Soft Power

This research seeks to examine the rationale behind the ‘new’ Turkish foreign policy orientation in recent years. To this end, it argues that the Turkish foreign policy is readjusting itself to the changes in the international political structure. To prove this, it extrapolates the main underpinnings of Kenneth Waltz’s neorealist thinking and applies them to Turkish foreign policy behaviour. Further, it augments the explanatory power of the theories using insights from the soft power approach that Joseph Nye emphasized. With the theoretical framework provided, this research assesses the change and continuity patterns that the Turkish foreign policy demonstrated since the late 1990s.

"This paper presents the sources, characteristics and limitations of the PRC’s soft power. It also tries to answer the question what will be the future role of soft power in the foreign policy of the fifth generation of Chinese leaders. The paper puts the emphasis on the fact that soft power in the PRC is linked with Chinese characteristics. This means that the rich Chinese cultural and historical background should be taken into consideration in order to understand the motivations and objectives of Beijing’s policies.

The PRC promotes terms such as “harmonious world” and “peaceful development” as core parts of its foreign relations and tries to avoid “zero-sum game” with Western powers. In the paper it is also underlined that Chinese soft power depends on the internal condition of China, and not its international relations. Next, the paper briefly discusses the PRC’s engagement in Africa, South Asia and Latin America. It is stressed that most of these countries are interdependent and coupled with Chinese economic development. At the end, despite the existing limitations of Chinese soft power, the author considers the PRC’s soft power as of great potential due to the fact that it perfectly matches China’s needs. "

The landscape of political activation is changing by the economic crisis, while the roles of consumers are rolling into new formations and the market become a political space. This paper discusses the intersection of brands with national markets as well as the role of the social media landscape in facilitating top-down corporate messages and bottom-up civic reactions. It sets a framework for understanding the complicated relationship between the production and consumption of meaning in corporate attempts to undertake a social role through branding. Nation branding is the focus of emerging critical scholarship within the communications field where the product promoted is the nation, while branding the nation is a case where products are promoted through the notion of the nation. The case chosen is the 2012 Johnnie Walker advertisement in Greece, which was part of Diageo's global promotional campaign inspiring consumers to participate for progress. The campaign was designed to minimise traditional marketing costs for the company and produce a self-marketing platform where citizens could concurrently participate in 'inspiring one another' (ad motto) and the marketing of the whiskey. The campaign succeeded in pulling consumer interest by encouraging them to co-brand the product with national pride through social media. Branding the nation can contain the deliverance of an online brand platform which is intended to mine and mirror an image of the nation. In other words, a brand can host a digital venue where citizens can directly express their national identity. This exploration draws from a critical analysis of YouTube comments to map out responses to this type of strategy. These responses are highly contested. Within a national context stricken by an economic and financial crisis, a body of two-minded responses emerges; on the one hand citizens are receptive and accepting of the positive attention granted from a global corporate brand, while on the other, they are expressing resistance to national commodification. This paper highlights three main points. Firstly, the marketing strategies of corporations are increasingly and perilously adopting a vernacular familiar to democratic institutions and agents. Diageo is performing the role of global citizen in so far as it plays a role as mediator of social progress through its branding strategies. Secondly, the reception of these corporate messages by the broader audiences is critical in understanding how acceptance or resistance to a corporate rhetoric coexists with various political, economic, social and cultural contexts. This is part of a wider shift in research which needs to evaluate the changing dynamics of agency from national and international political institutions to global commercial institutions. Thirdly, the role of social media within such a context demands critical attention. This paper homes in on YouTube as the main platform of exchange between the brand and the sum of citizens who responded to it and it attempts to explore the role of social media in accommodating corporate messages and facilitating civic deliberation in terms of architecture, affordances, limitations, while reflecting the Greek political fragmentation.

Adoptée en 2005 et entrée en vigueur en 2007, la Convention sur la diversité des expressions culturelles (CDEC) se veut un mécanisme international de régulation de l’interface « commerce-culture ». Il s’avère que la construction de la CDEC ne s’arrête pas avec sa ratification, puisque celle-ci doit se confronter à la réalité à travers l’application de ses dispositions, le respect de ses prescriptions, ainsi que l’existence de moyens qui permettront de la concrétiser. Partant de l’hypothèse qu’il y a un décalage entre les normes prescrites par un instrument international et leurs résultats concrets, nous offrons une cartographie de la question « commerce-culture », se consacrant aux enjeux juridiques et politiques de la mise en œuvre de la CDEC. En ce sens, favorisant une sociologie politique de la mise en œuvre, nous cherchons à nous interroger sur la problématique du changement provoqué par la CDEC dans les pratiques des acteurs impliqués.

