Esteem and influence: soft power in international politics

ABSTRACT

The vast literature and references in policy circles that have followed Nye’s seminal article of 1990 attest to the now extraordinary status of soft power in the study of international politics. And yet much has been neglected. The collection of articles in this special issue of the Journal of Political Power represents cutting-edge analyses of under-explored subjects and issues in the realm of soft power, and speaks largely to the process and impact of soft power. These contributions illuminate important nuances in the process by which soft power is manifest. They also demonstrate that soft power has a deep and significant impact in world politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Power
• international power
• soft power
• smart power
• sharp power

Humans have lived under the scourge of war from their very beginnings. Many believe that violence is as deeply ingrained in our DNA as eating and sleeping, but in this case an insufferable biological drive. More regrettable is the pervasive belief shared by a predominant vision of international politics that claims violence to be our salvation (i.e., Realism). For Realists, the survival instinct is paramount, and hence the threat of violence is the single most effective deterrent to war. More paradoxically, for this vision, it is only through war that we attain peace, and consequently humans have to trust their survival to their basest instincts. In the nuclear age we have upped the ante on threat to global annihilation. Supposedly, this MAD scenario should scare any sane leader into caution and reticence with respect to using large-scale military force, and we certainly hope this to be true. So our hopes hang on the ability of leaders to ‘play nice’ with their toys. Surely, humans can do better, and not bank on strategies that promote our greatest virtues (cooperation and mutual respect) through our most primitive drives (threat and war). Indeed, it is difficult for a reasonable person to think of attaining sustainable co-existence through the very potential seeds of global decimation. Perhaps we can actually seek to base our most essential goals of survival and prosperity on more benign foundations. In this respect, we can deliver our species from the specter of destruction and find ways to co-exist with more enlightened intentions and strategies. For too long nations have sought survival through our basest instincts: military power, territorial acquisition, imperialism and domination. Hence, they have made national influence synonymous with resources that can support a war machine. Only through the capacity to punish would they attain security. This capacity to punish is buttressed on what we can call hard power. In a diametrically opposed context, fortunately, the idea of soft power has given us a road to a better future as a species and planet.

Soft power looks for alternative paths to influence in world affairs. It is not through our darkest actions, intentions and war-related resources that we can attain security, but through characteristics and actions anchored in a more affable and convivial posture. It was always hoped by great visionaries that diplomacy would fill this role in delivering us from power politics. But soft power has demonstrated that there are important pre-conditions for diplomacy to function effectively. So the visionaries were targeting the symptom rather than the cause. Soft power drives diplomacy and is connected to virtually all constructive and progressive strategies in conducting foreign affairs. Soft power is the power that inheres in gaining the affect of other nations. In other words, it is synonymous with being a positive role model or gaining the admiration and trust of other nations. Realists envisioned cooperation and compliance from other nations as being extracted reluctantly by harder means. Soft power is contemplated as a process that cultivates cooperation and compliance in a much more harmonious context. While nations can certainly gain their foreign policy objectives at the point of a gun, they also possess other kinds of resources that allow them to attend to their needs with far less acrimony and resistance. In fact history has demonstrated time and time again, that the use of force has been counterproductive and even self – destructive for perpetrator nations (Gallarotti 2010a). Soft power has offered us a better way.

The idea of soft power was long in coming, but its late arrival owes to the fact that it violated some of the most venerated canons of power studies in political theory and international politics. It in fact represents outright heresy in this respect. The concept came from the ongoing scholarly thrust of Joseph Nye’s neoliberal research agenda. The new age of complex interdependence in global affairs made power ‘less coercive, fungible, and tangible’ (Nye 1990a, p. 167). Soft power was a non-confrontational way of attaining a nation’s foreign policy goals. The study of international politics was and is, however, dominated by a Realist paradigm that has made the concept of power synonymous with tangible resources: resources that could be used to extract compliance, i.e., hard power (military, wealth, natural resources). The idea that nations might attend to their interests with soft power violated two principal premises in the Realist vision: that 1) nations should predominantly rely on the capacity for violence for their security and 2) that there is pervasive conflict of interests between nations. Soft power cultivates compliance in a way that delivers outcomes without capacity for violence and with limited conflict of interests. Soft power emanates from the esteem, veneration and respect enjoyed by nations endowed with specific qualities. The nature of soft power is largely intangible. Realism considered any intangible restraints against threats to security as completely unreliable. The Realist vison is extreme in prescribing material capacity as the ultimate ratio for national safety. While intangible restraints such as laws, norms and goodwill might be useful, they could not and should not occupy a place of principal importance in a nation’s power arsenal. Additionally, Realism takes a state-centric and rational view of international politics. Since power politics for Realists takes place among states, other sources of influence that manifest themselves in the deeper demographic of civil society generate far less salience for them. But many of the processes through which soft power operates take place precisely in this demographic and within the context of some non-rational ideational processes.¹ Furthermore, power for Realists was never manifest in a context in which there was a confluence of national interests. Power was always relevant in cases of conflict and confrontation. Moreover, Realism’s epistemological bent toward positivism made any process that was not inherently subject to quantitative evaluation (such as soft power resources) suspect (Gallarotti 2021).

