An Unclear Attraction: A Critical Examination of Soft Power as an Analytical Category

An Unclear Attraction: A CriticalExamination of Soft Power as anAnalytical Category

Todd Hall*

The concept of soft power Joseph Nye proposed almost two decades ago has

provided academics and policymakers with a tool through which to refer to

sources of influence other than military force and economic payoffs. The

notion of soft power captures the idea that assets less tangible than bombs or

cheque books, such as culture and values, also act as power resources. In

Nye’s own words, ‘When you can get others to admire your ideals and to

want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and

carrots to move them in your direction.’1 Since it was first introduced, the

concept of soft power has arguably had impact on both analysts and prac-

titioners of foreign policy.

Actors in the policy world have employed the concept of soft power to

highlight the importance of a comprehensive foreign policy that incorpor-

ates cultural and public diplomacy. Policymakers in various countries have

adopted this terminology to advance and justify their international efforts

towards cultural promotion and public outreach. As one US State

Department official testified before the US Senate, ‘Along with the ‘‘hard

power’’ exercised by the military, the ‘‘soft power’’ of public diplomacy. . . is

an essential support in advancing U.S. interests abroad.’2 Similarly, the

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Todd Hall is a research fellow at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Programand will be starting as an assistant professor in the Political Science Department of theUniversity of Toronto in Fall 2010. The author would like to thank Chen Qi, MattFerchen, David Leheny, Sun Xuefung, Chigusa Yamaura and anonymous reviewers atCJIP for comments.

1 Joseph Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), p. x.

2 ‘Testimony of Christopher Midura, Acting Director, Office of Policy, Planning andResources Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. Departmentof State, before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommitteeon Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District ofColumbia’, September 23, 2008. http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction¼Files.View&FileStore_id¼6d0ca93b-7d48-4a6b-914a-ff8a4c37a55e (accessed on October22, 2009).

The Chinese Journal Of International Politics, 2010, 1 of 24doi:10.1093/cjip/poq005

� The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

at Bodleian L

ibrary on February 24, 2016http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction

http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/

Japanese Foreign Ministry states, ‘In recent years, pacifism, traditional cul-

ture, modern culture and such are potential sources of soft power for Japan;

there has been discussion about drawing on these in order to raise the pos-

ition of Japan in the world. On the basis of this idea the Foreign Ministry. . .

is organizing to enact a more systematic public diplomacy.’3 Indeed, with

this goal in mind, Japan’s Foreign Ministry appointed the popular cartoon

character Doraemon as the nation’s first ‘anime ambassador’ as part of the

effort to spread Japanese culture.4

Correspondingly, the term soft power is frequently employed in academia

as an analytical category referring to the various non-tangible resources that

state actors have at their disposal to influence the behaviour of others.

Originally applied to the United States, later analyses have also sought to

examine of the soft power resources of actors such as Japan, the European

Union, Canada, and India.5 More recently, scholarly interest has shifted to

the importance of soft power for China. Several authors within the United

States have published works that try to measure the extent and exercise of

Chinese soft power,6 their main focus being on PRC efforts to expand in-

fluence through diplomatic, developmental, and cultural channels.

This article does not dispute the existence of alternatives to hard power;

the author is indeed fully sympathetic to such a view. Its aim is rather to

present a critical perspective of the concept of soft power through the argu-

ment that although Nye’s concept lends itself for use in policy debates, it is

not suited for deployment as an analytic tool. To be more specific, Nye

emphasizes in his most recent versions of the theory the idea of attraction

as the primary mechanism behind the effects he attributes to soft power.

This article, however, finds that mechanism problematic, as regards both its

theorized sources and purported effects. It argues that in place of a theory of

soft power principally based on attraction we should instead disaggregate

3 http://www.mofa.go.jp/MOFAJ/comment/faq/pr/index.html#01 (accessed on October 23,2009).

4 ‘Doraemon Becomes Japan’s Anime Ambassador’, Japan Economic Newswire, March 19,2008.

5 Jan Melissen, The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations, Studies inDiplomacy and International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Evan H.Potter, Branding Canada: Projecting Canada’s Soft Power through Public Diplomacy(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009); Parag Khanna, ‘The MetrosexualSuperpower’, Foreign Policy, No. 143 (2004), pp. 66–8; Douglas McGray, ‘Japan’sGross National Cool’, Foreign Policy, No. 130 (2002), pp. 44–54; Christian Wagner,‘From Hard Power to Soft Power? Ideas, Interaction, Institutions, and Images inIndia’s South Asia Policy’, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, WorkingPaper, No. 26, March 2005.

6 Ding Sheng, The Dragon’s Hidden Wings: How China Rises with Its Soft Power, ChallengesFacing Chinese Political Development (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008); JoshuaKurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 2007).

2 of 24 Todd Hall

The Chinese Journal Of International Politics, 2010, 1 of 24

at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from

http://www.mofa.go.jp/MOFAJ/comment/faq/pr/index.html#01


the concept into separate ‘soft powers’, each with a discrete pathway of

influence.

As stated earlier, numerous policymakers and scholars have employed the

soft power concept. As a full treatment of all existing variations on Nye’s

approach would result either in a conceptual muddle or a project of several

volumes, this article limits itself to the theory of soft power as articulated by

Nye in Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, his most thor-

ough treatment of the subject.7 Nye being both the intellectual ‘father’ of the

term and participant in present debates on its use, the author feels justified

in taking his articulation of soft power as that most authoritative. The con-

cept has, however, undergone refinement even within Nye’s own body of

work. Nye himself acknowledges that he has ‘honed the definition’ of soft

power and ‘explored the implications and limits in ways [he] had not done in

earlier works’.8 This article consequently addresses his most recent, compre-

hensive treatment of soft power, because to draw on earlier versions of his

theory would risk mixing concepts.

This article is in four parts. The first outlines Nye’s theory of soft power as

presented in his book of 2004 as a basis for later discussion. The second

section introduces the two concepts of ‘categories of practice’ and ‘categories

of analysis’. It argues that although Nye’s theory possesses elements that

predispose it to being a category of practice, this fact does not qualify soft

power as a category of analysis. The third section explores the difficulties

that confront the concept of soft power as a category of analysis, and

critically examines the idea of attraction as a causal mechanism. Finally,

this article suggests an alternative approach—that of disaggregating forms

of soft power into different mechanisms with separate causal logics. It gives

three examples—institutional power, representational power, and reputa-

tional power—of how such an approach might proceed.

