International Education Programs and Political Influence

Manufacturing Sympathy?

I. Wilson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137349675
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Exchange programs are often considered to create goodwill for host countries among foreign citizens - yet is this the case? Drawing on a wealth of research with participants and alumni of exchange programs, Iain Wilson shows that the pursuit of goodwill receives little return and distracts these programs from the benefits they are able to deliver.

1

Political Expectations

“If you spend a year in a country then you probably fall in love with it and you will never forget it”

—Entente Cordiale Interview One

Governments support a range of international mobility programs, many of which are presented as means to political ends. I am supporting this claim with a small selection of the evidence I have come across showing that governments expect international mobility programs to generate political benefits.

By an “international mobility program,” I mean a formal arrangement by a government or transnational organization to facilitate the physical movement of people from one country to another on a temporary basis. There have been various attempts to substitute long-distance correspondence for physical mobility through “are backwards pen pal” schemes (Paige 2002), online dialogue sessions such as those organized by Qantara.de (a German-government-funded website aimed at “the Islamic World”) and so on. But physical mobility is the most intense form of intercultural contact. We might speculate that physically traveling to another country will have a significant effect on someone’s attitudes while writing a few letters would not; it is hard to imagine that writing letters would have an effect if travel did not. The best-known programs tend to rely on this most old-fashioned technique: physically bringing people into close proximity to allow face-to-face contact. Participants may have different objectives, like students who travel to study under renowned experts or military officers who seek advanced training in tactics perfected by foreign soldiers, but the mobility remains. Even programs which are notionally about teaching specific skills, such as language teaching programs, bring foreigners into direct contact and encourage human nature to take its course. Examples include the activities of the Goethe Institute and Alliance Francaise.

Perhaps the most familiar type of¹ mobility program is the exchange program, where a citizen of one country literally replaces a citizen of another country. For example, an American high school student might take the place of a Slovak, living with the Slovak’s parents, sitting at the Slovak’s desk in school and eating the food the Slovak would have eaten had she been at home. At the same time, the Slovak student whom the American replaced would be living with the American’s parents, sitting at his desk and eating his food. This might be the cheapest way to facilitate cross-border mobility, since the two teenagers are using facilities which someone else would have been used anyway (although the students will obviously still need transport and there will, inevitably, be some administration involved). But it is important to realize that governments, and transnational organizations, fund a wide range of mobility programs which are designed very differently. Most mobility programs are actually pseudo-exchanges or, in effect, services which are reserved for foreign citizens. These can greatly increase the costs involved in sponsoring mobility.

The classic exchange program has some fairly significant limitations. There need to be two potential participants who wish to travel to each others’ countries at the same time: if the American student wished to visit Slovakia, but there was no Slovak who wanted to visit America, the scheme would fall apart and no-one would go anywhere. An obvious solution would be for Slovakia to take an American one year on the understanding that the American school would accept a Slovak next time there was someone who wanted to go. But this would not solve the underlying problem if there were consistently more Americans wanting to go to Slovakia than Slovaks wanting to go to America. And if we consider more than two countries, the optimal solution becomes even more complicated: perhaps there would usually be more Americans who wanted to go to Slovakia than vice versa, but more Slovaks who wanted to go to Nigeria and more Nigerians who wanted to go to America. A pseudo-exchange might evolve in which administrators tried to maximize the number of exchangees who could travel, while also trying to ensure that no country ended up importing more than it exported, but then a fluctuation in the numbers of Nigerians wanting to travel would start to affect the flows between America and Slovakia as well. The limitations of this barter-like arrangement become ever clearer.

An alternative approach would be to simply create some dedicated services for foreign citizens—extra places in schools, for example, beyond those needed by the country’s citizens. The host country could monetize these services by offering awards to select foreign nationals, for example, scholarships which pay for a year’s tuition. They may even provide cash payments to meet living costs during the visit. In this scenario, some governments are likely to end up consistently receiving more visitors than they send out. Hence, the justification for spending money on hosting foreigners cannot be simply that foreign governments will reciprocate, creating equal opportunities for both countries’ nationals. Mobility is rarely balanced, and in fact it is often very imbalanced, with some countries “importing” many more people in this way than they “export.” This could be seen as either a problem, because they are spending more money on hosting foreign citizens than foreign countries are spending on their own citizens, or as an opportunity. If it is a big enough opportunity, governments could even be persuaded to pay very desirable foreigners to live in their countries, for example, by offering special scholarships to foreign nationals.

