scholarly journals An Examination of China's Soft Power

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Avery
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Embryonic Stage ◽  
National Image ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ulterior Motives

China’s soft power strategy has dominated the discourse on Chinese domestic and foreign policies both internally and externally. The subject has sparked interest within China to contribute to building a positive national image, while foreign analysts seek out ulterior motives, questioning the credibility of state-led soft power. This study will attempt to identify how China’s soft power is perceived and implemented by comparatively analyzing the extant data and literature on the subject. Through examining the various perceptions of soft power and how it is used by China, I aim to demonstrate that despite the myriad of research, soft power remains ambiguous in its embryonic stage and therefore should not be assessed without an aggregated measurement to operationalize soft power.

scholarly journals Global holiday as a cultural phenomenon of the Digital Age

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Ivan Dmitrievich Tuzovskii
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Methodological Foundation ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
The Status ◽  
Global Status ◽  
The Subject

The subject of this research is modern celebratory culture in the context of impact of globalization processes upon festivities. The author explores a new phenomenon that emerged in the early XXI century – a “global holiday” within the framework of sociocultural transformations related to transition of humanity towards the Digital Age, and formation of the global information space. Special attention is given to the following aspects: creation of media and post-mythological global holidays of the Digital Age, and transformation of the traditional holiday into new metanational forms. The methodological foundation for studying the holidays that received the status of "global" in modern culture became the adaptation of “head page method” applied in sociological, cultural and futurological research and sociocultural monitoring, including overt observation. The conclusion is made that modern culture marks the formation of several types of global holidays that carry metanational character: the first group includes media-produced holidays associated with post-folklore and post-mythology of modern society, or represent celebratory events as award ceremonies in the field of politics, art and science; the second group includes ethnic traditional holidays that received the global status (Halloween, St. Patrick's Day, Mexican Day of the Dead, Holi “Festival of Spring”, etc.). The phenomenon of global holidays should be taken into account in creation of the national strategies of cultural policy, and the global holiday itself may become one of the "soft power" tools in the Digital Age.

scholarly journals Identification of Nepal’s Soft Power

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 49-65
Author(s):  
Binod Khanda Timilsana
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Power Measurement ◽  
Power Indices ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
Natural Beauty ◽  
The World ◽  
Foreign Policies

Soft power, according to Nye, is a particular power of attraction to a state based on the appeal of its culture, political values, and foreign policies (Nye Jr. 2004, p. 11, 2008, p. 96). In the changing paradigms of state powers from military strength, economic might, political power, technological competency to soft power endeavors, identification of own soft power is the process of measuring own strength. Hard power measures can be observed from out sides as well but soft power potentialities will not appear easily without systematic attempt to expose them in front of international actors. Hard power measurement is easy and more exact than soft power qualities. There are very limited academic attempts visible in identification of Nepal’s soft power. Great soft powers of the world are visible and measurable through soft power indices developed by different think tanks and research agencies. The soft power 30 and Global Soft Power Index are exemplary forums engaged in ranking states in terms of soft powers. Reputation, influence, political values, culture, foreign policies, enterprise, culture, digital, governance, engagements and education are the indicators of soft power. The newly explained taxonomy of soft power includes four subunits of soft power namely resources, instruments, receptions and outcomes. Buddhism is a powerful soft power resource of Nepal. Conflict resolution and peace process model of Nepal is another potential soft power. Culture, engagement in multilateral global and regional forum, natural beauty with the world is highest Mt. Everest, diasporic community of Nepal, social networks, public diplomacy and personal diplomacy are remarkable soft power properties of Nepal. Nonetheless, identification of Nepal’s soft power is in very preliminary phase.

scholarly journals Battlefield of global ranking: How do power rivalries shape soft power index building?