Soft Power Defined

Power, according to Nye, is ‘the ability to get the outcomes one wants’.9 Hard

power in international relations means use of military force or economic re-

sources (in Nye’s words, ‘sticks’ or ‘carrots’) to obtain desired outcomes. Soft

power, in contrast, is a way of achieving a desirable result by ‘getting others to

want the outcomes you want’.10 Soft power, therefore, ‘rests on the ability to

shape the preferences of others’.11 In other words, whereas hard power

7 Joseph Nye, Soft Power.8 Ibid., p. xii.9 Ibid., p. 1.

10 Ibid., p. 5.11 Ibid., p. 5.

A Critical Examination of Soft Power as an Analytical Category 3 of 24


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


changes the external costs or benefits facing an actor, soft power alters an

actor’s perception of what is desirable or undesirable in the first place.

Attraction, according to Nye, is the primary mechanism through which

this happens. As Nye writes, ‘What is soft power? It is the ability to get what

you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments,’12 or to be

more concise, ‘soft power is attractive power’.13 The intuition behind the

idea of attraction is that something intangible belonging to certain attributes

or modes of behaviour elicits the compliance of other actors. In Nye’s own

words, ‘If I am persuaded to go along with your purposes without any

explicit threat or exchange taking place—in short, if my behaviour is deter-

mined by an observable but intangible attraction—soft power is at work.’14

Nye specifies three main sources of soft power. They are: culture, values,

and foreign policy.15 He elaborates, ‘The soft power of a country rests on

primarily three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to

others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad);

and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral

authority).’ 16 Culture for Nye is the ‘set of values and practices that create

meaning for a society’.17 These can be conveyed by both the pathways of

high culture (such as higher education) and of low culture (such as popular

culture). Political values are those manifested in the broad domestic and

international policies of a government. They include the values a govern-

ment promotes in its domestic and international discourse as well as in its

general foreign policy objectives.18 Finally, foreign policy as a soft power

resource refers to the ways in which governments frame their goals and go

about pursuing them. Nye points out, ‘Policies based on broadly inclusive

and far-sighted definitions of the national interest are easier to make attract-

ive to others than policies that take a narrow and myopic perspective.’19 The

execution of foreign policy, such as the use of public diplomacy to convey a

state’s position in the most positive light, also falls under this category.

To frame succinctly the causal logic of Nye’s argument, the attraction that

soft power assets, in the form of culture, values and foreign policy, generates

can act as a resource that helps states achieve their goals without employing

12 Ibid., p. x.13 Ibid., p. 6.14 Ibid., p. 7.15 While in other places Nye also cites institutional agenda-setting as a soft power mechan-

ism, this plays a much smaller role in his 2004 version. He does cite it as being on the softpower side of the continuum, but does not treat it as a primary source of soft power.Moreover, it does not figure in his later empirical analyses. For these reasons, this paperprimarily focuses on the three soft power resources outlined above.

16 Joseph Nye, Soft Power, p. 11.17 Ibid., p. 11.18 Ibid., p. 14.19 Ibid., p. 61.

4 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


explicit inducements or coercion. This is accomplished by changing the pref-

erences of others, or at least by eliciting their acquiescence. Whether or not a

specific attribute is indeed a soft power asset that ‘produces attraction’, Nye

states, can be measured through polls or focus groups.20 Nye’s argument is

significant in challenging the many realist, and even ‘neo-utilitarian’,

approaches which focus solely on force and economic resources as sources

of influence. In particular, Nye highlights the role soft power took in pro-

moting US policies during the Cold War, when the attraction of US soft

power assets, such as its culture and political values, successfully tipped a

material standoff. It is for these reasons that Nye believes soft power can be

instrumental in deciding the outcome of international political issues, hence

his warning, ‘When we discount the importance of our attractiveness to

other countries, we pay a price.’21

Category of Practice or Category of Analysis?

The popularity of the concept of soft power, particularly among actual

practitioners of international relations, would appear to suggest its capture

of something of analytical value; otherwise, it would arguably not be so

broadly embraced by the groups closest to the machinations of international

politics. This section sets out to differentiate the attributes of the soft power

concept that make it useful in policy debates as opposed to valuable as a

scholarly tool. To this end it introduces the terms ‘category of practice’ and

‘category of analysis’ as originally delineated by Brubaker and Cooper.22

The argument here is that although certain attributes entailed in the concept

of soft power indeed enhance its attraction as a category of practice, cate-

gories of analysis should nevertheless be judged according to separate cri-

teria. This section concludes by laying out those criteria as a basis for the

ensuing critical evaluation.

The point of this section is to argue that wide and popular use of a concept

does not qualify it as an appropriate category of social science analysis. This

difference is highlighted in the distinction Brubaker and Cooper make,

between ‘categories of practice’ and ‘categories of analysis’ in their writings

on the term ‘identity’.23 They claim that ‘identity-talk’ and ‘identity-politics’

within popular and political discourse can produce problematic, essentialist

ideas of identity as an inherent human attribute. These folk theories of

identity as manifested in popular language and social behaviour constitute

20 Ibid., p. 6.21 Ibid., p. 119.22 Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, ‘Beyond Identity’, Theory and Society, Vol. 29,

No. 1 (2000), pp. 1–47.23 Ibid., p. 4.



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


what Brubaker and Cooper refer to as ‘categories of practice’. Specifically,

Brubaker and Cooper define categories of practice as those ‘used by ‘‘lay’’

actors in some (not all!) everyday settings to make sense of themselves, of

their activities, of what they share with, and how they differ from, others’.24

Put differently, categories of practice describe the concepts that seem in-

tuitive to social actors, in the sense that they reflect common folk assump-

tions that actors make about how the world functions and what constitute

valid ontological categories. An alternative example of a common category

of practice the term ‘criminal’ as used to portray a class of individuals. To

the general public, ‘criminals’ may seem to be a particular type of human

being with identifiable characteristics, but this category is highly contingent

on the social context. The idea of ‘the criminal’ only exists with reference to

specific, socially defined and politically institutionalized laws that are viol-

able, laws which vary significantly both historically and across societies. A

person who counts as a criminal in one time or place, therefore, might not in

another.

A particular problem inherent in a concept such as that of ‘the criminal’ is

that it is commonly believed to denote actual, enduring attributes of indi-

viduals (outside of their behaviour in social contexts) which can be isolated

through scientific analysis. Scientific practitioners have taken it upon them-

selves at various times in history to find specific traits—such as skull shapes

and facial types—that distinguish the criminal type from other individuals.

Research of this kind has been carried out on the assumption that criminals

are distinct by virtue of being a specific type of human being, identifiable

through certain patterned physiological manifestations. What these now

discredited scientific endeavours actually attest to is the fundamental prob-

lem of taking a ‘category of practice’ as a ‘category of analysis’.