With respect to the other subfield in political science that studied power, political theory, there has been a natural sub-disciplinary neglect of a leading topic from the field of international politics. The idea of soft power germinated in the context of state power and international affairs, while political theorists worked mainly in sub-national and ideational strata. Applying it to the units of interest for international affairs was awkward for them. Moreover the premise of soft power flew into the face of the time-honored context of conflicts of interests (just as it did for international politics scholarship) in which the study of political power theory was grounded. Soft power is a process by which target nations, through the creation of positive affect, come to want what the soft power nation wants. In this respect, it violates the fundamental Dahl (1957) rule that has historically held court over the study of political theory and sociology: that power is defined as making someone do that which they did not want to do. The concept of soft power is further inconsistent with Dahl’s condition of temporal disjuncture. For Dahl and subsequent scholarship on power, each manifestation of a power relationship followed a stimulus-response process, whereby a prompt or extraction event preceded compliance by a target actor. Irregularity in temporal sequence was troubling for traditional scholarship. If response occurred after too much of a lag, the power effect would be uncertain. Soft power can follow a very irregular path. Cultivating compliance creates no urgency to act, such that significant lags may follow in a response to soft-power stimuli. Once positive affect is generated, you may have compliance or accommodations occurring without any stimulus at all. In many cases, no stimulus is intentionally initiated. Hence, the proximity of cause and effect will be quite irregular in a soft power relationship.²

The advent of soft power in the field of international studies was the result of the convergence of both scholarly trends and history. The emergence of paradigms such as neoliberalism and constructivism began challenging the primacy of Realism in the field of study from the 1970s onward. This scholarly wave was itself an outgrowth of historical shifts in the nature of international affairs. Their visions of norm-based action, cooperation and economic exchange appeared as a viable rival to the darker visions of war and anarchy. Soft power appeared in the new liturgy as another form of a benign factor underlying a more orderly and peaceful coexistent in the international polity. These historical shifts created a ‘softer world,’ and scholarship followed the flow of events. First, greater economic interpenetration took the edge off security threats by essentially creating de facto hostages across borders. The social and economic costs of conflict and disputes were significantly augmented by the greater economic interdependence among nations. Furthermore, this interdependence was raised all the more by the acceleration of globalization: thus tying societies and economies together all the more and all the faster, and thereby raising the specter of vulnerability from shocks in foreign relations. Third, the nuclear stalemate softened the security dilemma, as the abatement of escalatory potential in war placed the world at a lower level of threat. Fourth, the growth of democratization added another element of enhanced security through the democratic peace process, a process that circumscribes the use of force in resolving international problems. Fifth, this period saw a grand emergence of an international governmental super-structure (international organizations and regimes) that relegated force to a secondary position in resolving disputes. Finally, the rise of economic wellbeing as a political priority (i.e., the rise of an economic guardian state) made leaders all the more reticent about bearing the extraordinary costs of using force, and set them on a more passive policy trajectory in their foreign affairs (Gallarotti 2000).

