Diplomacy and International Politics

The following is an event write-up about the recent Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship (PETR) seminar on “France’s Global Role in a Changing World Order” co-moderated by Natalie Colbert, Executive Director of the Belfer Center, and Svenja Kirsch, Fellow with PETR, on April 19, 2023.

Authoritarian modes of governing have steadily increased over the past 10 years. A number of autocracies have intensified their repressive tactics, while several democracies – many of which were once classified as consolidated – have tampered with fundamental rights and the rule of law. Despite a few developments to the contrary, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) 2020 highlights the ongoing decline of democracy around the globe.

The presentation of BTI results focused on the resembling patterns of dismantling democracy in (highly) defective democracies such as Hungary, Moldova, the Philippines, Serbia or Zambia and regimes in which this process has been so pronounced that they are now categorized as autocracies in the BTI, such as Bangladesh, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Turkey or Uganda. It looked at the typical sequence to an authoritarian deconstruction of democratic institutions from within, from the purposeful undermining of oversight institutions, attacking the media and civil society to manipulating the electoral system, in order to examine the resonance of these trends in the United States. The goal of the discussion is to identify the features and underlying causes of this erosion, and to suggest promising counter-strategies.

February 24th, 2020, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Gesche Joost, Professor of Design Research at the Berlin University of the Arts and head of the Design Research Lab since 2005, discussed the digital divide and how it will shape social connectivity in an event moderated by Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, and Lauren Zabierek, Executive Director of the Cyber Project.

Chinese diplomats in Africa are robustly defending Beijing’s policies on Twitter as part of a new and sometimes aggressive public relations campaign which is playing out across the globe as the country’s envoys answer President Xi Jinping’s call to “tell China stories well”.south chi

Just two weeks ago, a tweet cost the global stock markets roughly $1.36 trillion (or Australia’s annual GDP). With 280 characters on Twitter, the U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to raise tariffs on select Chinese imports, instilling lower market confidence, triggering significant volatility, and exacerbating existing political uncertainties. To explore what is really at stake in Twitter diplomacy, it is important to explore why Twitter diplomacy matters, why world leaders use it, what it means for diplomatic relations, and how governments can manage the associated risks.