Archive for the ‘International Relations’ Category


Public Diplomacies and the Pathologies of Liberal Statecraft

March 29, 2017






Hard vs Soft Power as Metaphor

March 30, 2016









Locating Public Diplomacy in International Relations

April 14, 2015









Why I’m a Network Realist

April 16, 2013





Two things that I wouldn’t take from realism




Why Doesn’t International Relations Pay More Attention to Public Diplomacy?

March 21, 2013











Is Soft Power Fungible?

March 6, 2013

If you steep yourself in the theoretical debates about power in International Relations (my advice is not to do this) you will come across the question of fungibility (eg Baldwin 1979).  In crude terms is power like money?  If I’ve got money I can buy a loaf of bread  or a book using the same resource.  Can a ‘powerful’ actor achieve its goals across different issue areas using the same resources?  The very fact of raising the question suggests a suspicion that the answer is no.

Interestingly enough in his pre soft power days Joe Nye also points in this direction in Power and Interdependence (1977).  The basic thrust of that book was that you should recognize that power resources differ across issue areas.  Switzerland may have clout in the banking field (because of its banks)  but not in the regime for oceans (landlocked).   While it may be possible to leverage different power resources through clever diplomacy, by linking different issue areas together, the overall thrust is that power is non-fungible.  It would then follow that a state can be judged to be ‘powerful’ if it could draw on resources across multiple issue areas or a spectacular array of resources in a few.

But if conventional power resources aren’t fungible what about soft power? This struck me In reading Nakano Yoshiko’s contribution to the Soft Power Superpowers collection.  Nakano’s essay looks at the reception of Japanese popular culture in China. Her finding is that Chinese consumers are gaining a more complex and nuanced picture of Japan and seeing aspects of its culture as worthy of imitation but do not connect this with  their political image and attitude towards the country.  It can be added that the political attitudes have consequence for other relationships as in the effect of the  dispute over the Pinnacle Islands* on sales of Japanese cars in China.

Where does this lead us?  Probably towards the realization that soft power is probably even more fragmented than conventional power resources.  Analytically we need to think about the composition of a country’s soft power resources (How much? Are the concentrated in one or a few areas? Who do can they influence?) rather than seeing soft power as a unity.  I suspect that doing this kind of analysis will have a rather deflationary effect on estimates of national soft power.  ‘Some soft power resources will allow you to have some influence on some publics some of the time’?


Baldwin, D.A. (1979) ‘Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies’, World Politics, 31: 161–194.

Keohane, R.O., and J.S. Nye (1977) Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.

Yoshiko, N. (2008) ‘Shared Memories: Japanese Pop Culture in China’, pp. 111–127 in Y. Watanabe and D.L. McConnell (eds) Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

*This is what those islands that China and Japan can’t agree about were called on 19th c. British naval charts


EH Carr and the Realist Theory of Propaganda

November 28, 2011

I ‘accidentally’ bought a pamphlet by EH Carr, Propaganda in International Politics published in 1939 without realizing that this this was actually extracted from the first (1939) edition of The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919-1939.* Generations of International Relations students have read the second (1946) edition as one of the founding texts of realist international relations theory.  I remember being told as an undergraduate the chief difference the two editions was that in 1939 Hitler was still ‘Herr Hitler’ but from a quick comparison between the pamphlet and my copy of the second edition Carr seems to have toned down how he expresses his argument even if the basic direction remains unchanged.

Carr argues for the close association between ‘power over opinion’ and military and economic power.  The impact of ideas is tied to their promotion by states  – which in turn reflects interests.  Carr is dismissive of the power of ideas that are not supported by states.  For him the failure of the League of Nations and its belief in the power of ‘international public opinion’ is the ‘best modern illustration’  of the fact that propaganda ‘is ineffective as a political force until it acquires a national home and becomes linked with military and economic power’.

It is an illusion to suppose that if Great Britain (or Germany or Soviet Russia) were disarmed or militarily weak, British (or German or Soviet) propaganda might still be effective in virtue of the inherent excellence of its content.

The almost universal belief in the merits of democracy which spread over the world in 1918 was due less to the inherent excellence of democracy or of  the propaganda on its behalf than to the victory of the Allied armies and the Allied blockade.  Had the Bolshevik regime collapsed in 1919, far fewer people would today be convinced of the merits of Marxism.  If Germany is defeated in the present war, little more will be heard of the ideological merits of National Socialism.

But this isn’t the whole story

Propaganda to be successful must appeal to some universally or generally recognized values….Every country seeks to place its policy on an ethical basis, even if this can only be done by asserting that it has a historical mission to rule over inferior races for their own good.  Whatever the policy the need to clothe it in some altruistic guise is universally felt.

No national policy is disinterested, and no country can justly identify its own welfare with the welfare of the world as a whole. But some countries in the pursuit of their ends show more consideration than others for the rights and interests of the rest of the world.  In so far as they do so, they are entitled to claim that their policy is more moral: and their international propaganda, resting on this basis is likely to prove  more effective than that of their rivals

Three  thoughts:

What struck me in reading this was the question of the extent to which ‘power over opinion’ can be thought of as being an autonomous source of influence in international politics.  Carr is concerned to attack the idea that public opinion operates independently of other sources of power but at the same time he does recognize that ‘power over opinion’ has some force distinct from military or economic power.

Seventy years later can we argue that power of opinion has become more autonomous?  The standard view is that political change and a new media environment has produced this effect.  On the other hand I think that it would be a mistake to overstate the autonomy of power over opinion from other factors.   We wouldn’t be debating ‘Chinese  soft power’ if the Chinese economy was not as large as it is. The ability of the EU or the US to effectively promote its ideas will not be helped by the reality and perception of decline.

As with most writing from International Relations on propaganda or public diplomacy Carr is actually vague on the mechanisms by which power over opinion operates.

In a later post I’ll raise the question of what public diplomacy studies can learn from realism.

*Fortunately I only paid £3 (but the original price of the pamphlet was 3 pre-decimal pennies , there were 240 old pennies to the pound so ignoring inflation I paid 240 times the original price….)

Carr, E.H. (1939) Propaganda in International Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Carr, E.H. (1946) The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan.