Alex Blog - Интересные статьи

It is widely recognized that leaks can hamper international negotiations, but the ability of publicity to promote agreement among nations has received less attention. This article argues that the press contributes to international agreement insofar as it illuminates the issues under negotiation, helps to ensure intra-governmental coordination, links governments with interested publics, and provides supplementary communication channels for diplomacy.

International negotiations are frequently facilitated by publicity. One can acknowledge that, under some circumstances, the news media make it more difficult for governments to reach agreement, but this qualified form of acknowledgment in itself suggests that under other circumstances the media may have a favorable influence on negotiations. The problem becomes one of defining the positive functions of publicity and distinguishing them from the negative ones.

The primary body of data on which I have drawn consists of 48 semi-structured interviews with diplomats and journalists, conducted in Washington, New York, and Western Europe (excluding Southern Europe) during the first six months of 1973. My respondents included 23 European diplomats, 14 European journalists, and 11 U.S. diplomats.

In addition, I have made extensive but less systematic use of the experiences of a dozen American foreign correspondents and of memoirs written by journalists and diplomats. In view of the geographical specificity of most these sources, my observations apply primarily to the United States and Western Europe; the extent to which they apply to other parts of the world is not known.

Negotiation is defined broadly to include any interaction among representatives of two or more countries in search of agreement. The term diplomat is used to refer to policy-level members of foreign offices and other agencies concerned with foreign policy as well as to ambassadors and foreign service offices.