Soft Power

12 Key excerpts on "Soft Power"

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  South Korean Popular Culture and North Korea

  • Youna Kim, Youna Kim(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Power is the ability to make others act in a way that advances the outcomes you want. One can affect behavior in three main ways: threats of coercion (“sticks”), inducements or payments (“carrots”) and attraction that makes others want what you want (“Soft Power”). Soft Power co-opts people rather than coerces them: If I can get you to want to do what I want, then I do not have to force you to do what I want. Soft Power is not the same as influence, though it is one source of it. Influence can also rest on the hard power of threats or payments. And Soft Power is more than just persuasion or the ability to move people by argument, though that is an important part of it. It is also the ability to entice and attract (Nye 2004).

  In behavioral terms, Soft Power is attractive power. In terms of resources, Soft Power resources are the assets that produce such attraction. Some resources can produce both hard and Soft Power. For example, a strong economy can produce carrots for paying others, as well as a model of success that attracts others. In international politics, the resources that produce Soft Power arise in large part from the values an organization or country expresses in its culture, in the examples it sets, and in the way it deals with others. It was a former French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine (1997–2002), who observed that America is powerful because it can inspire the dreams and desires of others. The U.S. is master of global images through film and television; this, in part, draws large numbers of overseas students, who either stay or bring their experience back home with them.

  The Soft Power of any country rests primarily on three resources: (1) the attractiveness of its culture, (2) its political values, when it lives up to them at home and abroad, and (3) its foreign policies, when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority. Sometimes, these dimensions can conflict with each other. For example, the attractiveness of the United States declined markedly after the invasion of Iraq, which was seen as illegitimate in the eyes of many nations. In contrast, after the United States used its navy to assist in Tsunami relief in 2005, polls showed an impressive increase in its standing in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. In China, former President Hu Jintao told the 17th party congress that China needed to invest more in Soft Power to increase its standing in the world, and Chinese Soft Power benefited from the successful staging of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but polls show that China’s human rights policies and censorship of free speech has limited the growth of its Soft Power.

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  India's Soft Power

  A New Foreign Policy Strategy

  • Patryk Kugiel(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Soft Power is not a mere theoretical concept but a practical tool bringing tangible benefits. Still, the accumulation of Soft Power is not enough to influence the behaviour of other states. Possession of relevant resources constitutes only Soft Power potential, which would need to be translated into actual power through concrete actions and policies. This requires an effective “power conversion” of resources into strategies that produce outcomes the states seek (Nye, 2011b: p.20).

  It is not always easy to convincingly prove how Soft Power translates into concrete benefits. What is the link, if any, between cultural attractiveness of one country and the decision about it by other countries? How can respect for another country’s political values influence policy affecting that country? If one country supports the legitimate policy of another country, is it because the latter is a Soft Power or because it agrees with the policy outright? Why is it so difficult to show clear correlation or causation between one country’s Soft Power and other country’s decisions?

  In contrast to hard power, which can directly change the behaviour of another state through force, threats, or inducement, Soft Power rests on non-physical, non-threatening and non-forceful means and mechanisms to influence the preferences and decisions of other international actors. Moreover, “Soft Power works indirectly and its influence is most likely to have visible effects primarily over the long term, and it will have limited relevance in discrete attempts to alter behaviour in the short term” (Kearn Jr., 2011: p.70). Soft Power is more subtle and invisible, and unlike coercion and threats, aims to change the preferences and interest of other states, which cannot happen overnight. It needs more time to show progress but, at the same time, its effects are more durable. Because Soft Power works indirectly, it is also more difficult to prove that it is the sole cause of influence and change in the behaviour of a foreign actor. That also explains why “benefits of such Soft Power are much more difficult to ascertain and evaluate” (Gallarotti, 2011: p.40).

