7 Final conclusions 
This paper started with the thesis that the importance of communication between States 
conducted via the media will increase. In addition to professional diplomacy, which of course 
will continue, States will increasingly have to make use of the communication instruments 
and approaches used by businesses to assert their interests. Conflicts such as the tax 
discussion between States examined by the present paper will increase. To deal with them, the 
significance of professional communication between Government offices, in the sense of 
agenda setting and issues management, will play an ever greater role. Transnational 
communication (via the media) will increasingly become "communication within a system" in 
light of continuing globalization, so that the same rules as for businesses will increasingly 
apply. On the basis of this bundle of theses, the author wanted to investigate in the present 
paper whether the model of "a social framing-of-issues process" according to Eichhorn could 
be applied to transnational communication. The author had the initial assumption that this 
would be the case and aimed to research it using the example of "the German tax affair and 
Liechtenstein". 
The goal of transnational communication is to balance interests in a peaceful way. With 
respect to the communication between States conducted via the media, the question is 
therefore: Who are the influential actors — only State representatives or others as well? — and 
who brings which issues into the media and thereby indirectly influences the agenda of the 
mass media? Agenda-setting theory and issue management deal with these questions, which 1s 
why both categories of analysis were used in the present paper. The model of social framing- 
of-issues processes developed by Wolfgang Eichhorn is a specific model within agenda- 
setting theory. 
The subsequent question was therefore: What modifications or amendments have to be made 
to apply, expand and transfer Eichhorn's model of the "social framing-of-issues process" to 
transnational communication? For this purpose, the case of "Liechtenstein and the German tax 
affair" was used as a case study. The further question was, which modifications would have to 
be made to the model, e.g. with respect to the designation of actors, to make it applicable to 
transnational communication? Is it possible to move from a social framing of issues to 
transnational framing of cross-border issues? Is such a transfer and abstraction possible, and 
under what conditions? 
The focus of the considerations 1s not on "who communicates?", but rather on "What interests 
should be asserted, with what means, and vis-a-vis whom?". Accordingly, the focus here is 
primarily on the relevant issues, stakeholder management, and the assertion of one's own 
political interests. 
Eichhorn's model refers to a single, national political system. For the "system of Germany", 
the Liechtenstein Government is an external factor (discussion of the author with Wolfgang 
Eichhorn on 12 June 2008). The model was therefore expanded for the present paper to 
transnational communication. The thesis established in this paper is that the communication 
between States increasingly behaves as if it were "internal to a system", in light of the 
continuous progress of globalization. A significant difference exists, however, in the 
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