Alternative Paths to Influence

Soft Power and International Politics

Giulio M. Gallarotti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032463018
• eBook ISBN: 9781000887297
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction—Esteem and influence: soft power in international politics
• 1 The crisis of American soft power
• 2 The Smithsonian’s soft power: how foreigners engage the US national museum
• 3 Soft power’s dark side
• 4 From circulating liberalism to tech nationalism: U.S. soft power and Silicon Valley
• 5 The impact of Russian soft power in Kazakhstan: creating an enabling environment for cooperation between Nur-Sultan and Moscow
• 6 Pedagogical offensives: soft power, higher education and foreign policy
• 7 Impact of environmental quality indicators on soft power: a few empirical estimates
• 8 Testing the impact of geopolitics on European democratic countries’ soft power use
• 9 In search of soft power: mapping the expert community with a bibliometric network analysis
• Index