DSV

In its more than sixty-year existence, the United States Peace Corps program has been described by any number of names, including, derisively, “Kennedy’s Kiddie Corps.” But how did the Peace Corps evolve? How was it organized? For what purposes was it established? Did it meet its goals for establishment? Retrospectively, what can prospective participants in the program, policy...

The question of interstate relations, and the best approaches to manage them, has engaged scholars and practitioners since as far back as Thucydides and the History of the Peloponnesian War. Even before the establishment of the modern Westphalian state model that prizes sovereignty, envoys, ambassadors, government, kingdoms, emissaries, and even tribal chiefs’ representatives has been...

This chapter provides a general framework for evaluating processes and approaches to foreign policy making. By understanding the most common approaches to foreign policy making, the study will set the parameters for evaluating how volunteering can affect foreign policy perceptions in the volunteer recipient countries. The significant question here: How does citizen diplomacy affect the foreign...

The previous chapters conceptualized citizen diplomacy (through international volunteering) as a foreign policy strategy, but noted the dearth of studies examining how citizen diplomacy for foreign policy purposes changes foreign nationals’ and nations’ perception of the United States. To address this deficit, this research investigates the correlation between factors of mutual...

The previous chapter developed, tested and reported on the quantitative portion of the study, and clearly demonstrated that a relationship exists between citizen diplomacy and states’ foreign policy behavior as measured through congruence in voting with the U.S. at the United Nations, based on the Key UNGA Votes and All UNGA Votes. The preview of the justification of mixed methods argued...

This chapter examines the contribution of the Peace Corps to areas of critical importance: education systems, and the role that education would play in the social and economic development of some newly independent countries. Fresh off colonization, some of the most significant challenges in these countries was the...

At its core, the Peace Corps program proposed to utilize citizen diplomats, taking advantage of individuals’ desire to serve and assist strangers they had never met, as opposed to appealing to the citizens to serve the foreign policy goals of the United States. One might argue that the volunteers’ attraction to the Peace Corps did not—nor does it—stem from the...

Important questions remain about the overall efficacy, the benefit of citizen diplomacy as a foreign policy strategy, its accomplishments, its constraints, and other external, uncontrolled, often unrelated factors that have the potential to derail the good work of the citizen diplomats. Some doubts abound, surrounding what values citizen diplomats impart, the extent to which these values are...

 

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Stephen M. Magu is assistant professor of political science at Hampton University. He currently teaches courses in world civilizations, international relations, and statistical methods. He has previously taught at Old Dominion University, Regent University, and for the Junior State of America Foundation. His research interests include global...