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  The Influence Agenda

  A Systematic Approach to Aligning Stakeholders in Times of Change

  • M. Clayton(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The status imbalance may relate to power, knowledge, experience and, depending on the culture, demographic factors like age, gender and even ethnicity. Immediately, it should be clear how distasteful this form of influence can be, and status influence must therefore be a last refuge of someone lacking any other mechanism for persuading stakeholders. Of course, we all deploy all three forms of influence and my total influence over you is the cumulative effect of all three. This chapter, however, is about social influence. What is Soft Power? DEFINITION Soft Power : the ability to attract, co-opt and persuade. The term ‘Soft Power’ was coined by Joseph S. Nye in his 1990 book Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. He later refined the concept in his 2004 book Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. You can see from this that I have appropriated his term for our purposes: Nye is an expert in geopolitics and national security. He contrasted Soft Power with hard power and economic power; the coercion of military force and economic sanctions or incentives, respectively. The three, he suggested, should be deployed together, with Soft Power offering exceptional value for money. He asserted that: ‘Seduction is always more effective than coercion.’ This is the long-term strategy behind the UK’s foreign policy, which has historically focused on diplomacy, relatively high levels of aid and assistance, support for reconstruction and infrastructure development, and media interventions, of which the BBC World Service is globally pre-eminent

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  The US-Japan Alliance

  Balancing Soft and Hard Power in East Asia

  • David Arase, Tsuneo Akaha(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Soft Power is a term that has become ubiquitous but its meaning remains unclear despite Joseph Nye’s efforts to nail down the concept. Nye states, “In international politics, the resources that produce Soft Power arise in large part from the values an organization or country expressed in its culture, in the examples it sets by its internal practices and policies, and in the way it handles its relations with others”. 19 In other words, a nation derives its Soft Power from: (1) cultural values that are widely admired; (2) domestic and international behavior that is consistent with those values; and (3) the fairness and ethics with which it treats others. 20 Nye says elsewhere that Soft Power “arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies.” 21 Nye insists that culture is the source of Soft Power. But this claim is open to debate. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll cited above makes culture only one of five (i.e., economic, cultural, human capital, diplomatic, and political) means to Soft Power. The Congressional Research Service in its study of China’s Soft Power included “international trade, overseas investments, development assistance, diplomatic initiatives, cultural influence, humanitarian aid and disaster relief, education, and travel and tourism.” One expert on China opines, “People often conflate Soft Power with investment and economic development, but I define it as culture, education, and diplomacy.” 22 Joshua Kurlantzick notes that: “In the context of Asia today, both China and its neighbors enunciate a broader idea of Soft Power, the idea that Soft Power implies all elements outside of the security realm, including investment and aid.” 23 In other words, there is no agreed formula for Soft Power. Why this is so is discussed later. Nye believes that hard power and Soft Power are distinct from one another, and that one does not require the other

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  Soft Power in Japan-China Relations

  State, sub-state and non-state relations

  • Utpal Vyas(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Therefore, it can be said that Soft Power represents other co-operative activities which occur between nations, and in turn affect the practices and norms of those nations. These can include such activities as cultural exchanges, educational exchanges, and economic and political co-operation.

  Soft Power does not only result from these active policies, but it also results from policies which create an environment for the exchange of ideas, services and goods. In particular cultural trade, trade in techniques, technology and educational goods promote this kind of exchange; however, ultimately all goods which have been manufactured or services which have been created carry people’s ideas with them. These are ideas which have gone into the creation of those products, and are therefore inherent within them.

  Soft Power also emanates from the attractiveness of a country’s identity. Identity in this case consists of a country’s habits, practices and image (Hopf 2002, Wendt 1994), information about which has been transmitted through communication and discourse to other countries over a period of time. In this respect, people in one country may be attracted to the lifestyles, practices and ideas of people in another country, and thereby try to obtain or emulate them. The attractive country’s identity therefore can be said to influence the attracted country. The most often cited example of this has been the attraction of American lifestyles to many people around the world; these are seen as embodying individual freedom and choice, concepts which may be especially attractive to people living in circumstances where they are oppressed politically or economically. This kind of American Soft Power, however, is mitigated by other aspects of US policy; in areas of the world where the USA applies unwelcome hard power, its Soft Power is diminished. Nye notes that:

  Serbs eating at McDonalds supported Milosevic, and Rwandans committed atrocities while wearing T-shirts with American logos. American films that make the United States attractive in China or Latin America may have the opposite effect and actually reduce American Soft Power in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. But in general, polls show that our popular culture has made the United States seem to others “exciting, exotic, rich, powerful, trend-setting – the cutting edge of modernity and innovation” (Economist

