Article

Shadow Memorial Diplomacy: The Ronald Reagan Centennial Year in Central and Eastern Europe

Details

Citation

Toth G (2019) Shadow Memorial Diplomacy: The Ronald Reagan Centennial Year in Central and Eastern Europe. Journal of Nationalism, Memory and Language Politics, 13 (1), pp. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.2478/jnmlp-2019-0002

Abstract
This article examines the use of the memorialization of Reagan in transatlantic relations – specifically in the commemorations of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Year in 2011 in Central and Eastern Europe. Extrapolating from the case of Hungary, the article argues that because of the contemporary political status of its drivers and its oblique message, the Reagan Centennial’s campaign in Central Europe can be called “shadow” memorial diplomacy, which in 2011 used the former president’s memory to articulate and strengthen a model of U.S. leadership and foreign policy parallel to and ready to replace those of the then Obama administration. This study can serve as an international extension of previous scholarship on the politics of the memory of Ronald Reagan within the United States, as well as a case study of the use of memory in international relations.

Keywords
diplomacy; Ronald Reagan; memorialization; transatlantic relations

Journal
Journal of Nationalism, Memory and Language Politics: Volume 13, Issue 1

StatusPublished
Publication date31/07/2019
Publication date online12/07/2019
Date accepted by journal15/04/2019
URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/29494
eISSN2570-5857

People (1)

Dr Gyorgy Toth

Dr Gyorgy Toth

Lecturer, History