ABSTRACT
Over time the political system has expanded its communication into the global sphere, differentiated it and thus, after the experience of two world wars, fostered the idea of a communicative global community. However, states today can hardly be described as peace-promoters and cosmopolitans. While they appear, in the context of diplomacy, to be more willing than ever to interact, through public diplomacy they go behind the backs of their negotiating partners to pursue their national self-interest. Foreign policy has certainly discovered the term “dialogue” as a marketing tool, but public diplomacy and particularly war propaganda remain essentially one-way communication. The political system is more interactive than the mass media, but it is also far more aggressive. Other than moments when diplomacy establishes an interactive global community, international political communication takes the form of persuasion intended to preserve the identity and interests of the nation state. Cross-border political communication creates ideal “third spaces” and communities, but the state is schizophrenic: it can be destructive, undermines synchrony, dilutes discourses and thwarts both global dialogues and enduring relationships. The state’s capacity to integrate can only be developed further through changes in actor structures (transnationalization) and communicative relations (global governance).