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  China's Soft Power and International Relations

  • Hongyi Lai, Yiyi Lu, Hongyi Lai, Yiyi Lu(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  23

  Specifically, Nye identified three resources of Soft Power: culture, political values (which also include living up to one’s values), and foreign policies.24 As far as foreign policy is concerned, Nye maintained that foreign policy should be seen as legitimate and moral in the world and that it includes public, bilateral, and multilateral diplomacy.25 He also suggested that the behavior for mediating Soft Power consists mainly of attraction and agenda setting.26 However, much of Nye’s discussion focused on popular culture, political values, and legitimate foreign policies (including public diplomacy) and was conducted largely in the context of the effectiveness of US foreign policy compared to that of other nations.

  Nye rightly called our attention to the importance of gaining international support and legitimacy for a nation’s foreign policy and of cultivating a positive image of that nation. He also shed light on the relatively soft components of power, including culture and values, as well as soft aspects of power, such as appeals and attraction.

  However, one can question his components of Soft Power. If Soft Power, as co-optive power, operates through attraction to other peoples, then the sources of attraction Nye listed seem to miss ones that are more important. It is possible that other people or nations are attracted to the United States for its military might, economic prowess, and trade opportunities, or for technological advancement, not merely for its pop culture, values, and diplomacy, and look to the United States as a worthy leader. Arguably, it is even more likely that other peoples and nations respect the United States as a consequence of these hard power resources rather than the three Soft Power resources Nye noted. This point is particularly pertinent in East Asia and to a lesser extent South-East Asia. A public opinion survey in early 2008 suggested that Japanese and South Koreans thought that America had far greater Soft Power than China, and that Indonesians and Vietnamese believed US Soft Power had the edge over that of China.27

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  Writing Future Worlds

  An Anthropologist Explores Global Scenarios

  • Ulf Hannerz(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  6 Probably the impact of American music, movies, fast food and soft drinks in Western Europe after that war and during the Cold War which followed could also draw on a U.S. military presence. (Possibly the importance of military bases as cultural bases was no longer quite so strong by the time Robert Kaplan did his field studies in such locations, if by then soldiers remained rather more inside the gates during off-hours.)

  Furthermore, in the internal American debate in which Joseph Nye has been primarily engaged, there has been a choice involved, between Soft Power and hard. Elsewhere, it is likely that Soft Power is an appealing notion to those who, comparatively speaking, do not have much hard power anyway, which in the end may be everybody except the Americans. This creates the paradox of the Soft Power idea that it may in some ways have become more popular at the periphery than at the center, more relatively useful to those who received it (the rest of the world) than to those who originated the idea (the Americans). Soft Power becomes a consolation prize.

  Generally the idea is that Soft Power is something nations (and possibly regions, such as Europe) can have, and something they should be aware of and cultivate carefully. Moreover, they should avoid exhibiting undesirable characteristics that would detract from the buildup of such power. The concept thus comes to work as a new tool of self-reflexivity—what are we in our country good at, how do we want to be perceived by others? Getting Soft Power is a matter of building a brand.

  7

  Indeed, something called “nation-branding” has also become a considerable image-making industry in the early twenty-first century.

  8

  Usually, even in the recent past, when historians, anthropologists and others have looked at states becoming involved in cultural management, this has tended to be a matter of building and maintaining a nation, creating an imagined community, emphasizing a shared identity and safeguarding a shared heritage; turning “peasants into Frenchmen,” as the title of one important historical study had it. This kind of cultural management operates mostly inward. In contrast, Soft Power is externally oriented. It aims the promotion of a national brand at outside audiences.

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  Torn between East and West

  Europe's border states

  • Iulian Chifu, Simona Tutuianu(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  10 Therefore, one should understand that the two types of power could be quite clear when analyzed theoretically, but in the international action they can be more nuanced, presenting a wide conceptual stretching. The following axis emphasizes the dynamic nature of power and its manifestation when it is introduced between its softer and harder edges.