One way to see hosting foreigners as an opportunity is to think of it as the cause of a political effect. This implies some kind of mental model that links cause with effect. There are several possibilities. We might expect that mobility programs signal benign intent by the government that funds them, that they maintain informal lines of communication between countries which can be exploited during periods of strain, or that a well-informed populace abroad is helpful (I will come back to these ideas later). But perhaps the most common model applied to international mobility programs—including in the claims I am about to present and challenge—is what Scott-Smith calls the opinion-leader model.

The opinion-leader model links international mobility with the formation of attitudes to foreign countries (Scott-Smith 2008). It rests on a series of assumptions that suggest living in a country in the present will affect how a foreigner relates to it in the future. According to the model, this may in turn bring diplomatic benefits to the country which sponsored the mobility. If that is true, it suggests that countries that attract foreign visitors can turn this economic cost into a diplomatic advantage. It may even be worth paying certain kinds of foreign citizens, who will bring a big political benefit, to spend some time in the country.

Everyday experiences and increased interpersonal contacts with the country’s citizens might change attitudes and beliefs about the host country. But only relatively small proportions of most populations will actually participate in mobility programs, so any microscopic impact on participants must be “multiplied” if it is to influence the macroscopic world of international relations. In an opinion-leader model, multiplication would be largely a matter of returning visitors spreading their changed attitudes to the host country to co-nationals. When the visitor returns home, he or she might gain an influential position which would “multiply” the impact. A common assumption underlying international education programs and academic scholarships is that participants, who tend to be young and very capable, are likely to go on to positions of influence long after they have passed through the program. In many cases, they are selected on the basis of their potential to do so. Alumni might become well-connected and transmit opinions to their social circles, or gain positions of power in opinion-leading industries, such as the media, giving them the potential to influence what many of their compatriots think about other countries. Alternatively, alumni might acquire direct power themselves, and then be influenced in their use of that power by their formative experience (we could also call this a “direct-influence” model, but it rests on essentially the same assumptions).

It is worth bearing in mind that opinion leadership is only one model of how countries might benefit from hosting foreign nationals. For example, overseas visitors might acquire consumption habits which lead them to purchase goods from the host country (Mitchell 1986). They might enhance institutions’ prestige and improve the quality of education for others by attracting talented students, exchange useful knowledge with host nationals (see e.g. Adia 1998: Ch5; Mitchell 1986: 12–21, Schoch and Baumgartner 2005, Vickers and Bekhradnia 2007: 19–21; IIE 2007, Lincoln Commission 2007: 8–10 c.f. Messer and Wolter 2007). Alumni might act as interculturally competent mediators between countries (Bochner 1973, 1981). An ongoing theme of this book is that belief in the opinion-leader model is not necessary to believe that mobility programs bring benefits. Nonetheless, the opinion-leader model is very popular among officials who seek to justify government spending on international mobility (Mitchell 1986: 226–7).

The officials responsible for these programs are surprisingly willing to publicly tie their activities to the pursuit of political influence. When program administrators say that they have political objectives, this should be seen partly as a bid for resources to the custodians of public finances. However, their behavior also reflects political agendas.

Rhetoric

Mobility programs are frequently justified to governments in terms of “soft power,” the ability to manipulate others, in this case other countries, through the attractiveness of culture and values rather than economic incentives or threats of force. International mobility is central to many of Nye’s examples of how soft power can be generated (Nye 2005), and many former exchange administrators have made clear links in post-retirement publications. Arndt (2005: 394, 537) is one obvious example.

Programs frequently present themselves to policy makers as serving political ends. This is often obliquely mentioned in their public mission statements. The German Academic Exchange Service, for example, describes its mission as enabling

young academic elites from around the world to become leaders in the fields of science, culture, economics and politics—as well as friends and partners of Germany. (DAAD 2005, my emphasis)

Such allusions to encouraging international cooperation in public materials are fairly common, but typically vague on why “winning friends” is an activity which deserves government funding. More explicit statements tend to be made in communications between the program organizers and their governments, which are less likely to be read by the general public. For example, reviews of mobility programs by the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (e.g. 2006) indicate that securing political influence is a primary aim, and frequently express concern that the programs may not be doing so efficiently enough. Announcing a significant reorganization of academic mobility programs, which provide scholarships to foreign nationals interested in studying at British universities, the Foreign Secretary of the day explained his decision on the basis that the existing schemes were not devoting enough resource to “potential future leaders.”

