Role of Citizen Diplomacy in Shaping Contemporary World Politics Essay

Role of Citizen Diplomacy in Shaping Contemporary World Politics - Essay Example Citizen diplomacy plays important role in shaping the contemporary world politics because it has become now common for the countries to interact at citizen level especially where the governments of the countries do not officially recognize each other. Citizen diplomacy compliments the official or formal diplomacy but in some cases it could also challenge the official diplomacy by following different tract and strategy. In these cases, the governments of the countries usually ban the track two or citizen diplomacy for the management of their affairs solely through the official foreign policy and formal diplomats (Melissen, 2008).   Citizen diplomacy is not very new concept for the world. It was pioneered by a physicist Robert Fuller during 1970s and 1980s. He used to travel Soviet Union with the intention of alleviating the Cold War. After the demise of Russian empire, Fuller continued his efforts and propagated his thoughts all over the globe that the common people could also play defining role in bringing peace to the world politics (Patterson, 2007). In 1981, David Hoffman wrote an article about Fuller and coined the term citizen diplomacy giving a name to the efforts and concept divulged by Fuller through his continuous efforts. Since then citizen diplomacy has widely been recognized as an important tool of securing peace and friendly relationship between the states. Some historians also believe that the term was actually coined by Joe Montville to refer to the private negotiations. between the citizens of different countries (Gilboa, 2001). The role of citizen diplomacy in the contemporary world politics could be understood from the perspective that it came to play supportive role in the situations where the official diplomatic communication links between the countries are broken and they are stuck with the negotiation process. The continuation of such situation could lead towards cold war between the involved countries and in such situation the citizen diplomacy works for releasing