Correspondence: Geoffrey Allen Pigman, Political Economy, Bennington College, One College Drive, Bennington, Vermont 05201, USA. e-mail: gapigman@bennington.edu

¹obtained his BA from Swarthmore College, MA from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and D Phil from the University of Oxford. He is affiliated with the Faculty of Political Economy in Bennington College (Vermont, USA), and is Visiting Fellow, Graduate Division of Global Affairs, Rutgers University – Newark (New Jersey, USA). Formerly, he was Equity Research Liaison, CIBC World Markets, New York. His principal areas of research include contemporary diplomacy, trade politics, foreign economic policymaking, with a focus on current public diplomacy. He is the author of The World Economic Forum: A Multi-State Holder Approach to Global Governance (Routledge, 2006).

²is president and owner of Jott Communications, L.L.C., an integrated communications firm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Before creating Jott Communications in 2007, he held positions at a number of public relations and communications agencies including Weber Shandwick, Minneapolis, Hill and Knowlton, Brussels and The Centre, Brussels. Throughout his career he has served both national and international clients and has been an integral team member and leader on a number of communications projects. He has experience in a broad range of industry sectors including the financial services, health and wellness, telecommunications and retail industries as well as the non-profit and government sectors. He graduated with a BA from the University of Minnesota and earned his MA in International Political Economy from the University of Kent at Brussels in Brussels, Belgium. He is an active member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), where he serves as a committee chair and the International Studies Association (ISA).

Received 8 August 2007; Revised 8 August 2007.

Abstract

In a world increasingly conditioned by the speed and efficiency of information and communication technologies, the need for nation-state governments to communicate directly to foreign publics has increased significantly. Public diplomacy has had to become more fully integrated with, and more central to, governments' overall approaches to diplomatic representation and communication. Effective public diplomacy has also become crucial for diplomatic actors such as governments of regions and of not widely recognised nation-states, which seek to assert their identity through gaining recognition by the global public as well as by established governments. All have had to learn from the political communications strategies of large global firms, which have become skilled in communicating to global public audiences over the past three decades. Governments and other diplomatic actors aspiring to recognition have turned increasingly to private firms specialising in political communication and representation to conduct diplomacy on their behalf. Many such firms entered this business by 'going global' after building up expertise in domestic political representation and communication and in lobbying. This paper explores and evaluates a topography of how governments have interacted with private actors to construct diplomatic strategies of representation and image management.