Compound soft power: the BRICS and the multilateralization of soft power

Abstract

This article offers a complementary analysis to the prevailing literature on soft power by addressing the issue of multilateral soft power. While the prevailing literature on soft power tends to look at how soft power manifests itself within individual nations, this article attempts to analyze the manifestations of collective soft power in the vehicle of a multilateral organization. This can be referred to this as compound soft power. Such an analysis looks at a macro-level class of soft power. In doing so, it looks more broadly at the configuration of the forest, in contradistinction to the prevailing research on soft power, which looks predominantly at individual trees (i.e. individual country analysis). While this analysis of compound soft power is undertaken specifically within the context of the BRICS, it is intended to be generalized to the study of all international organizations.

Keywords:

• power
• soft power
• BRICS
• emerging markets
• smart power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Giulio M. Gallarotti is Professor of Government and Tutor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University. He has also been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Economic Theory at the University of Rome. He is the author of The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010) and Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Acknowledgments

I am especially grateful to David Baldwin, Phil Cerny, Gemma Gallarotti, Peter Rutland, and the anonymous referees of the Journal of Political Power for their generosity in reading this paper and their valuable suggestions.

Notes

1. Rothman (2011) and Nye (2002) posit agenda control in the vein that Bachrach and Baratz (1962) have envisioned it. While it is no doubt softer than more direct diplomatic coercion by larger powers, it could still involve a conflict of interests. In fact Bachrach and Baratz have envisioned agenda control in such a harder power context. Softer diplomatic power would work through the unifying power of legitimacy and respect, hence taking place in a context of far fewer conflicts of interest. In fact, Nye (2011b) has more recently contemplated agenda control in this vein. On this debate, see Gallarotti (2010b). On soft power and international organization, see Nye (2002, 2004, 2011a) and Gallarotti (2010b, 2011).

2. Aside from country studies, the rest of the prevailing research on soft power has largely addressed broader theoretical issues. The contributions in this special issue are typical of soft power country studies. This article will not cover fundamental theoretical issues about soft power, since it is done elsewhere in this special issue (Chatin and Gallarotti 2016).

3. In other respects, however, identity does matter, as will be evident below.

4. On this issue see especially Gallarotti (2010b) and Nye (2002). Gallarotti (2004, 2010a) explores the possibilities for disempowerment from foreign policies that are pursued with unilateral impunity: i.e. a vicious cycle of unilateralism.

5. While prompts for reforms of the UN, UNGA, and IMF have been consistently issued in the organization’s 8 year history, they are compatible with reform plans that have garnered wide and diverse appeal (e.g. making them more democratic and efficient). See BRICs Foreign Ministers’ Communique (2008, 2015).

6. Rothman (2011) underscores this norm reinforcement as a principal means of generating soft power.

7. See especially the various official communications from BRICS Leader’s Declarations and Action Plans (2016).

8. Soft power aside, the BRICS show great diversity across social, political, geographic, and economic dimensions; such that they do prima facie appear as strange bedfellows. The importance of non-differentiation in building soft power challenges arguments (such as in Armijo 2007) that political diversity within the BRICS compromises its abilities to function effectively as a soft or even hard power bloc. Indeed, history has shown that when common interests arise, even the strangest bedfellows make effective allies or compatriots. One recalls Churchill’s famous quote about aligning with the devil if it meant fighting Hitler.

The acronym ‘BRICS’ in fact was never originally self applied, but emerged from a set of studies by Goldman Sachs in the early 2000’s. The studies suggested greater attention to investment opportunities in the larger emerging market nations as rising powers in the world economy, hence there appeared in these studies a perceived commonality within this group of nations in the eyes of the financial community. See O’Neill (2001).

9. On smart and cosmopolitan power, see Nye (2011a) and Gallarotti (2010b).

10. The principal Confucian value of ren (benevolence or power of attraction) coincides perfectly with the modern concept of soft power (Zanardi 2016).

11. This is no surprise, since the Chinese state is the most effectively centrally managed nation of the BRICS. Central planning is an administrative manifestation of their Party model in all its activities. A clear reflection of this in the context of soft power is the establishment of a leadership council to coordinate the activities of the many Confucian Institutes spread around the world (Zanardi 2016).

12. In a sense, this process brings to mind Rosenau’s (2003) concept of fragmegration. Rosenau’s term reflects the opposing properties of fragmentation and integration which exist in the present globalizing world political economy. In the context of the BRICS, there is at the same time great diversity, but this diversity actually enhances the multilateral effectiveness of the organization.