‘Categories of analysis’ are therefore the ‘experience-distant categories

used by social analysts’.25 Although it may seem intuitive to individuals in

everyday life—especially those employed in law-enforcement—that there

exists a certain type of human who is criminal, this assumption does not

necessarily constitute a basis for scientific research. Valid categories of ana-

lysis are those that try to identify objects or groups of phenomena according

to similarities rooted in shared, specifiable attributes or mechanisms that are

discrete from the outcomes they are purported to explain. Certain categories

of practice may indeed also be valid categories of analysis, by virtue of

reflecting groupings that possess analytic utility. But attributes that make

an appealing category of practice do not necessarily match those that con-

stitute a functioning category of analysis.

24 Ibid., p. 4.25 Ibid., p. 4.

6 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


Kleptomania, as opposed to the concept of the criminal, for instance,

qualifies as a category of analysis because it identifies a particular psycho-

logical disorder associated with hoarding behaviour and stealing. People

suffering from kleptomania may engage in criminal behaviour at times,

but the mechanisms that trigger their actions differ from those of the

people who steal for material gain. Identifying kleptomania as a separate

analytical category hence enables us to avoid the confusion that results from

perceiving all criminals—or even just thieves—as possessing similar traits

that guide or produce their actions.

The concept of soft power, given its adaptations by both practitioners and

students of international relations, has so far led a dual existence as a cat-

egory of practice and a category of analysis. In line with the earlier discus-

sion, this article argues that there might be important reasons why soft

power is welcomed as a category of practice which bear little relation to

its analytic value. For one, this article would suggest that the ways in which

soft power has opportunely fitted various political debates over the past two

decades is a significant factor. To be concise, soft power as a term has a

political utility quite separate from its analytic utility. Second, soft power

approaches possibly also feed into the pre-existing dispositions of actors to

view their own values and political goals in a favourable light.

To elaborate, the term soft power has since its inception been of a political

nature. As David Leheny points out, the concept of soft power was born of

debates in the late 1980s and early 1990s about American decline, whereby

the claim that the US maintained a soft power advantage worked to offset

anxieties about US material decline vis-a-vis a then rising Japan.26 In Bound

to Lead, the first book in which Nye addressed the concept of soft power, he

argued that past analogies of declining power did not hold because, ‘The mix

of resources that produce international power is changing’,27 and corres-

pondingly, that the United States still held the ‘soft ideological and institu-

tional resources to retain its leading place. . .’.28 The soft ideological

resources Nye described at that time included most prominently American

ideals and culture; he was therefore offering an assuring reaffirmation of the

place of the United States in the world while simultaneously confirming

certain US liberal values.

More recently, soft power has become part of a debate on post-9/11 US

strategy. Nye and others have used the concept as a direct critique of the

26 David Leheny, ‘A Narrow Place to Cross Swords’, in Peter Katzenstein and TakashiShiraishi, eds., Beyond Japan, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 216–18.

27 Joseph Nye, Bound to Lead: the Changing Nature of American Power (New York: BasicBooks, 1990), p. 260.

28 Ibid., p. 260.



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


Bush administration’s foreign policy and its perceived unilateralism.29

According to this view, US foreign policy under the Bush administration

fell out of sync with American culture and ideals, over-emphasized the role

of hard power and was thus a cause of declining US influence. In Nye’s

words, it was a ‘foreign policy that combines unilateralism, arrogance and

parochialism’.30 The United States consequently needed to increase its soft

power by returning to policies that conformed to its values, built consensus,

and worked towards promoting a more positive image abroad.

On a superficial level, this was an argument for greater public diplomacy

and multilateralism. On a deeper level, however, the concept of soft power

was being employed to advocate and justify a certain set of values and a

specifically liberal conceptualization of American identity as central to US

international power. Nye was hence using the idea of soft power to stake out

a position in the debate on what should constitute American values and, by

extension, US foreign policy.

The idea of soft power as employed by policymakers in other national

contexts, especially Europe and Asia, has also mapped on to the belief that

certain ‘national values’ are inherently attractive. In other words, policy-

maker responses in Europe and Asia to soft power arguments have not

challenged the idea of soft power per se, but instead substituted their own

culture, value systems, or policy alternatives as those most attractive, either

regionally or internationally. European states emphasize the soft power of

multilateralism; China has cited the attraction of Confucian values and the

‘Beijing model’ of development. In all cases, it is exactly the values or poli-

cies—not to mention narratives of national selfhood—that particular pol-

icymakers try to promote and preserve that they claim as important soft

power resources. Describing something as a soft power resource can thus

serve as an endogenous validation of the policies and national discourses

that political practitioners advocate. In short, the concept of soft power has

political utility in serving to reaffirm the policies and values that political

actors—Nye included—advance.

Social identity theorists moreover suggest that actors generally attribute

more attractive and positive characteristics to their in-group,31 and are pre-

disposed to imbue their particular values and positions with an inherent

attraction. A bias of this kind can therefore make actors more receptive to

arguments that encourage such beliefs. Soft power approaches arguably fit

29 Joseph Nye, Soft Power.30 Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),

p. xii.31 Jonathan Mercer, ‘Anarchy and Identity’, International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 2

(1995), pp. 229–52.

8 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


this description to the extent that they propose foreign policy benefits for

those states which remain true to their values. By promoting certain articu-

lations of their own values and national discourses abroad, actors create

opportunities for the kind of social feedback that endorses pre-existing be-

liefs. Indeed, from the social psychology perspective, actors are likely to

focus on the types of international reactions to their soft power strategies

which provide positive feedback while at the same time rationalizing away

evidence that their values or beliefs are less than attractive.32 This generates

a self-reinforcing dynamic that feeds into pre-existent in-group biases.

The purpose of this discussion is to propose that it is both the political

utility and, from the social identity theory perspective, so-called attractive-

ness entailed in the concept of soft power that encourages policymakers to

endorse it. Soft power is a term that offers a convenient fit for the political

needs, beliefs and possible biases of state actors who, in turn,

inter-subjectively buttress the notion that soft power is at work by adopting

strategies rooted in the claims of soft power approaches.

The fact that many policymakers have adopted the concept of soft power

qualifies it as a category of practice. But as the above discussion seeks to

postulate, the qualities of the concept of soft power that are responsible for

this are not necessarily those that recommend it as a category of analysis. As

earlier stated, a category of analysis is based on attributes or mechanisms

common to the objects or phenomena it designates, but at the same time

discrete from the observed outcomes they are purported to explain. The

purpose of this section is to stress that widespread usage is not sufficient

for designating a term a category of analysis.

