**Abstract**

It is common practice when evaluating the effect of public diplomacy to associate it with soft power. This chapter challenges this view. It holds that, rather than turning soft power resources into soft power, the fundamental function of public diplomacy is to transform a country's assets into soft power resources that will attract the target country. This chapter also shows that although public diplomacy performs such functions, it is not necessarily effective, especially in 'high politics' such as territorial security. But even where its effectiveness can be exerted, public diplomacy is subject to other distractions. Therefore, in order to measure accurately the real effect of public diplomacy, it is necessary to exclude the potential influence of these interfering variables by strengthening the rigor of research design.

**Keywords:** public diplomacy, function, effectiveness, measurement