  Soft Power can take many forms of manifestation in international relations. It is a fluid concept with a high grade of versatility. According to Nye, there are three vehicles that rest at the basis of any Soft Power policies. The advancement of Soft Power can be based on culture, political values and foreign policy.11 Taking the example of the United States, Nye underlines the Washington has succeeded in advancing its interest through a specific Soft Power understanding. The United States uses education, movies, published books, scientific and journal articles, technology, ways of doing business and modalities of conducting politics.12

  The advancement of Soft Power can be made through a plethora of actions and agents. For example, information operations (IO) are just one way to conduct a Soft Power policy. Electronic Disturbance Theatre (EDT), a group of four people, actively supported the Zapatista movement through computer distributed denial of services (DDOS) by promoting the cause of the Zapatistas using chat rooms, internet advertisement and internet conferences.13 Of course, this is one example among others concerning the advancement of Soft Power through information operations but other actions from the same field of operations may include: Civil affairs (CA), Computer Network Attack (CNA), Deception, Electronic Warfare (EW), Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) and Operations Security (OpSec).14

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  Essays on Evolutions in the Study of Political Power

  • Giulio M. Gallarotti(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  American political culture and rhetoric privileges toughness rather than softness. Ironically, one US group that began using the concept was the military. For example, in 2002, when a general asked the Secretary of Defense what he thought of Soft Power, the civilian replied that he did not understand what Soft Power meant (Nye 2004). This attitude was evident among political leaders well before the security drama that followed the terrorist attacks on 9/11, but in that climate of fear, it was difficult to speak about Soft Power, even though attracting moderates away from appeals by radicals became a key component of the army’s counter-terrorism strategy, and in 2007, the Navy pronounced Soft Power an important part of its strategy (Chief of Naval Operations 2007). In that climate, and with the invasion of Iraq proving disastrous, I felt I should use my role as a public intellectual to spell out the meaning of Soft Power in greater detail for the policy community. Some policy journals were incorrectly describing Soft Power as ‘non-traditional forces such as cultural and commercial goods’ and dismissing it on the grounds that ‘its, well, soft’ (Ferguson 2003). And a Congresswoman told me privately that she agreed with the concept, but that it was impossible to use it to address a political audience who wanted to hear tough talk. In 2004, I went into more detail conceptually in Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. I also explained that Soft Power was only one component of power in international relations, and rarely sufficient by itself. The ability to combine hard and Soft Power into successful strategies where they reinforce rather than undercut each other could be considered ‘smart power’ (a term later used by Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.) I developed these concepts further in The Future of Power, including in the cyber domain (Nye 2011)

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  China, Media, and International Conflicts

  • Shixin Ivy Zhang, Altman Yuzhu Peng, Shixin Ivy Zhang, Altman Yuzhu Peng(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Global aspirations and political struggles Alessandra Massa and Giuseppe Anzera

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003261278-4

  Soft Power and online platforms: more than economics?

  Thirty years after publishing its first conceptualisation by Joseph Nye (1990) , Soft Power has proved to be an instrument with a robust explanatory capacity in reading contemporary politics. Soft Power suggests that the power of conditioning the international environment results from the wise use of non-material resources possessed or skilfully constructed by a state. Non-tangible elements, such as values, style of conducting foreign policies, and culture, act as catalysts for emulation by other states. Coercion is replaced by co-optation: other actors follow a state perceived as dominant because they wish to do so, while issues of collective interest arise from the modulation of agenda-setting – less visible the more influential the favoured actor (Nye, 1990 , 2004 , 2008 ).

  Players such as China have become globally visible. Accordingly, China has been able to imagine non-domestic zones of influence (including cultural ones) following its conspicuous economic rise. The actions of Soft Power diffusion (Glaser & Murphy, 2009 ; Hagström & Nordin, 2020 ; Kurlantzick, 2007 ; Nye, 2012 ; Wang, 2011 ) – particularly those that have affected areas of strategic interest (Gill, 2010 ) – have often seen the cultural dimension intertwined with economic interventions (Vlassis, 2016 ), transforming economic success into a lever of Soft Power.