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang Zhang ◽  
Ruiqin Wu
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Power Index ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
International Competition ◽  
Power Measurement ◽  
Political Values ◽  
National Image ◽  
Development Models ◽  
Index Building ◽  
Selection Of

International competition over soft power has largely transformed from image promotion and cultural diplomacy to benchmark setting. Benchmarks breed discourses and discourses embody power. The article argues that the soft power index building has turned into a battlefield where different values, norms and development models struggle for legitimacy through quasi-scientific validations. By critically examining the methods employed by two soft power indexes, Portland Soft Power 30 Index and China National Image Global Survey, this article unpacks the mechanisms by which institutions from western and emerging (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS)) states embed political values, interests and agendas in the selection of data, indicators and treatments of data. The article finds that while the soft power indexes originating from Western organizations largely normalized liberal values and the current international hierarchy, the Chinese national image survey provides a more self-reflective approach to soft power measurement.

scholarly journals Illiberalism, geopolitics, and middle power security: Lessons from the Norwegian case

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Nina Græger
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Middle Power ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Bilateral Cooperation ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Middle Powers ◽  
Global Solidarity

Middle powers have played a key role in supporting global governance, a rules-based order, and human rights norms. Apart from conveying and effectuating global solidarity and responsibility, multilateral cooperation has been an arena where middle powers seek protection and leverage relatively modest power to greater effect, sometimes as “helpful fixers” to great powers. This article argues that geopolitical revival and the contestation of the liberal order are challenging middle powers' traditional sheltering policies, based on empirical evidence from the Norwegian case. First, the weakening of multilateral organizations is making middle powers more vulnerable to great power rivalry and geopolitics, and Norway's relationship with Russia is particularly pointed. Second, existing shelters such as NATO and bilateral cooperation with the US are negatively affected by the latter's anti-liberal foreign policies, making looser sheltering frameworks important supplements. While Norway's and other middle powers' traditional policies within the “soft power” belt may continue, “doing good” may become less prioritized, due to the need for security.

scholarly journals The soft power of commercialised nationalist symbols: Using media analysis to understand nation branding campaigns

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 527-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Bolin ◽  
Galina Miazhevich
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
National Image ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Media

Since the late 1990s, nation branding has attracted a lot of attention from academics, professional consultants and government actors. The ideas and practices of nation branding are frequently presented by branding advocates as necessary and even inevitable in the light of changing dynamics of political power and influence in a globalised and media-saturated world. In this context, some have argued that nation branding is a way to reduce international conflict and supplant ethno-nationalism with a new form of market-based, national image management. However, a growing body of critical studies has documented that branding campaigns tend to produce ahistorical and exclusionary representations of the nation and advance a form of ‘commercial nationalism’ that is problematic. Importantly, the critical scholarship on nation branding has relied primarily on sociological and anthropological theories of nationhood, identities and markets. By contrast, the role of the media – as institutions, systems and societal storytellers – has been undertheorised in relation to nation branding. The majority of the existing literature tends to treat the media as ‘neutral’ vehicles for the delivery of branding messages to various audiences. This is the guest editors’ introduction to the Special Issue ‘Theorizing Media in Nation Branding’, which seeks to problematise this overly simplistic view of ‘the media’ and aims to articulate the various ways in which specific media are an integral part of nation branding. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach and problematises both the enabling and the inhibiting potentialities of different types of media as they perpetuate nation branding ideas, images, ideologies, discourses and practices.

Peacekeeping and foreign policy: Canada, India and the International Commission in Vietnam, 1954–1965

1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramesh Thakur
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Commission ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Subject ◽  
International Peacekeeping ◽  
And Control ◽  
Constituent Elements

Vietnam has been the subject of several studies in our times; yet a need remains for an analysis of the Vietnam experience as an exercise in international peacekeeping. Possibly because interest in peacekeeping has tended to be concentrated on UN exercises, the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC) in Vietnam has escaped serious study. I hope in the course of this paper to partially fill the lacuna. I intend to show the achievements and shortcomings of the ICSC by subjecting its workings to as close a scrutiny as is feasible within the constraints of an article. In the process, I shall be breaking down the Commission into its constituent elements, the three delegations. This procedure allows us both to understand the workings of the Commission as a whole, and to comment upon the coincidence of voting patterns of the delegations with the foreign policies of their respective countries. Polish behaviour, it might be noted, will receive less than equal emphasis. The study is thus simultaneously an examination of ICSC behaviour in Vietnam, and of Canadian and Indian behaviour in the ICSC.

scholarly journals “Hybrid Threats” to Russia’s Security: Identification and Counteraction

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-71
Author(s):  
S. I. Kodaneva
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
National Security ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Grey Zone ◽  
Hybrid Warfare ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Hybrid Threats ◽  
Hybrid War