This article examines Russian foreign policy towards the “Russian diaspora”. It will be shown that Russian efforts to utilize its diaspora for its own geopolitical ends have come to little. Instead the main successes of Russian compatriot policy have been in cementing its own domestic identity and in placating calls for imperial expansionism from within Russia. To this end, it will be argued that Russia’s soft engagement with its “compatriots” in the Baltic states serves an important domestic function for the Russian authorities while doing little to undermine the internal stability and sovereignty of the Baltic states.  In fact, it is argued that Russia’s application of soft power in the region acts as a pressure valve, tempering Russian imperialism by creating the illusion of meaningful Russian influence.

The article develops two simultaneous arguments; one is theoretical, and the other is analytic. The theoretical argument is based on an assessment of the utility of the concept of “soft power” in comparison to the Gramscian concept of hegemony in understanding the developments in the recent regional power games in the geographical area consisting of Eastern Europe and the near and Middle East. The analytic argument examines the popularity of Turkish soap operas, both among a cross-cultural audience and within the wider context of cultural, economic, and political influences, and in so doing, it points out challenges and limits for Turkey’s regional power.

The paper examines the critical role of global sport within Qatar’s international strategy, most notably through the successful bid to stage the 2022 football World Cup finals. Our research draws particularly on interviews with key stakeholders in the Qatari sport system, as well as fieldwork in Qatar, and analysis of relevant documents and secondary materials. Our discussion is separated into three main parts. First, we set out our theoretical framework, which draws on the concepts of globalization and soft power; to assist analysis of Qatar’s engagement with global sport we introduce the two further concepts of ‘glocal consciousness’ and ‘soft disempowerment’. Second, with reference to these theoretical tools, we discuss three key themes that emerged mainly from our interviews on Qatar and global sport: exhibiting Qatar’s supremacies as a microstate; the pursuit of peace, security and integrity; and confronting national health crises. Third, we explore issues of soft disempowerment and reputational risk with regard to these three themes and in particular critical international comment surrounding Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup. We conclude by arguing that Qatar’s soft disempowerment, although damaging in the short-term, leaves the door open for the state to respond in a positive manner, regenerating its soft power capabilities in the process.

The evolution of diplomacy has often been driven by technological innovation and progress, which provide new media for communication and information transfer. The advent and diffusion of new ICTs has, similarly, resulted in a revolution in the conceptualization and practice of diplomacy. The US has been a pioneer and a leader in the use of the new ICTs in its diplomatic conduct, but the practice has spread far beyond, particularly in the past several years. Yet, the academic discussions of digital diplomacy still focus primarily on the US and Western Europe. This paper begins with the examination of the new digital public diplomacy and its development in the US, and provides a broad overview of how the idea and the adoption of these tools have spread to other parts of the world, as well. It then focuses on the case of Russia, examining how the ideas and principles involved are being adopted, localized, and often reinterpreted as they are translated into the Russian context.

"This book aims to fill gaps between a set of critical literatures on what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls "the hyper-real 'Europe'" coloniality, empire and colonialism, the historical sociology of state making and supra-state public authority, geopolitics, global governance and world-systems analysis in the tradition of Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi and Christopher K. Chase-Dunn.

_The EU and Global Social Change_ offers a macrohistorical-sociological answer to the question of just what the European Union is, in the context of the ongoing structural transformation of the global system. The author develops an integrated approach to global transformations to discuss how this supra-state organisation, that shares and pools the sovereignty of some of the wealthiest states of the modern world, makes sense. The book:

. Interprets the ongoing transformation of west European public authority in the context of the global geopolitical economy of competition, cooperation and conflict

. Examines the consequences of west European integration for the global system in a longue-durée perspective, developing a new, geopolitical dialect within world-systems analysis, sharpening some of the conceptual tools developed by its paradigm-setters.

. Develops a new conceptualization for the EU’s global geopolitical strategy, which the author describes this strategy as the elasticity of size.

Developing a deeper understanding of global social change and west European strategies of global advantage-maintenance and power-management, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of European Politics, International Politics, International Relations Theory and Globalization Studies."