Soft power has been theoretically underdeveloped for reasons offered above. Beyond this, a general neglect among Realist scholars and political theorists have limited the amount of rigorous thinking and formal modelling of the concept. Many of the extant categories of power analysis have been held in abeyance. The concept of structural meta-power is better developed and hence offers a more useful theoretical architecture to understand the process of soft influence.³ As a phenomenon in social relations, meta-power posits that social interactions are embedded in greater structures that determine the general orientation of those interactions. Which interactors have power and how much power they have cannot be ascertained simply by evaluating who wins direct contests. Little can be determined from direct interactions. The greater power play is determined by the forces that set the parameters of the contest. So in a game or contest, who wins the direct competition tells us little about who in the game actually has power, but it is who determines the nature of the game that has the real power.⁴ In the now common rubric of faces or dimensions of power, meta-power is manifest in the later three (of the four) faces in which embedded power relations are played out (Lukes 2005, Haugaard 2020). Gramsci’s (1988) work on hegemony is an especially well known application of the meta-power of capitalism. In his vision, capitalism has legitimated itself through the creation of institutions that have affirmed the authority of a socio-economic hierarchy. Whatever contests occur between classes are played out within formal structures (state, law) that protect the interests of dominant classes in society. Lukes (2005) third dimension of power also sees social relations unfolding within greater structures of power that set the parameters of the direct contests among competing actors.⁵

With respect to soft meta-power, the esteem generated by soft power nations raises their attractiveness as a model for their own practices, policies, guiding principles and lifestyles. How nations manifest this esteem can be wide-ranging indeed. Esteem may lead them to cooperate more with soft-power nations. It may lead citizens of those nations to buy more products from these soft power nations. In a more extreme vein, it may encourage outright emulation of political and economic systems of soft-power nations. The impact in terms of influence is obvious and significant: soft power nations are functioning in a system where they have more direct and indirect sway over the beliefs and actions of individuals and state functionaries. So ultimately the international relations of soft-power nations are embedded in practices, institutions and belief systems that are synonymous with their most vital interests. Whatever outcomes we witness in direct contests between nations across the soft-power scale tells us far less about relative power endowments. So for example, nations that have embraced a neoliberal foreign economic policy may indeed have a disagreement over indirect investment with a nation such as the U.S., but the divide will still be within the parameters fairly open capital markets (e.g., the argument will be over the level of regulation rather than the existence of regulation).⁶ But soft power is quite different from most iterations of meta-power in that it is less grounded in conflicts of interests.⁷ Traditional power theories in their various manifestations are strongly grounded in contexts of pronounced conflicts of interests. In fact, the phenomenon of power itself is most commonly seen as only relevant in such contexts. There are no power plays present when nations are not pulling and hauling along continuums defined by opposing preferences. With soft power, preferences and interests do not disappear of course, but they are far more convergent than in traditional treatments of power. In this respect, as compared with traditional visions of power, soft power itself is more cognitively transformative.

But the relationship between interests and consequent actions and policy dispositions can be quite complicated. Interests can converge to a smaller or larger extent. Affect could manifest itself over very different structures of interests. At some lower level of affect, nations may esteem or respect soft power nations, but not necessarily share their philosophies or objectives in foreign policies. Deferential behavior here would be a function of an affect that does not derive from assimilation. At some higher level of affect, such as assimilation, the affect could also manifest itself as deferential behavior, but in this context it comes from shared objectives. Hence, actions and policy dispositions are not necessarily conterminous with comparative structures of interests. Compliant nations may defer to the preferences of a soft power nation out of respect without necessarily sharing its interests (e.g., diplomatic accommodations they find costly). But compliant actions could also be created by a convergence of interests (e.g., agreements among liberal nations on a shared objective of free-trade). Hence, the relationship between interests, goals, policies and actions needs to be evaluated carefully and contextualized. Furthermore, the potential of soft power to generate greater convergence of interests leads to the potential for mutual gains, something quite inconsistent with traditional power theory, given the zero-sum vision of the latter. Mutual gains are much more attainable because both sets of nations evaluate outcomes based on a similar structure of preferences, and hence there is less contestation. But esteem and even convergence of interests could lead to insidious outcomes as well, given that soft power also has a dark side (discussed below). The monarchs of early modern Europe agreed perfectly on the need to dominate the Continent, which led them into great wars. Similarly, esteem generated by military prowess could lead to malign policies.