That said, status as a category of practice does not necessarily disqualify a

term as a category of analysis. The criteria necessary for a category of ana-

lysis are, after all, shared attributes or mechanisms. Significantly enough,

Nye proposes a mechanism—attraction—which analytically unites soft

power resources. The matter under discussion in the next section, therefore,

is the suitability of attraction as a mechanism upon which to base a category

of analysis.33 If attraction proves to be a viable mechanism common to the

soft power assets that Nye outlines, there is good reason to treat soft power

as a category of analysis. If not, the concept of soft power needs to be

rethought. The next section poses two questions. The first: does the

32 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1976), pp. 143–202.

33 Again, Nye has in other writings noted institutional agenda-setting as a possible form ofsoft power. This, however, is an entirely different mechanism from the notion of attractionhe advances in Soft Power (2004). As such it will not be treated as belonging to the samecategory of analysis.



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


behaviour that actors exhibit towards designated soft power resources sig-

nify attraction? Second, if attraction does exist, does it produce favourable

foreign policy outcomes for states that enjoy its benefits? Reframed in social

science terms, these questions explore whether or not the mechanism under

examination is operative, and if so, whether or not it produces the outcomes

that have been attributed to it.

Types of Attraction

Soft power, according to Nye, ‘arises from the attractiveness of a country’s

culture, political ideas, and policies’.34 This section follows Nye in subdivid-

ing soft power resources into his three major categories. For these assets to

function in the way Nye describes, they must (i) produce an attraction, and

(ii) this attraction should help a given state in its pursuit of foreign policy

goals. To explore whether or not this is the case, this section examines each

of Nye’s three categories of soft power resources.

Culture

Culture might seem an amorphous concept, but the empirical examples

Nye offers are clear indicators of what he regards as representative. His

analysis as it pertains to the United States in particular focuses on academic

and other cultural exchanges (high culture) as well as on popular culture

(low culture). The question, therefore, is to what extent these are sources of

attraction.

When considering academic institutions as a source of soft power, it is

difficult to parse out attraction from other possible mechanisms. The desire

to study abroad might have less to do with attraction to a state’s ‘culture’,

understood in the broadest sense, and be more a reflection of the brand

status and resources of that state’s academic institutions. From the perspec-

tive of career advancement alone, there are strong enticements to study at a

university recognized as being at the cutting edge of research, or that has

high name recognition. What is more, the location of a university may be

importantly correlated to its ability to access resources through connections

to domestic business and science sectors. Couple the above factors with the

path dependent effects of reputation for acquiring talent and it becomes

obvious that there are many reasons other than culture for selecting a

specific university. Statistics appear to support this proposition. The top

three most popular fields among foreign students in the United States are

34 Joseph Nye, Soft Power, p. x.

10 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


those of business and management, engineering, and physical and life sci-

ences,35 all of which have clear economic and technological orientations.

Attraction to a particular culture should hence not be confused with more

self-interested motivations.

This does not discredit the argument that the experience of studying in a

foreign country—or other forms of exchange—might heighten the positive

impression individuals may hold of it. This is an important topic worthy of

future study. In situations where the citizens of two states have little contact,

it is easy to imagine the ways in which limited high culture exchanges could

break down and humanize what were hitherto exaggerated stereotypes.

There is nevertheless need for caution. Any given society is complex, with

both positive and negative elements. Although more frequent exchanges

might counter the simplistic views certain actors hold of their foreign coun-

terparts, familiarity can also breed contempt. This, at least, would seem to

be the case for the 9/11 hijackers who had studied in ‘the West’. As Nye

himself observes, exposure may also elicit ‘repulsion’.36 On a less extreme

level, we should not automatically assume that exchange participants are

incapable of nuance. Exchanges might indeed promote attraction among

participants toward a host state’s people or culture, but we should not

assume that the scope of this attraction will include the host government

or its foreign policies. Again, more research is needed on this topic. In pro-

ceeding, however, we must be careful of selection biases. In other words,

those choosing to study abroad might already be predisposed towards cer-

tain views of their host country.

Popular culture is perhaps the most widely mentioned and controversial

soft power resource. Nye cites figures which demonstrate that people

throughout the world are attracted to products of American popular cul-

ture,37 and that there are, moreover, large foreign markets for American

cultural products, particularly movies. It cannot be assumed, however, that

this constitutes attraction to American culture as a whole for several im-

portant reasons.

First, people need to be aware of cultural goods before they can consume

them. This presupposes an existing network for advertising, distribution,

and sales. The popularity of Hollywood movies, for instance, has long

been touted as representative of the attraction of American culture. But

Hollywood is differentiated from its competition by access to substantial

amounts of capital and an unparalleled international marketing and

35 See ‘Table 16: International Students by Field of Study, 2006/07 & 2007/08’, Open Doors2008: Report on International Educational Exchange (New York: Institute of InternationalEducation, 2008).

36 Joseph Nye, Soft Power, p. 52.37 Ibid., p. 36.



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


distribution apparatus. Take for example the internationally top grossing

movie of 2007, Pirates of the Caribbean: At the World’s End. The trailer

alone was expected to reach ‘an estimated 200 millionþ viewers in 62 coun-

tries, 31 languages, across five continents and spanning over 12 time zones’

within days of its release.38 The movie cost an estimated US $300 million to

make, and was eventually shown in ‘more than 10,000 theatres in 104 coun-

tries’.39 When examining the success of this ‘cultural product’ it is difficult to

ignore the massive amount of resources that were marshalled to make

Pirates into an international phenomenon. One has to ask whether it was

the cultural content of the film that drew audiences, or the production,

marketing, and special effects spectacle it presented. If the latter is the

case, it is less a matter of a given culture being attractive than its ability

to mount a packaging and delivery blitzkrieg.

Also to bear in mind is the fact that consumers of cultural goods might not

always react to them in the way their producers expect. An extreme example

of this is the screening before Somali audiences of the 2001 American film

Black Hawk Down,40 intended as grim and tragic portrayal of American

heroism after a military helicopter is grounded and comes under attack in

Mogadishu. Scenes where American soldiers are injured or killed, however,

elicited cheers rather than sympathy from Somali cinema-goers.

On a more subtle level, though, consumers might bring to bear their

specific cultural frameworks of interpretation when attaching meaning to

cultural products. There is no reason to assume that the message being sent

is the same as that being received; audiences after all have their own pro-

cesses of generating meaning.41 What some may perceive as national values

embodied in a cultural product, others may see as universal values devoid of

national association, or even as vices, peculiarities, or devoid of meaning.

The point here is that the cultural values that manufacturers ascribe to their

goods might not be those that are understood—let alone viewed as attract-

ive—by their foreign consumers.

