Whither soft power? Divisions, milestones, and prospects of a research programme in the making

ABSTRACT

The rapid expansion of soft-power scholarship has made its central concept one of the most recognisable terms in the discipline of international relations. Yet the increased attention has not spurred the resolution of the underlying conceptual issues. Instead, soft-power scholarship has drifted into separate streams: concept-driven and case-centred studies. The emerging divide impedes the healthy exchange that holds the key to a more resonant impact on the field of international relations. This article seeks to bridge the gap by revealing the common ground where both the unresolved problems and the conceptual achievements of the nascent research programme have their roots.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft power
• international relations
• theories of power

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Valentina Feklyunina, Peter Mayer, Heiko Pleines, and Gergana Vaklinova for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I gratefully acknowledge the valuable suggestions for improvement provided by two anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Political Power. I appreciate the useful feedback on an earlier version of the text from the participants at the International FRRESH Spring Seminar at the European University at St. Petersburg, 14-16 March 2018. All remaining shortcomings and errors are entirely my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All direct and indirect quotations from texts in Russian are translated into English by the author.

2. See also the exchange between Pamela Pansardi (2012a, 2012b) and Peter Morriss (2012) on this distinction.

3. Though Digeser (1992) later added a fourth face to the discussion, which represents a Foucauldian interpretation of power (productive power in Barnett and Duvall’s terms). As already mentioned, Nye steers away from such readings, as their insights ‘are purchased at too high a price in terms of conceptual complexity and abstraction’ (Nye 2011a, p. 16).

4. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this point.

5. Nye issues the caveat that the use of process tracing would be ‘very expensive and very cumbersome’ (Nye 2013a, p. 25) and relegates the task to ‘journalists and historians’ (Nye 2011b, p. 94, 2013a, p. 25).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions under grant agreement No [713639].

Notes on contributors

Ivan Bakalov

Ivan Bakalov is a COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellow at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Bremen | Jacobs University. The focus of his research is on studying the concept and theory of power in international relations. His empirical work concerns foreign policymaking in Eastern Europe.