Due to its theoretical underdevelopment, soft power has been misunderstood. A number of issues stand out.⁸ Soft power does not strictly emanate from intangible sources. In this respect, many believe that the difference between hard and soft is reflected in tangibility of the sources: tangible hard power resources versus intangible soft power resources. This is not the case, because the two sets of power overlap and interact. They are not mutually exclusive. Hard power can generate soft power, and vice versa. Tangible resources, for example, provided to nations in the form of aid can generate great esteem. Similarly, esteem can be leveraged into greater hard power (e.g., access to airspace). In some cases, the most celebrated vehicles of hard power have functioned as major sources of soft power, i.e., the public diplomacy activities carried on by American foreign military bases. This more complex coexistence is demonstrated by the fact that international power metrics show hard and soft power among nations to be strongly correlated: the most prolific hard-power nations are equally endowed with soft power.⁹ The momentum of this relationship has led the literature on soft power and also the policy world to evolve toward a position of smart or cosmopolitan power. Scholars and the policy community have come to increasingly gravitate toward a predilection embracing some optimal mix of hard and soft power as a normative thrust. In terms of national influence, hard and soft power have come to be identified as two sides of the same coin (Gallarotti 2010b, Nye 2011, Nossel 2004, Clinton 2014).¹⁰

Moreover, esteem and the convergence of interests and goals, the very factors that create soft power, can have a dark side when evaluated according to a liberal normative metric. Admiration may lead followers to illiberal ends. The theoretical misapplication of the more general mechanics of the process of soft power only to liberal outcomes has led to a predictable confusion. There exist what many would consider less desirable role models with respect to creating allegiance and emulation based on positive affect. Illiberal nations can generate significant influence if other nations hold their policy visions and actions in high regard. More recently, we have seen a growing fraternity of autocrats engaged in self-congratulatory rhetoric and emulation based on strength, domestic oppression and nationalism. This has destabilized international relations by injecting an infectious strand of expansionism, contempt, paranoia, systems of restricted civil rights and xenophobia into the global system. Hearts and minds have indeed been captured, but directed toward highly illiberal ends. The idea of sharp power has emerged in this theoretical vein. Sharp power involves disinformation initiatives by illiberal nations or suspect actors to enhance their image in target nations. The neologism is misapplied theoretically because it conflates process with the attribution of the moral character of the outcomes. The process by which sharp power manifests itself is the same as soft power in that the initiatives seek to enhance the image of the perpetrator nations or actors. It has been distinguished from soft power because of purported nefarious intentions and morally suspect role models.¹¹ But of course the process of generating positive affect need not lead to benign outcomes (Napolitano 2022, Snyder 2021, Gallarotti and Al Filali 2012, Walker 2018, Walker and Ludwig 2017, Patalkh 2017, Kurlantzick 2007, Marlin-Bennett 2022).¹²

Much of the pushback against soft power comes from the Realist camp: still the dominant paradigm in the study of international politics. For Realists, soft power is epiphenomenal. Indeed, it is considered ‘soft’ in terms of impact. They posit that soft power resources and strategies produce exiguous gains in terms of influence (Gallarotti 2021).¹³ An overriding concern with the effects of anarchy lead Realists to consider force to be the ultimate arbiter of international relations. Within such a structure of self-help, only hard power resources enjoy guaranteed utility (e.g., diplomatic overtures may have no impact on abating an invasion, but weapon systems are guaranteed to inflict harm onto an aggressor). One can think of hard and soft power resources as investments in assets with differing risk and return profiles (Gallarotti 2010b). Since it is in the nature of soft power to cultivate compliance or affect, returns in terms of influence will be more modest since there is no urgency to comply to soft overtures. But the risks of applying soft strategies and instruments will also be more modest because there will be far less negative feedback from target nations. Extracting compliance with hard-power instruments (threat, force) may generate greater gains (especially in the short run) because there is urgency in compliance (faster and greater), but the risks are also far greater in terms of negative feedback. In other words, the consequences of using hard power to extract compliance could generate self-defeating outcomes. It is a result of these consequences that soft power appears in a light that is far more auspicious than Realists admit. This would come under the rubric of hard disempowerment. Hard disempowerment occurs when the use of hard power is counter-productive and ultimately self-defeating. Indeed some significant gains in compliance can be made in the short run through excessively hard-power strategies (e.g., violence), but the creation of countervailing opposition on the part of target and third-party nations may render a situation where net gains over some longer period in terms of influence are compromised. Hence, actions or strategies that were intended to strengthen actually served to weaken a nation. Nations that fall prey to such circumstances are often victimized by what I have referred to as power illusion: the tendency to evaluate gains based on possibilities of nominal compliance extraction. Leaders become obtuse to the net results of power activation in terms of influence.¹⁴ Net results are all those outcomes that include the consequences of the reactions emanating from target and third-party nations (Gallarotti 2010a).

