International careers increasingly require knowledge and skills that transcend the confines of traditional academic disciplines. The contemporary world is strongly characterized by parallel processes of globalization and integration. These processes pervade almost all areas of human activity, and the issues that foreign policy makers address at the highest levels increasingly affect the ordinary lives of people around the world. Nation states are no longer capable of resolving certain issues single-handedly, whether they be international terrorism, global (and often national) financial crises, or climate change. Moreover, the emergence of asymmetrical security threats and the international convergence of social, political and economic relations, have underlined the need for a renewed focus on diplomatic relations and soft power, of which cultural diplomacy is a crucial component.
Operating under a joint partnership, Babes-Bolyai University and the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy are the first institutions to offer a Master of Arts degree program that will educate students from around the world in several academic disciplines related to International Relations and Cultural Diplomacy.
The Key Objectives of the program are:
•To provide students with an in depth understanding of the theory and practice of international relations within the contemporary interdependent world placing a particular emphasis on cultural diplomacy within this framework
•To educate students about cultural diplomacy within the context of the political, economic and cultural pillars upon which sustainable international relations are based.
•To analyze soft power and hard power strategies within the international relations discourse in the recognition that each element is mutually important and compatible in what Prof. Joseph Nye has characterized as “smart power.”
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