Finally, it might not be what cultural goods are but what they are not that

makes them attractive. In other words, foreign cultural goods might provide

convenient symbolic resources that can be put to use in internal cultural or

political struggles. Under these circumstances they might be appropriated

38 ‘Worldwide Trailer ‘Roadblock’ Debut for Walt Disney ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: AtWorld’s End’ to Reach an Unprecedented Global Audience’, Business Wire, March 16,2007.

39 Ibid.40 ‘Somalis Flock to See Bootleg Version of ‘Black Hawk Down,’ Cheer American

Casualties’, Associated Press, January 23, 2002.41 For a classic framing of this critic see Don Kulick and Margaret Willson, ‘Rambo’s Wife

Saves the Day: Subjugating the Gaze and Subverting the Narrative in a Papua NewGuinean Swamp’, Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1994), pp. 1–13.

12 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


less for their inherent attraction than the fact that they present a readymade

way of demonstrating a differentiated status, or of manifesting resistance to

an existing cultural order. This is true not only of movies but equally, if not

more, of food, fashion, and other consumable goods. Nye cites, for instance,

the role of rock and roll music in the Soviet Union.42 The main question

is whether or not there was anything special about this music, other than

its ready availability as a signifier of resistance against a regime that dis-

couraged it.

Even when acknowledging that all of these elements in some way imply a

sense of attraction to a state’s high and low culture, it remains unclear—and

this is the second question—how such an attraction translates into positive

outcomes for a state’s foreign policy goals. As Niall Ferguson bluntly states,

‘All over the Islamic world kids enjoy (or would like to enjoy) bottles of

Coke, Big Macs, CDs by Britney Spears and DVDs starring Tom Cruise.

Do any of these things make them love the United States more? Strangely,

not.’43 This suggests that the indicators Nye associates with ‘cultural attrac-

tion’ are not linked in a straight forward manner to political persuasion.

The difficulty in viewing the attraction individuals might harbor for

certain aspects of another state’s culture—either due to their consumption

of cultural goods or prolonged cultural exchange—as a foreign policy re-

source stems from the presumption it makes of undifferentiated attractive-

ness. Why assume that individuals, even foreign policy novices, are

incapable of holding nuanced views? For instance, as demonstrated in the

2008 Pew Global Survey, there sometimes exists a considerable difference

between the view foreign observers have of a state and of its citizens. The

survey observes, ‘In many countries, there are significant gaps between the

favourability rating for Americans and the rating for the United States, with

the American people receiving much more positive reviews.’44 If such dif-

ferences can indeed exist between impressions of a state and of its people,

there is no reason why it should not also be the case in the sphere of culture.

The assumption that positive cultural impressions equate with support for a

given state’s foreign policy hence stems from the simplistic view that political

actors lack cognitive complexity. How this model of naı̈ve political actor-

hood is actually defensible is not entirely apparent.

In sum, the problems facing a soft power argument based on the mech-

anism of attraction in the sphere of culture are (i) it is not clear whether

preferences for American cultural goods (high or low) indicate attraction to

42 Joseph Nye, Soft Power, p. 49.43 Niall Ferguson, ‘Power’, Foreign Policy, No. 134 (2003), p. 21.44 ‘Some Positive Signs for U.S. Image’, Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 12, 2008, p. 24.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Public_opinion_and_polls/GAP%20report061208.pdf (accessed on October 29, 2009).



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from

http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Public_opinion_


the actual national-cultural elements of those goods; and (ii) the idea that an

attraction towards cultural goods or other factors is a foreign policy asset

assumes a simplistic model of political actorhood. This review, therefore,

recommends caution against taking for granted the idea that the cultural

aspects, as framed by Nye, are sources of attraction, and moreover that this

attraction can spill over into the foreign policy realm.

Political Values

Political values appear a more concrete concept than culture and hence a

more straightforward issue, but the ensuing argument suggests that this is

not necessarily the case. Determining whether or not political values are

attractive entails first defining them—in itself a highly political exercise.

Whether or not this attraction helps a state achieve its foreign policy

goals is further complicated by the ways in which external actors might

strategically claim certain political values as their own. This section

addresses each of these issues.

First, in examining whether or not political values produce attraction, we

must first define the political values at issue. Quite simply, there exist a

multitude of values in any polity. Which are promoted as ‘national values’

is a highly politicized and continually shifting process. For instance, promot-

ing ‘American values’ as unitary and unchanging is at best a gross mischar-

acterization. To cite one example, recent polls suggest that almost half of all

Americans believe that torture can be justified in cases of suspected terror-

ism.45 This finding reflects not only a debate on the effectiveness of torture,

but also a major divide between beliefs about the value of individual human

rights and dignity and communitarian ideas of security. This significant

division on a matter of basic values would suggest that ‘national values’

are far from monolithic.

Nevertheless, in practices of national representation—both by official

state actors and external observers—there occurs a process of selection in

which certain values are promoted as being most fundamental. But exactly

which values are emphasized and which downplayed, what kind of inter-

pretation is proposed, and where exceptions are allowed—even in domestic

contexts—is highly contextual and politically fraught. Consequently, choos-

ing particular values as belonging to a state is in the first place no innocent,

objective, analytical move, but rather an act of intervention in a political

discourse of national identity.

45 Pew Research Center, ‘Public Remains Divided Over Use of Torture’, April 23, 2009.http://people-press.org/report/510/public-remains-divided-over-use-of-torture (accessedOctober 24, 2009).

14 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from

http://people-press.org/report/510/public-remains-divided-over-use-of-torture


The implications of this point not only pertain to analysts looking to

employ the concept of political values, but also to the possible motives of

external actors. Citing values attributed to a particular state as attractive

enables foreign actors to embrace or advance a specific version of that state’s

discourse on national identity. There is nothing odd about foreign actors

adopting certain political values; the question is why they would also accept

the claims of such values as belonging to or representative of a specific

national political culture.

Put bluntly, actors may have strategic reasons for echoing such

claims. During the Cold War, for instance, certain leaders proclaimed

their affinity with American values purely to gain US support in either

international or domestic struggles. Alternatively, opposition groups may

try to marshal international backing by appealing to ostensibly shared

values. Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress is a prime example

of an opposition figure claiming to hold ‘American values’ in hopes of US

backing for his cause.46 This type of strategy could conceivably play upon

the social psychological biases mentioned in the last section, whereby polit-

ical actors might be favourably disposed to positive feedback that confirms

the attractiveness of their values. Under such circumstances, the proclaimed

political values of other states can provide a readily appropriated set of

symbolic resources capable of generating international allies.