The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia and prior use of force in Crimea and Donbas are glaring examples of hard disempowerment. Putin desired a Ukraine that was squarely in the Soviet sphere of influence to serve as a buffer state against a growing NATO presence in the region. Although Ukraine was edging closer to the West, the nation was still outside of a formal Western alliance. The invasion and prior violence set in motion a self-defeating series of events that compromised Russian influence in East and Northern Europe, and the world at large. Finland and Sweden accelerated their memberships with NATO, other nations in the region adopted a more adversarial posture toward Russia and a more favorable disposition toward the West as a wedge against Russian aggression, the US and NATO increased the deployment of troops in Europe, the traditionally pro-Russian sympathizers in the Ukraine turned into enemies, Russian public opposition increased against the Putin regime and the economy suffered greatly. Rather than placing Putin and Russia in a position of greater security, the invasion and violence have made them far more insecure. Therefore, while the pre-invasion situation void of the excessive application of hard power rendered the Ukraine far less than a desirable buffer for Russia, excessively aggressive attempts to reign it in created a situation far worse for Putin and Russia. While the softer path to security rendered less than fully satisfactory results for Russia, the harder path generated far more toxic outcomes for Russian security in Europe and the world at large.¹⁵

The concept of hard disempowerment is grounded in the logic of complexity and system effects (Jervis 1997). The international system, like any other social or physical system, is defined by its complexity with respect to how its elements interact. Interactions are tightly-coupled, such that actions can reverberate through the system and generate wide-ranging and complex consequences (i.e., feedback). Sometimes the consequences are simple and ascertainable (i.e., linear), but mostly they are quite intricate and difficult to perceive (non-linear). In such cases, small changes in initial conditions may reverberate to create larger changes in systemic outcomes (e.g., for want of a horse, a kingdom was lost). Hence, soft power may indeed yield modest gains, but in a complex system, small gains in period t1 may have generate a significantly favorable impact down the road in time t6.¹⁶ Complexity renders even small actions significant. Hence, the nominal size of initial actions are not indicative of their final systemic impact.

The collection of articles in this special issue of the Journal of Political Power speaks largely to the process and impact of soft power, given the sizable shadow of Realist scholarship in the field: as Realism questions impact and pays scant attention to alternatives to hard sources of influence (i.e., softer sources). Any subversive strand in a scholarly field needs to prove its metal against the dominant paradigm, and Realism is still the king. Realists have continued to assault soft power as a feeble interloper in an anarchic global system. The contributions in this special issue establish, contrary to the Realist narrative, that soft power has a significant footprint in world politics, and that indeed there are salient alternative sources of influence that can compete with hard power. Indeed, while softly implanted, the footprint is quite deep and consequential, and softer roads to influence are quite viable and efficacious. And yet even those that have explored softer sources of power have insufficiently revealed the processes by which soft power is manifest. The contributions in this special issue take a deep dive into these processes as well. Hence, these contributions represent cutting-edge analyses of under-explored subjects and issues in the realm of soft power that are timely and merit a level of scrutiny that matches their importance.

Two articles consider American soft power in quite different manifestations. Kearn contemplates a more conventional state-centric process in showing the toxic impact of the recent Trump presidency on America as an international role model, while Wu covers the little explored issue of how America’s great museums in Washington (non-state cultural beacons) generate a positive impact for American influence abroad. Kearn in an especially timely contribution chronicles the deleterious effect of Trump’s domestic and foreign policies on America’s influence. This is an especially important study because interest in soft power is primarily one way: how soft power is created or manifest. Kearn’s is a far less common study that demonstrates how soft power is compromised. He cites three pillars of soft-power decline: a rejection of universal liberal principles, multilateralism and an exclusionary worldview; a willingness to challenge and undermine America’s foundational liberal democratic institutions; and the staggering incompetence and absence of leadership during the recent COVID pandemic. These created a confluence of negative affect that impacted strongly on American foreign relations in a multitude of contexts. The general disdain for multilateralism and democratic process undermined the international trust so vital to U.S. security and economic relations. The multinational support system of the U.S. was compromised, leaving nations far less willing to help or trust the U.S. as an ally and partner. This was compounded by the effects of a vision of intolerance to multiculturalism and diversity, thus alienating not only foreign leaders, but populations at large. ‘America first’ and ‘Americans first’ tropes cut against the reputation of the U.S. as a trusted ally and economic partner, and even injected an adversarial element into erstwhile favorable schemes of cooperation. The authoritarian push made democracy far less of a model for state building and political transition, thus undermining a major milieu goal of U.S. foreign policy. In short, Trump’s policies and actions left the U.S. with fewer friends and more adversaries. While the Biden transition promises enhanced prospects for reclaiming that lost soft power, the hold of Trumpism over the Republican party in the U.S. bodes poorly for being able to climb out of the toxic well easily.

