Bringing together scholarship from the perspective of the cultural disciplines, this book locates contemporary cultural diplomacy practices within their social, political, and ideological contexts, while examining the different forces that drive them. The contributions to this book have two methodologies: to deconstruct and demystify cultural diplomacy, notably the `hype¿ that accompanies it, especially when it is yoked to the notion of `soft power¿, and to better understand how contemporary cultural diplomacy actually operates. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Policy.