The Citizen Diplomats and their Pathways to Diplomatic Power

This chapter focuses on individual, citizen diplomats that reached a global level of notoriety and explores their representational work in order to identify pathways to diplomatic power. We applied Sharp’s taxonomy of citizen diplomats (2001), adapting traditional models of soft power and public diplomacy (Nye, 2011) and employing a multiple case design focusing on descriptive case studies (Yin, 2018). We, therefore, selected global citizens who reflect the challenges and trends of contemporary citizen diplomacy (Cooper, 2007, p. 126): a sense of purpose, an ability to interact with high-level state officials and a global reach. By building specific case studies drawn from diplomatic actions of highly visible individuals, our focus was to explore the conversion process of soft power as a possible pathway to diplomatic power in terms of policymaking rather than awareness, a dimension often associated with the soft power of citizens.