Cultural Diplomacy as a Network and Networking in International Relations: The Case of Cultural Diplomacy in Russia

Abstract

This article discusses the European Union (EU) member states’ cultural institutes as nodes of cultural diplomacy networks and a network approach in the analysis of cultural diplomacy at the time of Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea in 2014. This study’s hypothesis is that the international crisis over the war in Ukraine pushed the EU member states to establish new ties linking their cultural establishments. The authors analyzed the EU countries’ cultural diplomacy documents and considered the concepts of network structure, network synergy, and issue networks to investigate whether EU governments—and especially their cultural agencies—understand cultural diplomacy as a network. The results of the study show that while the nodes of cultural diplomacy in Russia and the selected EU countries continued their communication during the international crisis, the expected interactions among CIs in Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Poland were hardly established.