In the scientific literature, it is customary to consider and analyze war exclusively as a violent (conventional) confrontation of subjects of international politics. However, this does not take into account that modern wars are increasingly unfolding in the “grey zone”, that is, outside the framework of international law, they are conducted both in physical and in other dimensions – informational, cybernetic, cultural, cognitive – and mainly by non-military means and with the involvement of irregular formations (rebels, terrorists, etc.). As a result, today’s interstate confrontation is becoming more complex and hybrid, presenting new mechanisms for non-nuclear deterrence.It is important to understand that the inability to recognize the enemy’s ongoing war in time, to determine the direction of the strike destroyed many states, starting with the Roman Empire and ending with the USSR. This determines the relevance and timeliness of this study, which is aimed at analyzing the content of the phenomenon of hybrid war, determining the main methods of its conduct used today and proposing counteraction measures.It should be recognized that in the modern scientific literature there is no single approach to understanding what a hybrid war is, which is quite understandable precisely because of its essence – the variability and complexity of ways of it conducting, as well as flexibility and adaptability to specific circumstances. There are quite a lot of disparate studies on individual components of hybrid war, such as “soft power”, information, economic and cyberwar, “color revolutions”, etc.The subject of this research is the phenomenon of hybrid warfare, its content and specific ways of conducting hybrid warfare. The purpose of this work is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the subject of research, as well as to structure the manifestation that form the phenomenon of hybrid war in its complex, determine their correlation and mutual influence of various methods of conducting hybrid war, as well as to develop specific proposals for countering threats to Russia’s national security.The importance of developing comprehensive strategic approaches aimed primarily at identifying vulnerabilities, as well as including spiritual security as the basis of the entire security system and countering hybrid threats is emphasized.Taking into account the specified subject and purpose, the introduction reveals the relevance of the study of the phenomenon of hybrid war and the danger that this type of interstate confrontation poses for Russia. Then we analyze the concept of hybrid war and its content, as well as the four main ways of conducting it. The results of the analysis are followed by conclusions and proposals on countering threats to Russia’s national security.

scholarly journals CHINESE POLICY OF SOFT POWER AND PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

2018 ◽  
pp. 171-194
Author(s):  
AGHAVNI HARUTYUNYAN
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Political System ◽  
Great Power ◽  
National Image ◽  
Chinese Characteristics ◽  
Chinese Policy ◽  
Rights Issues

Even though more than 30 years have passed since the “socialism with Chinese characteristics” reforms of 1978 began, Western criticism of China regarding its political system, human rights issues, its treatment of Tibet, and so forth continues unabated today . Until the middle of the 1990s, as it emerged from the shadow of the Tiananmen events, China’s communist leaders designed new state-craft to revitalize economic reform and improve its national image. They have continued to view soft power as indispensable for the country’s efforts to increase comprehensive national strength and regain its status as a great power.

scholarly journals FINNO-UGRIC "WORLD" AS A SYMBOLICALLY CONCTRUCTED PROJECT

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 60-76
Author(s):  
O. B. Yanush ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Institutional Setting ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The World ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Science And Education ◽  
The Creation

The article studies the Finno-Ugric "world", understood as a transfrontier language community and its actors. The author marks tendencies of unification in the Finno-Ugric community of the 1990s and a stage of «disin-tegration» in the 2000s. The study goal is to explain the ongoing processes in the context of the foreign poli-cy of several western countries engaged and ethnic fragmentation among the Russian Finno-Ugric peoples. For this purpose, the work describes the creation of the Finno-Ugric community, the institutional setting and the results of the World Congresses; the role of the Finno-Ugric “world” in the foreign policies of Western countries. Attention is paid to practices aimed at constructing a common Finno-Ugric identity, among which the initiative "Cultural Capitals of the Finno-Ugric World" is noted.The author concludes that the Finno-Ugric “world” is a symbolically constructed project that connects the divergent positions of a diverse circle of participants, typologically defined as “the glottogenesis communi-ty”, where symbolic and discursive principles prevail over material ones. Moreover, bilateral and multilateral interactions between “western” and “eastern” Finno-Ugric peoples in the culture, science and education are more likely projections of the “soft power” of Finland, Hungary and Estonia than aspirations to create a common Finno-Ugric space.

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