Determinants of US public diplomacy success/failure: Structural and institutional elements

This paper pushes the conversation about US public diplomacy (PD) failures beyond debates such as 'Is the message delivered well?' versus 'Is the message content poor? 'The paper defines and examines two types of country-level attributes: structural and institutional. Using recent historical data from 2002, evidence is provided that these factors are associated with US PD performance by analysing available data from federal departments, nation-level data and foreign public opinion polls. Using a median regression model, the paper considers the impact of several institutional and structural aspects of countries on US PD success. Factors positively associated with PD success include income (a structural factor) and women's roles in government (an institutional factor), whereas two other factors weakly predict PD failure: government institutional credibility (institutional) and PD spending (structural). The findings suggest that there is merit in moving the PD and foreign policy discussion beyond the existing limited discourse.