Power and foreign policy

Abstract

Power is a contested concept, and no one definition suits all purposes. Many analysts of international relations and foreign policy have confused power defined in relational and resource terms. They often use simple command definitions of behavioral power, and neglect the second and third faces of power. In terms of resources, they often have ignored ideational aspects of power resources to accommodate simplified neorealist structural models. This article surveys the usefulness of different definitions and conceptions of power and illustrates how they can produce relatively rich or truncated foreign policy analyses.

Keywords:

• faces of power
• structure
• agent
• hard power
• soft power
• smart power
• foreign policy

Notes

1. Power implies causation and is like the word ‘cause.’ When we speak of causation, we choose to pick out the relation between two items in a long and complex chain of events because we are interested in them more than the myriad other things that we might focus upon. We do not say in the abstract that ‘an event causes’ without specifying what it causes.

2. On intentions and power, see also Baldwin (2002, p. 181). ‘There is no need for a fundamental reformulation of the concept of power in order to account for its unintended effects.’

3. It is worth noting that Finland, after fighting Russia at the beginning of World War II, was cautious not to challenge the Soviet Union during the cold war. It was able to preserve its independence but with a limited domain of actions which became known as ‘Findlandization.’ Outcomes are not always all or nothing.

4. Philosophers such as Antony Kenny and Peter Morriss argue that reducing power to resources constitutes the ‘vehicle fallacy,’ but Keith Dowding contends that ‘the vehicle fallacy is not a fallacy if resources are measured relationally, for example, the power of money is relative to its distribution. It follows that strategic considerations must enter into the very essence of the concept of power’ (2008b, pp. 238–258).

5. These different definitions can be summarized in the following diagrams:

This common approach outlined in Diagram 1 can be contrasted with the more careful relational definition in which power is the ability to alter others’ behavior to produce preferred outcomes:

6. Preferences and strategies are closely related. Preferences rank outcomes in a given environment, and a strategy is an actor’s effort to come as close as possible to preferred outcomes in that setting. From an analytical point of view, preferences in one setting may become strategies in another (see Frieden 1999, p. 41). Thus in the gunman example, in the original setting, A’s preferences include both life and money and his strategy is to keep both. The gunman’s threat changes the environment so that A must now rank his preferences, and adopt a strategy of handing over his wallet. A’s preferences do not change (life ranks over money), but when the gunman changes the environment, A has to change his strategy.

7. William H. Riker developed a somewhat similar concept that he called ‘herestetics,’ which ‘involves structuring the situation so that others accept it willingly’ (1984, p. 8).

8. As Lukes points out, my concept of soft power is similar but not identical with his third face of power. My concept was developed in the context of international relations and includes the voluntaristic dimensions of agenda setting as well as preference setting by attraction and persuasion. I was more concerned with the actions of agents and less concerned about the problematic concept of ‘false consciousness.’

9. Steven Lukes calls soft power ‘a cousin’ of his concept of the third face of power. He is concerned, however, about distinguishing degrees of freedom or voluntarism. ‘Both the agent‐centered, strategic view of Nye and the subject‐centered structural view of Foucault lack this distinction … We need to focus on both agents and subjects and ask the question: exactly how do agents succeed in winning the hearts and minds of those subject to their influence – by wielding powder over them or by contributing to their empowerment?’ (Lukes 2007, p. 97).

10. I am indebted to Tyson Belanger for this point.

11. At various times, in trying to explain soft power I have shortened my formulation to statements like ‘soft power is attractive power’; ‘soft power is the ability to shape or reshape preferences without resort to force or payment’; ‘soft power is the ability to get others to want what you want.’ These short forms are consistent with the longer more formal definition of the concept.

12. The behaviors in the spectrum the Diagram sometimes overlap, but they can be conceived in terms of the degree of voluntarism in B’s behavior. In the middle of the spectrum, payment has a degree of voluntarism, and agenda setting can be affected by institutions and discourses that B may not fully accept. That aspect of agenda setting is determined by hard power, but to the extent that hard power in one period can create in a later period institutions that limit the agenda but are widely regarded as legitimate, then agenda setting is part of co‐optive and soft power. The effect of World War II in changing power relations that set the framework for the postwar UN and Bretton Woods institutions is a case in point.

13. Baldwin and others have criticized my earlier discussion of tangibility. I should have made clearer that intangibility is not a necessary condition for soft power. I define soft power in behavioral terms as the ability to affect others to obtain preferred outcomes by co‐option and attraction rather than coercion or payment, and I was careful to use language that suggested an imperfect relationship (‘tend to be associated, are usually associated’) between soft power behavior and the intangibility of the resources that can produce it. But the criticism is justified and that explains this restatement.

14. Suzanne Nossel (2004) also deserves credit for using the term in ‘Smart Power,’ but I was not aware of this until later.