  The immaterial spaces designed by online platforms are transformed into an arena to exercise Soft Power. Indeed, platforms become examples and agents of Soft Power when they represent success stories. Platforms are a hybrid: they affect the dimensions of culture and self-expression but have to do with business systems, generating full-fledged economic models (Srnicek, 2016 ). Finally, platforms regulate online public discourse even by Soft Power storytelling initiatives deriving from internal regulatory devices or external norms governing political communication (Cammaerts & Mansell, 2020

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  Britain's Persuaders

  Soft Power in a Hard World

  • Helen Ramscar, Michael Clarke(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • I.B. Tauris

    (Publisher)

  1 In this analysis we start from the assumption that Soft Power is not much of a policy lever. Even if in some cases it can be discerned as a lever, it can be very hard to pull. And yet we also contend that Soft Power is an important part of the full spectrum of power that adheres to any state, in relation to whatever objectives it may be trying to achieve in the world.

  If it were better understood in government, Soft Power would be seen as a very significant part of the whole context in which national power is exerted. Officials and ministers readily see a spectrum of British hard and Soft Power before them as they consider how to carry their chosen policies forward. They grasp the bare outlines of the concept easily enough, but thinking quickly gravitates towards the intuitive hard power end of the spectrum because that’s where the policy levers with more neatly measurable outcomes seem to be. In this respect they tend to lack what might be called ‘contextual intelligence’.

  As analysts, neither of us are driven in the way policy-makers are, so let us try to cast the descriptive analysis of Part Two, looking at some key Soft Power behaviours in modern Britain, in terms of the conceptual assessment of power in Part One. How can a considered understanding of power, in other words, tell us more about what Soft Power really achieves? And how do we recognize its effects when we see them?

  The ubiquity of the Soft Power arena

  Power, as we said in Part One, is intrinsic to all political relationships. Indeed, much of what fundamentally defines politics is the process of managing power and the way it works as between one group of people and another. Power is intrinsic to all relationships and no one can opt out of it. One might try, but being passive is not an opt-out.

  We take the view here, therefore, that wielding and reacting to power is an expression of the predicament of politics. The need to manage power is unavoidable, bequeathed to us by natural differences and the fact of human choice. Engaging in the politics of power is not something a state – or for that matter an individual – has much option about. The recognition that all power relationships are also multidimensional means that Soft Power relationships, as we defined them in Chapter 3, are equally unavoidable.

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  Power in World Politics

  • Felix Berenskoetter, M. J. Williams, Felix Berenskoetter, M. J. Williams(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In addition to these reconsiderations of strategies for cultivating attraction are reconsiderations of strategies for deploying Soft Power. For instance, Nye (2004c), among others, has been rather vocal about the importance of stockpiling Soft Power. Implicit in this logic is that Soft Power ought to be treated as if it were military power – as something that should be kept in reserve and ready to go in situations where it is appropriate. But where attractiveness and, thus, Soft Power are a matter of representational force, stockpiling appears impossible, or at least counterproductive. After all, where Soft Power is more accurately based on representational force, it exists only for as long as the coerced victims continue to feel the threat to their subjectivity. As soon as a victim ceases to feel trapped by the threat in the representational force that led him to submit in the first place, he will most likely no longer feel like he must comply. This eventuality arises from the fact that victims’ subjectivities, like all sociolinguistic ‘realities’, change over time. Given the changeability of selves, a more efficacious approach would be to cultivate attraction and use the ‘soft’ power it yields on an as needed basis.

  Finally, thinking about Soft Power through a sociolinguistic lens has some striking normative implications. Understood through the conventional lens, Soft Power has appeared as an alternative to the raw-power politics that so frequently characterise world politics. It has thus been embraced by ethically minded scholars and policy-makers. But the realisation that Soft Power is not so soft encourages some critical rethinking about its ethical value. Where Soft Power is indebted to representational force, it promulgates a form of power politics that operates on the level of subjectivity. It promotes a ‘power politics of identity’ in which domination is played out through the representations that narrate ‘reality’. In my opinion, a power politics of identity, however unappealing, is normatively more appealing than the power politics of war, empire and physical conquest. But even so, one must still question the moral logic of representational force. Given that Soft Power may, in the end, not be all that soft, it is worth considering the ethical dimensions and dilemmas that arise when using it as ‘a means to success in world politics’.

  Notes

  1

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