This process, however, can also work in reverse. The discursive and pol-

itical nature through which values become associated with particular states

can also be observed in the rhetoric of actors that deprecates adversaries.

This seems to have been the strategy which Iranian leader Ali Khamene’i

adopted when he denounced the United States and other ‘Western’ states for

promoting ‘sexual freedom by their deeds, by their speeches, by their propa-

ganda and even by their philosophy’,47 saying that the ‘West’ therefore

aimed to ‘abuse and insult women’.48 This rhetoric reveals a selective por-

trayal of the values attributed to a group of states aimed not at gaining

allies, but rather at painting a picture of moral decay.

The main point here is that a state’s explicit ‘national values’ and the

extent to which external actors frame them as attractive (or not!) is in

many cases intricately linked to the political struggles in which the relevant

actors are engaged. For these reasons, analysts and outside observers

should be extremely cautious when accepting, in evaluations of the

46 For an in-depth treatment of Chalabi and the role of the INC, see Aram Roston, The ManWho Pushed America to War (New York: Nation Books, 2008).

47 ‘Iran’s Khamenei Tells ‘Elite Students’ About Importance of Self-confidence’, BBC WorldMonitoring, 5 January 2008.

48 Ibid.



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


international attractiveness of a given ‘value’, claims that a certain belief is a

‘national value’.

All the same, even if it were possible to bracket all these concerns and ask

how others’ overt emulation of a given state’s proclaimed political values

might help that state with its foreign policy goals, one would still face

difficulties. The main problem is that of the important qualitative distinction

between ‘wanting what you want’ or even ‘wanting to be like you’ on the one

hand, and ‘wanting what you want them to want’ on the other.49

Japan after the Meiji Restoration is a classic example of this problem.

There is a a strong argument that following the restoration Japan did inter-

nalize the political values of the dominant powers of the time. Indeed, Japan

demonstrated an explicit desire to study the Western powers, and hence

learned to want what they wanted, namely naval power, natural resources,

markets, colonies—an empire. These political values, however, put Japan on

a collision course with the very states it emulated, ending in the massive

bloodshed of World War II.

On a less extreme level, since developed nations began trying to reduce

carbon emissions, the internalization by developing nations of the values of

industrialization and consumption, as epitomized by lifestyles in the first

world, has become a source of tension. From the perspective of industria-

lized states, therefore, developing countries eager to emulate their industri-

alization and consumption patterns represent a significant obstacle to the

common task of curbing carbon emissions, and hence a conflict of interests.

The object of these examples is to show that emulating ‘what a state

wants’ and ‘wanting what helps that state’ are two different things. The

fact, for instance, that Hamas has chosen to pursue political power through

open elections—thus apparently adopting the ‘American values’ of demo-

cratic competition—does not mean that it aspires to what the United States

‘wants them to want’. Sharing the same ‘political values’ should hence not

automatically be equated with sharing the same foreign policy goals. This

means we should be wary of arguments that assert a straightforward correl-

ation between putative national values and the ability to accomplish foreign

policy objectives.

Foreign Policy

The final source of soft power, according to Nye, is a state’s foreign policy.

Interpreted uncharitably, this hypothesis becomes semi-tautological; other

actors will support an attractive foreign policy, the attractiveness of which is

defined by the degree to which other actors support it. Under such a for-

mulation, the hypothesis is unfalsifiable. Brusquely stated, it is hard to

49 Ibid., p. 2.

16 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


register the attractiveness of a policy absent the support others give to it. In

this section the two questions outlined at the outset of this endeavour fold

into one—what is it about foreign policy that makes actors support it?

A slightly more generous application of Nye’s approach in light of this

question would be that specific foreign policies gain the support of other

states absent the use of coercion or payoffs by building upon shared values.

Even phrased in this manner, however, it is difficult to separate situations

where attraction is the driving mechanism from other, possibly non-material

motivations. Neo-utilitarians would argue that correspondence of interest is

a primary motivator.50 According to this logic, states support policies that

further their own purposes. Saudi Arabia, for instance, had clear security

reasons for supporting the United States in the 1991 Gulf War, albeit having

echoed US rhetoric about the invasion of Kuwait as an outrage against

international law.51 Support such as this arguably has little to do with at-

tractiveness and everything to do with selfish interests.

A more nuanced approach would be to look at the ways in which states

promote their policies as being for the common good, or in other words, of

benefit to all or of benefit to the advancement of a shared normative order.

By gaining legitimacy in this fashion, states could be theorized as benefiting

from the mechanism of attraction. But how or why other states accept the

justification of a policy as ‘legitimate’ remains unclear. It may simply be that

governments that also stand to gain from a certain policy assist in its packa-

ging, thus giving the policy a veneer of international legitimacy sufficient to

garner domestic support. The issue then becomes not the attractiveness of

the policy per se, but rather the willingness of other states to help market it.

Also to be considered is the idea that broader appeals to common values

help a state to achieve its goals. It seems intuitive that arguments which

appeal to the greater good carry more traction than those plainly stemming

from egotistical motivations. Indeed, Nye criticizes the latter as the ap-

proach of ‘unilateralists. . . directly responsible for the decline of America’s

attractiveness abroad’. 52 The problem, however, is that efforts to frame

policies in more multilateral, ‘common good’ terms to expand a state’s in-

fluence could well backfire. Nye himself admits that attempts to be more

multilateral can at times function as a ‘straightjacket’.53

Specifically, although such a strategy could serve certain foreign policy

objectives in the short term, it might also become a constraining factor in the

50 John Ruggie, ‘What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-Utilitarianism and the SocialConstructivist Challenge’, International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4 (1998), pp. 855–85.

51 ‘Saudi Statement Says Saddam Alone is Responsible for Consequences of his Actions’,BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 22 January 1991.

52 Joseph Nye, Soft Power, p. 64.53 Ibid., p. 66.



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


long run. Frank Schimmelfennig, for instance, has highlighted in his work

the effects of ‘rhetorical entrapment’, whereby ‘even if community members

only use the standard of legitimacy opportunistically to advance their

self-interest, they can become entrapped by their arguments and obliged

to behave as if they had taken them seriously’.54 Rhetorical entrapment

works in three ways. First, states executing a particular policy to maintain

foreign backing might find themselves unwillingly bound to the initial rhet-

oric through which they justified the policy. The United States, for instance,

was not able simply to install a new, albeit friendly, dictator in Iraq, willing

to accord with its needs. Having justified the Iraq War as a necessary step to

spread democracy throughout the Middle East, the US government then

found itself constrained by the demands of elected Iraqi officials. Second,

to avoid revealing the self-interested basis of their claims, states are obliged

to follow similar norms of behaviour in related concurrent or ensuing situ-

ations. Schimmelfennig gives an account of how, having previously cham-

pioned the ideals of a liberal, European community, European Union

members found themselves forced to acquiesce to eastern enlargement.

