Transnational non-state actors as “alt agents” of public diplomacy: Putin’s Russia versus Open Russia

This paper argues that non-state actors (NSAs) that challenge their respective states can claim a stake in their country’s public diplomacy by introducing and promoting narratives that (a) disrupt the official state-supported narratives and (b) present a more complex picture of their country-of-origin to the foreign publics. To conceptualize this type of engagement with foreign audiences, this project proposes the term “alternative agents” or “alt agents” of non-state public diplomacy. The paper combines Kelley’s (Agency change: diplomatic action beyond the state, Owman & Littlefield, London, 2014) framework of diplomatic capabilities of NSAs with Miskimmon et al. (Strategic narratives: communication power and the new world order, Routledge, New York, 2014) concept of strategic narratives to develop the definition of alt agents of public diplomacy. Using the case study of the transnational movement Open Russia, the paper illustrates how the work of alt agents aimed at connecting with foreign constituencies in order to achieve their political goals might look like in practice. The paper contributes to the scholarship on non-state public diplomacy by engaging with the relatively unexplored question of the role of adversarial non-state actors in public diplomacy, and the dynamic of their engagement with foreign stakeholders.