13. There is strong beneficial cross-over for China in Africa with China’s soft-power offensive on that continent. See Nelson (2013) and Kurlantzick (2007).

14. In fact the very first point of the first official communiqué by the organization underscored the importance of development. The ministers touted ‘the prospects of the BRIC dialog based on mutual trust and respect, common interests, coincidence or similarity of approaches toward the pressing problems of global development’. See BRICs Foreign Ministers’ Communique (2008).

15. Point 5 in the BRICS communiqué from their first formal meeting states, ‘The Ministers expressed their strong commitment to multilateral diplomacy in dealing with common challenges to international security’. See BRICs Foreign Ministers’ Communique (2008).

16. On what constitutes deep soft power and on diversification among power assets, see especially Gallarotti (2010b).

17. Fourcade (2013) sees the formation of the BRICS as symbolically important in terms of the world economy. Its existence signals the importance of nations that were heretofore excluded from the core (G7), and it also builds soft currency for the challenge of the Beijing Consensus against the Washington Consensus.

18. The BRICS as a bloc was especially influential in constructing broad financial planning in the G-20 in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis (BRICS Strategy 2015).

19. This disposition toward leadership roles is apparent in the Joint Statement of the BRICS Second Summit in Brazilia in 2010 (BRICS Second Summit 2010).

20. See especially the Sanya Declaration and Action Plan in BRICS Third Summit (2011).

21. Once more, we see the natural interaction of soft and hard power. In this case greater control over hard resources places the BRICS in superior diplomatic positions over important issues within which it can utilize its softer resources (accommodation, cooperation, leadership, etc.).

22. The ideas of piggybacking and sling shooting are taken from Putnam and Bayne (1987), where they identify a tendency within the yearly major power summits among the G7 for the members as a whole to lend support for controversial domestic political initiatives of the individual member leaders so as to enhance the leaders’ political standings at home.

23. Brazil’s support for African nations in pushing European nations and the US to dismantle cotton subsidies over the past 12 years has provided an interesting window into the diplomatic power which small nation coalitions can generate when working toward similar goals in existing international organizations. On cotton diplomacy, see Nelson (2016).

24. Brazil has been especially valuable as a wedge into Southern hearts, as it has positioned itself as a ‘Southern development partner’ and has achieved a reputation as a ‘role model’ among developing nations (Chatin 2016).

25. On transitivity and perception formation in international politics, see Jervis (1976).

26. See Point 5 in the BRICS communiqué from their first formal meeting, quoted above (BRICs Foreign Ministers’ Communique 2008).

27. Other adverse transitivity effects can come in the form of ambivalence on universal principles resulting from new fellowships. For example, South Africa under Zuma stepped back from its leadership in the international LGBT movement due to tensions that would cause with Russia and other African states (Van Der Westhuizen 2016).

28. Agenda control offers both harder and softer qualities (Chatin and Gallarotti 2016).

29. Brazil’s tenacity in negotiating trade agreements on agriculture and medicine patents was rewarded by extensive support among developing nations in the election of Roberto Acevedo as Director General of the WTO in 2013 (Chatin 2016).

30. Gallarotti (2010b) underscores a commitment to democratic values at home as an important source of a nation’s soft power.

31. It is indeed interesting to note that the very thing that China and Russia vilified under Communism (religion) would now be seen as a remedy for a fracturing community.

32. Although in terms of actions, Putin showed complete disdain for these principals in annexing Crimea.

33. Another interesting soft spin off can be seen in the role of the Confucian Institutes breaking down the monopoly which Taiwan had on teaching non-simplified Chinese abroad, thus degrading the cultural role of Taiwan in the world (Zanardi 2016).

34. In a twist on the soft power dynamic, both China and Russia have recently ramped up their barriers to the infusion of Western soft power, as both nations have been cracking down more robustly on the operations of NGOs within their borders (Chin 2016).

35. Studies of voting in legislatures has shown that blocs can sway outcomes in far greater proportion to the number of their memberships (Mueller 2003).

36. The influence that the Cotton Club enjoyed in global trade diplomacy (mainly in the WTO) on farm subsidies is a testament to how effective even small blocs of developing nations could be in dismantling policies supported by hegemonic powers (Nelson 2016).

37. Gallarotti (2004) demonstrates how leaders can piggyback off of diplomatic accords to promote the passage of difficult laws at home.