Third, states are constrained from raising objections to the policies of

others justified on the basis of norms that they have in effect committed

to practicing. The actions of states under all three situations are limited by

the very arguments through which they originally expected to generate sup-

port for their own objectives. Crafting an ‘attractive’ foreign policy in the

short term, therefore, could effectively limit the room a state has to

manoeuvre.

In conclusion, this section highlights the methodological difficulties of

parsing out what constitutes attraction, given that both its indicator and

its effect—namely support for a given policy—are the same. Moreover, it

suggests that the ability to employ attraction (which seems in many ways to

signify legitimacy) to muster support for a foreign policy might also involve

significant tradeoffs. Soft power, therefore, might be a useful tool for pro-

moting a state’s foreign policy in one area, but could also limit it a state’s

freedom of political movement in others.

Review

As stated, the goal thus far has been to ask two questions. First, does the

behaviour that actors exhibit towards designated soft power resources sig-

nify attraction? Second, if attraction does exist, does it actually produce

favourable policy outcomes for states that enjoy its benefits? The

54 Frank Schimmelfennig, ‘The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action, andthe Eastern Enlargement of the European Union’, International Organization, Vol. 55, No.1 (2001), p. 65.

18 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


preliminary answers appear mixed at best. First, whether or not it is the

cultural elements of high and low culture goods or exchanges that make

them attractive is not apparent. Even if they are understood as generating

an attraction, there is still no clear link between this and support for a

particular state’s foreign policy. Second, as it pertains to political values,

soft power as an analytic category is in itself highly problematic, given the

fact it is interwoven with discursive struggles over political identity. What is

more, the desire to emulate another state’s perceived ‘political values’ does

not necessarily signify wholehearted backing of its foreign policy. There is an

important distinction between actors that ‘want what you want’ and that

‘want what you want them to want’. Finally, on the question of attraction

and how it relates to support for another state’s foreign policy, it is difficult

to disentangle evidence of attraction from its claimed outcome, which could

easily have other causes. Even if we accept that certain policies can theor-

etically be framed in ways that accentuate their attractiveness, the benefits of

such tactics are still not clear, because theoretical commitment can also

produce actual constraints in the longer term.

More broadly, however, the concept of attraction itself makes for an un-

wieldy theoretical tool. Nye’s writings present attraction as a psychological

mechanism, but the psychology behind it is missing. It is hence unclear

exactly what generates attraction, whether or not attraction takes different

forms or is transferable across categories, how attraction can be translated

into support, and how permanent an asset’s attraction actually is. Concisely

stated, attraction is a very ambiguous mechanism. As it stands, the concept

of attraction as articulated by Nye appears at best an imprecise basis for a

category of analysis.

Alternatives

The goal of this article is not to discredit the notion that alternatives to hard

power exist. The problem it highlights is the difficulty of defining the soft

power alternative as a category of analysis based on a mechanism of ‘at-

tractive power’. The question, therefore, is how to proceed. Some might

argue for a more intensive theorization of the concept of attraction. Such

a theory entails a more thorough explication of the psychological under-

pinnings of attraction; an outline of its different forms; specification of its

eliciting conditions, durability, and tangible effects; and ways to empirically

disentangle attraction from processes that have similar consequences. This

accomplished, there is still no guarantee that this mechanism is actually

capable of generating important empirical effects. The author believes

there is a simpler alternative. This article proposes preserving the basic in-

tuitions of the soft power approach—that there are pathways of influence



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


apart from military and economic power—but discarding the concept of

attraction. Nye identifies in his writings various possible sources of influ-

ence, such as institutions, reputations, and dissemination of information. It

is possible to extract and develop theories based on these sources, without

the need to assume the mechanism of attraction is at work. This, however,

requires disaggregating the notion of soft power into separate analytical

categories and abandoning the assumption that these mechanisms are uni-

fied by anything other than the fact that none is a type of hard power. In

other words, we should speak not of soft power, but ‘soft powers’, each with

distinct causal pathways and mechanisms.

The next section presents three preliminary proposals for categories of

analysis with clear, testable mechanisms that build upon the sources of in-

fluence Nye identifies. It is by no means an exhaustive list, and this article is

certainly not the first to propose disaggregating forms of power.55 The in-

tention is to provide brief illustrations of how we can forge more precise

categories of analysis out of the foundational material Nye provides without

invoking the ambiguous concept of attraction. Specifically, this article pro-

poses an examination of the categories of institutional power, reputational

power, and representational power.

Institutional Power

The role of institutions occupies a large body of international relations lit-

erature.56 Barnett and Duvall define institutional power as ‘preconstituted

actors exercising control over others indirectly through institutions’.57 This

definition encompasses all the ways in which state actors can indirectly,

often unintentionally, shape the behaviour of others over time and space.

This article, however, is interested in a more narrow definition. Specifically,

it defines institutional power as the options available to state actors

55 See, for instance, Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’,International Organization, Vol. 59, No. 1 (2005), pp. 39–75.

56 Stephen D. Krasner, ‘Regimes and the Limits of Realism: Regimes as AutonomousVariables’, International Organization, Vol. 36, No. 2 (1982), pp. 497–510; AndreasHasenclever, et al., ‘Integrating Theories of International Regimes’, Review ofInternational Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2000), pp. 3–33; Robert O. Keohane,‘International Institutions: Two Approaches’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 32,No. 4 (1988), pp. 379–96; Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation andDiscord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984);Martha Finnemore and Michael N. Barnett, ‘The Politics, Power and Pathologies ofInternational Organizations’, International Organization, Vol. 53, No. 4 (1999), pp. 699–732; Barbara Koremenos, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal, ‘The Rational Design ofInternational Institutions’, International Organization, Vol. 55, No. 4 (2001), pp. 761–99;For a good overview, see Beth A. Simmons and Lisa L. Martin, ‘InternationalOrganizations and Institutions’, in Walter Carlsnaes et al., eds., Handbook ofInternational Relations, (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2001), pp. 192–211.

57 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’, p. 51.

20 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


according to their membership and relative position within specific interna-

tional organizations which enable those states to exercise influence within

them. For example, the five permanent members of the United Nations

Security Council have institutional powers that non-P5 states do not, as

regards agenda-setting, authorizing international actions, and either legiti-

mizing or censuring the behaviour of others. This is not simply a function of

material power; there are significant variations in material capabilities

among the P5 states, and also rich, populous, nuclear-armed states that

do not enjoy permanent status. The status of permanent member hence

confers specific pathways of influence on a select few.

