysis of media policy archive focuses on the rise of illiberal trends at the cross-roads of the Polish hybrid media system, democracy and society. We find these trends display the features of centralisation of power, cultural politics, political partisanship and social polarisations. We explain these notions, using the concepts of “executive aggrandisement” and “politicisation” of public service media sector.