The Historical Construction the Ideas and Policies of U.S. “Cultural Diplomacy” in the Framework of the “Good Neighbor Policy”: A Neoliberal Institutionalist Perspective

Yu Sun

Abstract
The global dissemination of American culture in the twentieth century was an important source of the “soft power” of the United States. However, compared with European countries such as Britain and France, the U.S. federal government intervened in cultural dissemination affairs relatively late. From the theory of neoliberal institutionalism put forward by Goldstein and Keohane, it can be found that the emergence of American “cultural diplomacy” is a result of the change of American “worldview”, “principled beliefs” and “causal beliefs” in foreign relations. The concept of “cultural diplomacy” was embedded in the framework of American foreign policy along the path of institutionalization, forming the “Good Neighbor Policy”, which is the result of the reconstruction of American “worldview”, “principled beliefs” and “causal beliefs” in foreign relations in the 1930s. Under the “Good Neighbor Policy”, the Division of Cultural Relations and the Office for Cooperation in Inter-American Affairs were established, along with various a variety of cultural exchange programs. With the coming of World War II, the tension between cultural internationalism and cultural nationalism within the U.S. “cultural diplomacy” became increasingly prominent. Eventually, after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. federal government formally incorporated “cultural diplomacy” into the framework of its national foreign strategy, which also marked a shift in the concept and policy of “cultural diplomacy”.

Keywords
“Good Neighbor Policy”, Historical construction, Neoliberal institutionalism