Hawaiian Paradiplomacy

          When considering country "branding" in public diplomacy, it is more common to see an entire country being presented rather than parts of the whole. While this does a good job of alerting attention to the country itself, smaller parts of the state, such as language and regional cuisine, are overlooked. Nicholas Cull points out in "Listening for the Hoof Beats" that public diplomacy is expanding to include more actors than just the government, such as NGOs, international organizations, and even sub-national regions and cities, spurning "city-level diplomacy". This type of diplomacy has been dubbed paradiplomacy, in which "sub-national actors such as states or regions [conduct] diplomacy and public diplomacy,". The United States has definitely taken advantage of paradiplomacy, as documented in the Huffington Post article "Aloha Diplomacy: Hawaiian Public Diplomacy".

            The state of Hawaii is currently being utilized as a separate brand that still promotes the United States. Although other American states may try to create a cultural and diplomatic brand separate from the entire country, Hawaii will be more successful due to their cultural closeness with the rest of Polynesia. Before Hawaii became a state in 1959, it was its own kingdom with a culture and language completely unrelated to the continental U.S. In 2011, Hawaii was given its own pavilion at the Taipei Flora Expo, while the United States was situated in a different pavilion. For the 2012-2013 season of the State Department's American Music Abroad program, a Hawaiian group playing slack key guitar and hula music was prominently featured in a five week tour of Brazil. Dubbed the "Ambassadors of Aloha", the group performed in concerts, held classes at music schools, collaborated with local musicians, and taught Brazilian students about Hawaiian music and culture. Hawaiian cuisine is also becoming influenced by China, Japan, and South Korea. Hawaiian restaurants are preparing more raw fish dishes, following Japan's lead, as well as mochiko chicken, a type of sweet rice flour-battered chicken which caters to the increasing Asian love for fried chicken. Hawaii's food scene also creates a gastronomic exchange with the continental U.S., as Hawaiian cuisine is arguably more exotic than that of the rest of the country and can introduce fellow Americans to Asian-Hawaiian fusion dishes.

            Cull states that successful public diplomacy is carried out by "NGOs, international organizations and even sub-national actors — whose outreach is not restrained by being inconveniently tethered to a geographical unit that is divided by contradictory internal opinion and inconsistent behavior,". Hawaii is conveniently located in the middle of the Pacific, which distances the islands from the U.S. but also makes them more accessible to the Asian nations that are developing an interest in Hawaii. While public diplomacy is now a two way flow of information and engagement between members of different states, Hawaii is in the unique position of offering American cultural exchange, while also exchanging its own culture to both the continental U.S. and foreign countries.  

The full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-rockower/aloha-diplomacy-hawaiian-_b_4633759.html