Outlining and testing the effects of institutional power is a straightforward

matter. If we take institutional position or membership as the independent

variable, we can then examine its effects on the dependent variable of foreign

policy success. Looking at states with different relative positions, either

within or outside institutions, enables us to produce variations on the inde-

pendent variable while controlling other factors. Coupling with this complex

process tracing to determine exactly what attributes of their institutional

status states are able to draw upon in pursuing their goals enables us to

identify exactly which institutional pathways generate influence.

Reputational Power

Much work has been done on the role of reputations in deterrent situ-

ations.58 This body of work has primarily been interested in the questions

of credibility of threat and reputations for belligerence.59 Comparatively less

research has been done on other types of reputation and their effects.60 A

reputation for being economically successful, for instance, might give a state

more of a say in the creation of development models. Being known as a

neutral broker could qualify a state to intercede as arbitrator in a conflict. A

reputation for giving aid might dispel suspicions that a state has exploitative

intentions. Reputations develop in complex ways and may not be simply a

58 For the classic treatment of this topic, see Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).

59 For more recent treatments, see Mark Crescenzi, ‘Reputation and Interstate Conflict’,American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 51, No. 2 (2007), pp. 382–96; Anne Sartori,‘The Might of the Pen: A Reputational Theory of Communication in InternationalDisputes’, International Organization, Vol. 56, No. 1 (2002), pp. 121–49; JohnathanMercer, Reputation in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996);Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 2005); Paul Huth, ‘Reputation and Deterrence: A Theoreticaland Empirical Assessment’, Security Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1997), pp. 72–99.

60 Important exceptions are: Michael Tomz, Reputation and International Cooperation:Sovereign Debt Across Three Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007);Peter van Ham, ‘The Rise of the Brand State: The Postmodern Politics of Image andReputation’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 5 (2001), pp. 2–6.



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


reflection of past behaviour of international actors.61 Nevertheless, the

images others have of a state actor influence the importance they attach

to its statements, the manner in which they interpret its actions, and the

predictions they make about future behaviour.62

Reputations as independent variables can be measured through polling,

focus groups or surveys. But we should be careful to clearly differentiate the

different types of state reputations. Popular evaluations of a state as simply

favourable or unfavourable reveal little of the criteria that actors rely upon

to form judgments about a said state’s reliability, intentions, credentials, and

expertise. Although a state may be despised in general, its officials might

retain influence by virtue of their perceived expertise in a particular area.

The term reputational power, therefore, highlights the manner in which

particular reputations provide states with issue-specific forms of influence.

Certain types of positive reputation might be evident in foreign policy out-

comes; others might not. In looking at the effects of reputations on the

dependent variable of certain foreign policy successes, it is necessary to be

precise about exactly how a state’s reputation informs others in ways that

shape their decisions. By clarifying the type of reputation involved we can

also be more exact in identifying the scope conditions under which certain

reputations affect outcomes.

Representational Power

Constructivists within international relations have devoted considerable

effort to analysing discourses that constitute identities and shape the choices

of actors. Janice Bially Mattern, in particular, has emphasized the role of

‘representational force’, whereby threats are ‘aimed at the victim’s subject-

ivity rather than physicality and are communicated not in reference to ma-

terial capabilities but through the way the author structures her narrative’.63

In other words, for Mattern, representational force aims to coerce others by

placing them in a discursive trap that forces them either to submit or to

surrender their subjectivity. For the purposes of this article, however, rep-

resentational power is defined in a more limited and concrete fashion as the

ability of states to frame issues, advance their own interpretations, and con-

sciously seek to shape the beliefs of others. Sources and tools of represen-

tational power include public diplomacy, propaganda and information

control.

61 Johnathan Mercer, Reputation in International Politics.62 Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1989).63 Janice Bially Mattern, ‘Why ‘Soft Power’ Isn’t So Soft: Representational Force and the

Sociolinguistic Construction of Attraction in World Politics’, Millennium, Vol. 33, No.3(2005), p. 602.

22 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


A state which possesses a high degree of representational power is better

able to spread internationally a message that both reflects its interests or

ideology and puts its spin on a given issue, but that also discredits alternative

interpretations. Representational power can overlap with reputational

power in a state’s efforts to promote a specific national image abroad, but

the two are not the same. Reputations come from multiple sources; con-

versely, representational power can be used to shape beliefs about things

other than reputations. States can employ representation power, for in-

stance, to advance the impression abroad that particular groups are terror-

ists as opposed to freedom fighters, that a given issue is scientific rather than

political, or that a state is a victim rather than a perpetrator. Successfully

perpetuating such frames of reference helps states in their efforts to shape

international debates to their advantage. Representational power can thus

be measured by comparing the message a state is attempting to propagate

with the degree to which its target audiences accept the way it is framed.

Likely variables relevant to the success of representational strategies include

access to resources through which state actors can disseminate their fram-

ings, adroit spin skills and the ability to delegitimize or block adversaries’

counter-rhetoric. Research on this form of power should show clear links

between the efforts of state actors and actual outcomes through close exam-

inations of along exactly which pathways states have successfully conveyed a

given message, and to what extent that message related to support for spe-

cific foreign policies.

Again, the three earlier examples of ‘soft powers’ are not purported to be

the last word on the subject. Rather, they are meant to illustrate alternatives

which capitalize on the basis Nye provides without resorting to the attrac-

tion mechanism. The causal pathways outlined here are specific, traceable

and denote clear mechanisms that serve as categories of analysis.

Conclusion

Understanding the various ways in which states achieve their aims is one of

the goals of international relations scholarship. The concept of soft power,

as articulated by Nye, has helped this endeavour by highlighting types of

influence other than the tools of military force and economic statecraft. Soft

power arguments powered by the so-called mechanism of attraction,

however, appear problematic. Although policy makers might welcome

such arguments, the concept of attraction does not form a suitable founda-

tion upon which to base a category of analysis.

This article therefore proposes that the idea of soft power be replaced with

a conceptualization of various soft powers rooted in different mechanisms

which operate through discrete pathways. The themes of institutions,



at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


reputation and the ability to advance particular representations all appear

in Nye’s work and the author believes that these offer possibilities as

departure points from whence to proceed. The sketches of institutional

power, reputation power, and representational power provided above are

intended as examples, but many other possibilities undoubtedly also exist.

Nye has identified a field of analysis, but much work remains to be done,

both theoretically and empirically, to specify the pathways which run

through it.

24 of 24 Todd Hall


at Bodleian L


Dow

nloaded from


Documents

An Unclear Attraction: A Critical Examination of Soft Power as an Analytical Category