19. Public Diplomacy of Authoritarian States: Conclusive Remarks

This chapter synthesizes comparative findings on the diverse public diplomacy strategies employed by authoritarian regimes. It identifies the centrality of domestic legitimation and repression in shaping international outreach. Key features include centralized, hierarchical structures, externalization of repression, dynamic adaptation of soft power tools, and a strategic turn toward the Global South as a primary target of influence. The chapter proposes a heuristic framework distinguishing four overlapping authoritarian public diplomacy approaches: the great power, promoting modernization, occasional intruder, and ideology dissemination approaches. It finds that authoritarian regimes’ public diplomacy is highly adaptive, frequently blending strategies and learning from peer experiences. Ultimately, public diplomacy in these contexts is a contested, evolving arena, challenging traditional assumptions about the exclusive linkage between democracy and soft power. This underscores the need for further comparative, context-sensitive research.