Wu on the other hand analyzes the impact of a little scrutinized source of American soft power: the Smithsonian museum complex in Washington, D.C. Wu’s study of museums as sources of soft power is an especially crucial contribution to the literature on the subject, since there is no greater manifestation in the promotion of national cultures than the institutions of museums. It is here that cultural affect is most glaringly observable. Indeed the great might and success of the U.S. is widely displayed at the museums, thus galvanizing the esteem and affect for the nation. If Trump torpedoed the image of the U.S. as an international role model, the Smithsonian has historically raised it. Using a Soft Power Rubric, Wu assesses the impact of the Smithsonian based on cultural engagement through social interaction. The Smithsonian uses the very highpoints of American cultural and scientific achievement as a platform for engaging foreign visitors and resident researchers. Foreign visitors are already a sign of affect, and exposure to temples of its grandeur elevates both esteem and psychological connections. This creates a cultural janissary corps of civil diplomats in global society. Such pervasive connections are at the very foundation of soft influence in foreign relations among nations. Moreover, the Smithsonian programs for resident researchers provide another layer of engagement (this one on a more elite level). The affect created through working with American scientists not only serves to build greater foreign political and economic relations, but also creates a multicultural scientific community in which American values and identities are strongly entrenched. Finally, the museum’s sponsored events such as folk festivals provide an opportunity for an even more intense experience in multicultural engagement, thus raising cultural IQs and reshaping identities. All such social interactions generate a powerful immersion experience that raises affect toward the U.S.

Marlin-Bennett, Baykurt and Hudson look at a little analyzed subject: the processes whereby information flows generate soft power. Marlin-Bennett offers a creative and original look at the dark side of soft power. Indeed the liberal slant in soft power scholarship has served to suppress ideas about malicious uses of processes that generate affect. So this is an especially important contribution to the neglected ‘dark side’ of soft power. In addition, Marlin-Bennett addresses the process of psychological imprinting through information flows. This is an especially important study also because scholars have paid little attention to how information networks are used to create affect. This contribution attempts a systematic account of the process itself in precisely modeling the theoretical context of the nefarious use of soft power. It proposes a process of dissemination geared toward creating attraction based on the structure of information flow: its content, velocity and direction. It then employs this model in analyzing the promulgation of the conspiracy theories of the anti-Semitic Blood Libel and Pizzagate. Three key insights emerge from this study. First, malign soft power exists and is a significant policy concern. Second, previously unrecognized actors (including individuals and small groups), as well as states and recognized non-state actors, use social media and other information technologies to participate in malign soft power practices. Third, some people who are exposed to conspiracy theories see them for the fabrications that they are and do not succumb to believing them. In this latter respect, those who in fact choose to believe them have some moral culpability for that choice.

Baykurt offers a critical-historical perspective on the relationship between soft power and the global internet. The internet was regarded and used as a vehicle to buttress U.S. dominance in the post-Cold War period. The U.S. government employed the internet as an informational platform that would serve as a chariot of American soft power: disseminating appealing narratives of democracy, liberalism, freedom, dialogue, capitalism and cooperation. This dominance was challenged by regional and global players from the 2010s onward. Branded a ‘tech Cold War,’ this competition among powerful nations such as China and the U.S. has been a manifestation of a greater contest among major players in the digital game of information technology. While the digital configuration of power has transitioned from unipolarity to multipolarity and plurilateralism, the strong symbiotic relationship between tech companies and their governments has remained vigorous. Just as geo-strategic competition springs from a nationalistic foundation, so too has this digital competition generated another form: what she refers to as ‘tech-nationalism.’ This article is especially important because it takes a deep dive into the process by which technology can project soft power, and in showing the links between such technology and soft power, the article attests to just how intertwined hard and soft power really are.

