Countries use various approaches in their ambitions to gain a good reputation. One of the ways of positioning and promoting a country in international relations can be done through nation branding as a foreign policy strategy. Due to the role and importance of culture in nation branding, cultural diplomacy can be an appropriate tool, which enables countries to communicate their identity, based on generally accepted and socially created characteristics of the country, to their foreign environments. In this thesis I formulated a conceptual model of nation branding and examined the approaches and characteristics of branding of illiberal democracies through their cultural diplomacy based on a case study on Hungary. The characteristics identified partly reflect the "typical" characteristics of illiberal democracies, but in certain aspects they reflect the general theoretical characteristics of nation branding and the mechanisms of cultural diplomacy.
|