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- Gamkrelidze, Natia
(author)
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Reimagining Georgia : Images of Georgia Held by the Collective West, Russian, and Georgian Political Elites from 1991 to 2020
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This compilation thesis examines the United States (U.S.), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU), Russian, and Georgian political elites’ images of Georgia from the regaining of Georgia’s independence in 1991 up to 2020. This topic shows the significance of studying the role of the agency of individual leaders and including them as a level of analysis when analyzing different geopolitical setups. The empirical data come from the author’s 102 original interviews with political elites from Georgia, the U.S., NATO and the EU, including presidents, prime ministers, ministers, secretaries, secretaries-general, and Russian foreign policy experts. This dissertation comprises four articles, each using the same research design. The findings of this dissertation show that over time, external and internal political elites hold somewhat varying images of Georgia. These diverging images that mainly emerged after the Rose Revolution of 2003 have a geopolitical character and are crucial for understanding Georgia’s strained geopolitical context. In particular, they reflect a rift between the U.S., NATO, the EU, Georgia, and Russia with regard to the perception of the threat to and cultural status of Georgia. This has chiefly influenced the type of imagery of Georgia that the actors hold and has contributed to the changing geopolitical conditions. Overall, changes in internal and external political elites’ perceptions and attention to image variation help explain policy variation over time.
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| 2. |
- Villanueva Rivas, Cesar, 1966-
(author)
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Representing Cultural Diplomacy : Soft Power, Cosmopolitan Constructivism and Nation Branding in Mexico and Sweden
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study aims at understanding how representational theories can substantiate the field of Cultural Diplomacy by looking at three models: Cosmopolitan Constructivism, Nation Branding and Soft Power. This study aims at understanding how representational theories can substantiate the field of Cultural Diplomacy by looking at three models: Cosmopolitan Constructivism, Nation Branding and Soft Power. The aim of the study is to provide a theoretical framework to under-stand, reformulate and develop the field of Cultural Diplomacy by analyzing and comparing the three main representational models. Using Hanna F. Pitkin’s discussion of political representation as a background, the author assesses the relevance of the three models in terms of the contemporary discourses of Cultural Diplomacy. The author also presents a discussion of cultural representations and formulates an analysis of how indexical, symbolic and postmodern representations can be appropriated in Cultural Diplomacy terms. The main theoretical contribution of the text lies in its analysis of Cosmopolitan Constructivism and its sources: multilateral diplomacy, cosmopolitan theory and constructivist politics. In the debate between identities and alterities, the thesis suggests that the fixed cultural representations of nations in terms of friends and competitors is continually melding with representations about enemies and exotic-others. Two specific cases are chosen to illustrate the underlying theories of representation as a response to cultural global pressures: the idea of Soft-Power in the international exhibition “Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries” and the idea of “Nation-Branding” in Sweden. In sum, this thesis shows the nations’ possibilities, in Cultural Diplomacy terms, of representing their own stories to the world, while being capable of understanding what others have to express about themselves.
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