Following on from such discourse within government, small industries have been developing, particularly in London and Washington, which provide consultancy on how mobility programmes can be used to gain political leverage in dealings with foreign countries. Their publications (e.g. Fisher and Bröckerhoff 2008, Leonard and Alakeson 2000, Leonard, Stead and Smewing 2002), clearly targeting policy makers, again envisage exchanges as nurturing positive views of the sponsoring country among influential foreign citizens.

One program which is explicit about its pursuit of political objectives is Fulbright. Describing a mobility program that targets young people from Post-Soviet states, the Polishi Fulbright Commission states that its

main aim is to become part of the process of creating in these countries a new intellectual, political and economic elite—open to Western values, and willing and able to work for democracy, market economy and civil society. (Fulbright Poland 2007)

The main Fulbright administration is barely more circumspect about the political nature of its aims. It does not require a dramatic leap of imagination to link the classic mission statement, that the program is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries . . .” to the opinion-leader model. A small elite identified as future leaders will receive Fulbright awards, in the expectation that they will go on to have influence disproportionate to their numbers.

While US programs are perhaps the most overt, similar claims are made in a wide range of countries. The British government reserves a large number of scholarships for foreign students in the hope of establishing bonds with future elites. As one very senior administrator put it “the object [is at least partly] to establish, if you like, crudely, ambassadors for Britain” (British Council Interview One). In bemoaning the limited resources Canada devotes to mobility programs, Potter (2002) establishes that government-funded visits are widely seen as a means of shaping foreign nationals’ views of Canada. McConnell (2000) demonstrates convincingly that the Japan English Teaching (JET) program, which pays English-speaking graduates to teach in Japanese schools, is not simply intended to improve Japanese children’s language skills. A coalition of support for importing English-speakers formed within the Japanese government in large part because this was seen as a means of improving Japan’s diplomatic relations in the long term through those graduates’ future influence.

The opinion-leader model is based on alumni contributing to political change. All the diplomats I contacted expressed a belief that mobility programs impact on international relations through their alumni. But interviewees did differ in what kinds of changes they expect to see in grantees. In particular, we need to be aware of the distinction between making visitors understand a country better, even if they come away disapproving of it, and hoping that visitors will “fall in love with” the host country (Entente Cordiale Interview One)—or at least that more of them will develop positive attitudes than negative ones.

There are managers of mobility program who see their objectives in terms of increasing understanding, and not necessarily making foreigners fans of their countries. This position was reflected in a particularly intriguing use of the word “sympathy” which recurred during my conversations with policy makers.

The essential touchstone of the thinking of any cultural relations organization, whether it’s the British Council, the Goethe Institute or the Japan Foundation . . . is that exposure to a country and its culture—the good, the bad, and the ugly of that culture—will, by definition, produce a better understanding—also for better or for worse—of that country, and therefore in the broadest sense of the word a greater sympathy toward that country. Sympathy can be negative too, to some extent. (British Council Interview One, my italics)

“Sympathy” here is an ambiguous term, which can connote affection but could also mean a more balanced awareness of why a country is as it is. This seems to leave open the curious possibility that a visitor who returned home with a more nuanced, but ultimately skeptical, attitude could count as a success story. In this case, sympathy reflects more a sense of understanding than necessarily approval or endorsement. This perhaps counter-intuitive understanding raises so...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Political Expectations
• 2 Can We Infer That Mobility Has Political Impact? Some Historical Case Studies
• 3 How Strong Is the Evidence of Political Impact?
• 4 How Can We Detect Short-Term Impact (and What Does That Mean)?
• 5 Short-Term Impacts of Erasmus Mobility
• 6 Varieties of Experience
• 7 Individual Perspectives
• 8 Impact over Decades
• 9 Conclusion
• Appendices
• Notes
• References
• Index