Victoria Hudson’s article on Russian soft power in Kazakhstan looks at the communicative transmission mechanism that generates affect for Russia in Kazakhstan. Drawing on an attitudinal survey, the article shows that Russia does enjoy cultural-ideational attraction in Kazakhstan. By way of explanation, the principal informational channels through which Russia communicates with the Kazakhstani audience are presented and analyzed: public diplomacy, co-optive approaches, language, education and media. The article offers especially nuanced analysis of a two-tiered transmission mechanism in the description of how domestic actors in the channels of communication can serve as translators and disseminators of Russian content. With regard to the impact of Russian soft power in Kazakhstan, the article points to various examples of how Kazakhstani relationships and interactions with Russia are facilitated and enhanced by soft power.

Gallarotti analyzes national initiatives at enhancing soft power through higher education. The initiatives are designed around the objective of psychological imprinting through programs of academic and cultural immersion. Scholars have poorly specified the psychological process by which soft power is generated, but such an ideational process is at the core of creating affect. This contribution attempts a more systematic account of how this occurs. With respect to the specific pedagogical offensives, three programs are scrutinized: Australia’s Colombo Plan, the Soviet Union’s Patrice Lumumba University and America’s Fulbright Scholarships. The findings from the case studies suggest that nations are rational and systematic in attending to important foreign policy goals through pedagogical programs, and that these programs produce a significant impact in targeted demographics. Inferences from the cases suggest a number of patterns in these respects. First, nations target the geographic breath of the programs proportionally to their resources and to the geo-strategic context that most affects their national interests. Second, the demographics targeted accord with the narratives comprising the imprinting: i.e., the pedagogical visions accord with the particularistic interests of the target audiences. Third, soft power strategies are often embedded in hard power resources and incentives: i.e., material benefits raise the affect generated by the pedagogies. This supports the dominant thinking regarding the state of soft power today: that the best strategies for maximizing national influence are to aim as blending an optimal mix of soft and hard power (i.e., smart or cosmopolitan power). Finally, pedagogies themselves are bolstered by complementary experiences. It is not enough to teach individuals about the redeeming qualities of a culture, the individuals must also experience the culture through physical immersion for maximum positive affect. Learning is insufficient to generate optimal affect, and hence pedagogy must be delivered through very specific living experiences. This article is an important addition to the literature on the soft power of education since it analyzes two cases that have garnered little attention (Lumumba University and Australia’s Colombo Plan) and it takes a comparative analysis that generates patterns in the relationship between the two variables. It’s importance also lies in offering a more precise picture of the process of cognitive imprinting underlying the process by which soft power is generated.

Vale and Marques and Trunkos present quantitative analyses of soft power. Vale and Marques address the question of whether a nation’s environmental policy can impact its soft power. Their findings suggest that it does indeed. This is an especially important contribution in providing a rare quantitative glimpse into the relation between the environment and soft power over a large number of nations. In addition to scrutinizing the general relationship between environmental performance and soft power, the authors also identify which specific environmental policies have the greatest impact on a nation’s soft power. The data demonstrate a number of interesting findings. It appears that the major issues of land, air and water resonate with the world at large, and hence are crucially linked to a nation’s soft power. In addition, domestic issues are more salient in driving soft power outcomes than international outcomes. Finally, measures that affect people’s health seem to be especially important sources of impact on a nation’s soft power. The article also generates important normative implications for optimal policies on economic development.

Trunkos provides a quantitative study of the relationship between geopolitical threat and soft power. Using a statistical analysis of 29 European democracies, Trunkos evaluates the impact of geopolitical threat on democracies’ use of soft power. For the time-period of 1999–2010, the data reveal that geopolitical threat boosts soft power use. The findings suggest that when there is the perception of threat, the political elite creates a narrative that focuses on national security and the country starts to rely on a higher level of soft power in order to balance against the threat. The findings provide answers regarding countries’ alliance-building processes as well as suggest that the three main paradigms of international politics, namely Realism, Idealism and Constructivism, are more compatible than previously stated. This is an especially important contribution to the theory of soft balancing, in that it enriches the lexicon of soft weapons that nations can rely on when facing threats.

