This book offers new and cutting-edge analyses of under-explored subjects and issues in the realm of soft power. It attempts to fill significant scholarly gaps in understanding the process by which soft power is created, as well as gaps in demonstrating its impact. Soft power is one of the most influential ideas in the study of international politics over the past thirty years. Can nations attain their most vital foreign policy objectives in agreeable ways? Advocates of the concept of soft power have vociferously answered in the affirmative. After many years of thinking in the field of international affairs that the only effective path to influence in international politics was military and economic power, the idea of soft power offers new and exciting possibilities of gaining such influence through a more benign path, one that elevates cooperation and esteem as preferred alternatives to violence, threat and military capacity. This book posits that the realization of the full potential of soft power as a foundation for international relations is a crucial goal for our present world, one beset by war and planetary crises. The book will be of special interest to researchers across political science, international relations, cultural studies and foreign policy. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Political Power.

Joseph Nye coined the term "soft power" in the late 1980s. It is now used frequently—and often incorrectly—by political leaders, editorial writers, and academics around the world. So what is soft power? Soft power lies in the ability to attract and persuade. Whereas hard power—the ability to coerce—grows out of a country's military or economic might, soft power arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies. Hard power remains crucial in a world of states trying to guard their independence and of non-state groups willing to turn to violence. It forms the core of the Bush administration's new national security strategy. But according to Nye, the neo-conservatives who advise the president are making a major miscalculation: They focus too heavily on using America's military power to force other nations to do our will, and they pay too little heed to our soft power. It is soft power that will help prevent terrorists from recruiting supporters from among the moderate majority. And it is soft power that will help us deal with critical global issues that require multilateral cooperation among states. That is why it is so essential that America better understands and applies our soft power. This book is our guide.

This book encourages a critical dialogue between interdisciplinary fields that border heritage boundaries and seeks to contribute a wide range of scholarly perspectives and case studies (both national and international). The widespread use of the concept of soft power is sometimes grossly misused as a synonym for anything other than military force. While the concept is one of the most popular and influential in progressive foreign policy circles and is noted for being the ability of a country to convince others that its cause is the best, without having to resort to economic or military threats, the your ability to accurately describe the world we live in needs repair lenses. The power of example, the power of attraction through culture or, in other words, the ability of a country to attract others because of its culture and political values ​​in its foreign policy, that is, soft power, is something that emerges in partly because of government and partly in spite of governments. To have soft power, you need to be connected, and the interaction, management and dissemination of assets can be seen as exercises in soft power action. This book seeks to detail in examples how the concept of “soft power” encompasses and problematizes the multiplicity of themes on the contemporary international agenda, focusing on one of its least discussed elements: the universe of international cultural heritage and the relationship between actors and society, preservationist actions in the globalized world. While cultural heritage embodies different values ​​and can serve different economic, social and political objectives in development contexts, the past becomes a cultural currency when it becomes essential to the human experience.

This book explores the phenomenon of soft power in international relations. In the context of current discourses on power and global power shift s, it puts forward a comprehensive taxonomy of soft power and outlines a methodological roadmap for its empirical study. To that end, the book classifies soft power into distinct components - resources, instruments, reception, and outcomes - and identifies relevant indicators for each of these categories. Moreover, the book integrates previously neglected aspects into the concept of soft power, including the significance of (political) personalities. A broad range of historical examples is drawn upon to illustrate the effects of soft power in international relations in an innovative and analytically differentiated way. A central methodological contribution of this book consists in highlighting the value of comparative-historical analysis (CHA) as a promising approach for empirical analyses of the soft power of different actors on the international stage. By introducing a comprehensive taxonomy of soft power, the book offers an innovative and substantiated perspective on a pivotal phenomenon in today’s international relations. As the forces of attraction in world politics continue to gain in importance, it provides a valuable asset for a broad readership. This book was the winner of the 2021 ifa (German Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations) Research Award on Foreign Cultural Policy. “In this important and thoughtful book, Hendrik Ohnesorge explains and advances our knowledge of the ways that soft power, public diplomacy, and charismatic personal diplomacy are shaping the international relations of our global information age.” Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University and author of The Future of Power

Offering empirical richness within a consistent theoretical framework, this work provides a comprehensive examination of small state foreign policy.