PD Foundations
PD Foundations is the State Department's doctrine for public diplomacy. It explains how practitioners understand, plan, carry out, and measure the work. I directed the office that wrote it, and this essay explains how it came to be.
The documents are in the public domain. This site publishes the full text by chapter, with stable links you can cite. State's internal edition remains the authoritative version.
- Volume I · 2023 edition · 9 parts · ≈93 min
Principles of Public Diplomacy
The conceptual foundation. This volume places public diplomacy inside statecraft and strategy, lays out the ends-ways-means logic of the work, and names the values and mental models of the profession.
- Volume II · January 2025 edition · 19 parts · ≈188 min
Public Diplomacy in Practice
The working manual. This volume covers strategic planning as a design discipline, audience analysis, logic models, implementation and management, and learning from what the work produces.
- Volume III · April 2024 edition · 17 parts · ≈64 min
Monitoring Toolkit
The measurement guide. This volume explains what to monitor and why, how to build a monitoring plan from a logic model, and how to turn the data into learning.
Each page distills one working tool to a single page and links back to the full text.
- The PD Framework on one page
The five elements of the State Department’s Public Diplomacy Framework, what each one asks, and how practitioners use the wheel to plan and run PD work.
- The logic model, quick reference
The logic model as PD doctrine defines it: every column from inputs to long-term outcomes, how outputs differ from outcomes, and how to build one that holds up.
- Ends, ways, means — quick reference
The strategy logic public diplomacy borrows from statecraft: what ends, ways, and means each name, how they chain into a plan, and where misalignment shows.
- The audience alignment matrix, quick reference
The influence-by-alignment matrix for prioritizing audiences: what the two axes measure, what each quadrant calls for, and what the tool will not decide for you.
- SMART objectives, quick reference
How PD doctrine writes objectives: the five SMART criteria, the four components every objective needs, and example objectives that pass the test.
I send new essays and exhibits when I publish them. Add a note if you want to start a conversation.