Vladimirova offers one of the very first bibliographic network analyses of the literature on soft power. It identifies clusters in a scholarship network that feature thematic commonalities in the study of political power. The data on keyword co-occurrences help us ascertain how soft power scholars are positioned in relation to themselves and other communities of researchers conducting power analysis. In the context of the soft power group itself, the patterns found are consistent with differing themes used to study this theory. It confirms that scholars have taken the original approach to soft power by Joseph Nye and pushed it into other areas of inquiry. Notably this analysis introduces to the political power domain a latent space model, an advanced statistical approach welcomed for years by leading journals such as Political Analysis (Minhas et al. 2019) and the Journal of Peace Research (Ward and Hoff 2007), yet this family of models still remains rare. Vladimirova believes that in the future this useful tool will allow us to trace how the study of soft power is gravitating away from the specific analysis of the originator of the concept Nye.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giulio M. Gallarotti

Giulio M. Gallarotti is Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. He is Chairman of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) Research Committee on Political Power (RC 36).

Notes

1. Soft-power has been much more behavioral and cognitive, as it has involved non-state and non-rational factors that play out in the human psyche.

2. Behavioral economists have evaluated the effects of altruism on human actions and institutions. The scholarship on the evolution of norms similarly explores the role of cooperation and reciprocity on social outcomes. See, for example, Kolm and Yithier (2006) and Bender and Swistak (2001).

3. I have analyzed soft power in the context of meta-power in Gallarotti (2010b, 2011).

4. Sociologist Peter M. Hall (1997) gives a valuable overview of the development of a meta-power vision in the context of social organization.

5. One might consider Foucault’s (2000) vision of knowledge-power as the most extensive manifestation of meta-power. In this case he views social organization as embedded in pervasive structures of cognitions and institutions that are ”omnipresent” and hence exist in every ‘background condition’ underlying social relations (Digeser 1992, Brass 2000).

6. Much of Nye’s (1990b, 2004, 2011) work is a testament to how the U.S. benefits from its soft power in global affairs. See also Gallarotti 2010a, Chapter 6).

7. This is why attempts to integrate soft power into Lukes (2005) third face of power or radical Marxist visions of power such as Gramsci (1988) and Isaac (1987) fail (Bauman 2017). The latter visions see the merger of interests as a manifestation of co-optation in the context of a conflict of interests. Indeed affect if cultivated, but in the form of a false consciousness (i.e., distortion of preferences away from true objective interests). There is a subjective distortion of preferences that cuts against actual outcomes that would benefit the victimized groups. Soft power largely eschews conflicts of objective interests (Gallarotti 2010b).

8. Kearn (2011), Bohas (2006) and Baldwin (2016) have offered some penetrating thoughts on a number of these issues.

9. See, for example, the well-known database The Soft Power 30 (McClory 2019).

10. Theoretical difficulties are not completely the fault of analysts. Indeed soft power is an inherently problematic phenomenon, and hence difficult to nail down as a concept and subject of scholarly scrutiny. Is soft power an outcome (affect, admiration, emulation) or a set of resources and actions (diplomacy, admirable qualities and accomplishments, cultural or religious standing)? Should it be evaluated causally as a dependent or independent variable? Conceptual difficulties of course also manifest themselves in difficulties with measuring soft power and quantitatively analyzing it (Trunkos 2022, Gallarotti 2020).

11. I use the terms ‘attribution’ and ‘purported intentions’ because of the value-laden categories of the process of soft power. Indeed, many of the so-called perpetrators of sharp power do not consider themselves to be nefarious. They will often see their intentions as more enlightened than those who condemn them. Autocratic regimes, for example, will often consider their social and political order to be morally superior to neoliberal alternatives. In fact, they would consider those alternatives themselves to be malign (e.g., politically erratic, hypocritical and neo-imperialistic).

12. I have in this issue (Gallarotti 2022), modeled a general cognitive process of soft empowerment, which applies to both sharp and soft power.

13. In reality, a close reading of the great canons of Realism actually reveals quite a bit of attention drawn to the utility of soft-power instruments. This, once again, pays homage to the importance of achieving smart power (Gallarotti 2015, 2021).

14. History suggests that nations and leaders could be quite obtuse to the failures of excessive hard-power strategies (Gallarotti 2010a).

15. Even when hard power generates compliance, the compliance is never x-efficient (i.e., never maximized beyond what is observable). Compliance is like any other imperfectly specified contract. Compliance is a matter of degree outside the monitoring capacity of the perpetrator nation. In other words, you can expect target nations to do the minimum in complying to agreements under duress. In these cases, x–inefficient compliance can itself prove quite unproductive (and even detrimental) for perpetrator nations.

16. Of course, small changes in hard power may also reverberate, but in the case of hard disempowerment, the long-term outcomes could be exponentially harmful for perpetrator nations.