The BRICS and soft power: an introduction

Abstract

In a new global order that has moved well beyond the bipolar world of the cold war, scholars are trying to assess how the power structure of international power is changing. Pre-eminent among the nations that will be challengers for primacy in the new world order are the emerging powers. Leading this cadre of emerging powers are the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). This special issue explores an important and neglected type of power possessed by the BRICS: their soft power, both individual and collective. This introduction summarizes the principal arguments of the contributions to this special issue, and also examines the concept of soft power.

Keywords:

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

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Mathilde Chatin is a PhD candidate at King’s College London (Brazil Institute). She has been a fellow at the BRICS Policy Center (Rio de Janeiro) and a visiting scholar at the University of São Paulo (Department of International Relations).

Giulio M. Gallarotti is a 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).

Acknowledgements

A special thanks goes out to Mark Haaugard for encouraging and stewarding this scholarly project toward completion. None of this would have been possible without his talents and generosity. We owe many thanks to Kevin Ryan for his efforts in helping to pull this special issue of the journal together. We would also like to thank Gemma Gallarotti for her generosity in reading this paper and her valuable suggestions.

Notes

1. Nye introduced the concept of soft power in ‘Soft Power’ (1990b) and Bound to Lead (1990a) and further applied and developed it in Nye (2002, 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2007, 2011a, 2011b). The literature on soft power has grown significantly over the past decade. Especially insightful treatments, both from a supportive and critical perspective, can be found in Gallarotti (2004, 2010a, 2010b), Berenskoetter (2007), Baldwin (2002, 2016), Kurlantzick (2007), Lennon (2003), Ferguson (2003), Fraser (2003), Kearn (2011) and Meade (2004). Also, Johnston’s (2008) work on socialization introduces categories that reflect processes of soft power. The idea of ‘smart power’ suggests that a foreign policy based on the combined use of both hard and soft power can yield superior results over one that relies exclusively on one or the other kinds of power. On smart power see, Nossel (2004), Report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Smart Power (2007), and Etheridge (2009). Gallarotti’s (2010b) cosmopolitan power represents a theoretical development and historical application of the idea of smart power.

2. Gallarotti (2010a, 2010b) demonstrates that throughout history soft power could have significantly enhanced the influence of nations whose leaders were predominantly swayed by the allure of hard power (i.e. victims of a hard power illusion).

3. For two especially insightful and penetrating critical inquiries, see Baldwin (2016) and Kearn (2011).

4. The reader is referring to much more extensive descriptions that can be found in Nye (2004b, 2011a) and Gallarotti (2010b, 2011).

5. For Realists, power also derives from some intangible sources: Waltz’s competence (i.e. leadership, policy, decision-making). Hence it is not tangibility that determines the principal distinction between soft and hard power. Realists would also embrace the utility of threat or other types of coercive posturing. But ultimately, these intangible measures rely on actual material capabilities to be effective, hence muscle is the key to power for Realists.

6. This recalls Lasswell and Kaplan’s (1950, p. 156) process of ‘identification’, where rank and file members of a group adopt the values of their leaders out of respect and admiration.

7. ‘Meta-power refers to the shaping of social relationships, social structures, and situations by altering the matrix of possibilities and orientations within which social action occurs’ (Hall 1997, p. 405).

8. The power literature has designated four faces of power. Agenda control would fall under the second face of power. On the four faces see Barnett and Duvall’s (2005).

9. Nye (2011b) later acknowledges this distinction.

10. In this context, I stress the ideas of Lukes as formulated in the first edition of Power: A Radical View (1974). In the second edition, Lukes (2005) has acknowledged possibilities of power relationships that abate conflicts of interests, and hence are closer to the idea of soft power.

11. Another example of the soft power generated by an extensive military presence would highlight the good will promoted by American civil-military functions abroad: education, political stabilization, provision of public goods.

12. China conceptualizes all types of power as existing in one space: idea of qi and zheng place influence squarely in the realm of the coexistence of hard and soft power (Zanardi 2016).