Citizen participation in external action and foreign policy in today’s democracies: Spain as a case-study.

In recent years, modernizing trends in today's democracies have fostered greater transparency, citizen participation, and even open government. These policies are present in many of the aspects of public policies in democratic states, even at different administrative levels, especially at the local level. Besides of those policies there are certain areas that are more restricted to these trends, especially in the so-called state policies. Foreign Policy is one of those state policies in which it is more difficult to apply transparency or citizen participation. In this paper we are going to see how mechanisms for citizen participation can be articulated in the elaboration and formulation of foreign policy. For that, we are going to study the case of Spain. External Action and External Service Act (2014) and the Spanish Action Strategy (2015) consider both transparency as a key principle of the state's foreign action. Specifically, the 2015 Foreign Action Strategy places the citizen at the center of Foreign Policy, which implies that there must be a greater citizen contribution in the elaboration process. The objective is to carry out a more legitimate and democratic External Action. This citizen contribution must be carried out through political parties and other citizen organizations. In the same way, public diplomacy instruments are promoted, such as the nation brading (Marca España or España Global) or digital diplomacy. Also, accurate information must be transmitted to the media from public institutions and to analyze the presence of Spain in foreign media. In this paper, we are analyzing these proposals in the 2015 Foreign Action Strategy, just when the new 2021-2024 Foreign Action Strategy is being discussed in the parliament. We want to answer if whether these proposals are compatible with the defense of national interests.