soft power

soft power

English

Etymology

Coined by American political scientist Joseph Nye in the late 1980s and popularized in the 1990 book “Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power”.[1]

Noun

soft power (countable and uncountable, plural soft powers)

1. (politics) Political influence that is extended by means of diplomacy, media, international assistance, cultural exchanges, etc., rather than by such "hard" means as military intervention or punitive economic measures.
   • 1999 March 8, Joseph S. Nye Jr., "The Challenge of Soft Power," Time:

     Soft power is a country's cultural and ideological appeal. It is the ability to get desired outcomes through attraction instead of force.

   • 2007 May 23, Jim Yardley, "Blocked by U.S., China finds it own way to space," New York Times (retrieved 16 July 2011):

     The bank often provides the hard currency for Chinese soft power aspirations: In Africa, China ExIm has handed out more than $7 billion in loans in recent years.

   • 2011 Jan. 8, "More Indian cultural centres to showcase soft power: PM," Indiaweb123.com (retrieved 16 July 2011):

     India will set up cultural centres in five more countries to showcase its soft power and acquire a global footprint for its rich diversity, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here Saturday.

2. A state having this kind of power.

Translations

political influence that is extended by means of diplomacy, international assistance, cultural exchanges, etc.

Albanian: please add this translation if you can Armenian: please add this translation if you can Azerbaijani: yumşaq güc Belarusian: please add this translation if you can Chinese: Mandarin: 軟實力／软实力 (zh) (ruǎnshílì) Danish: blød magt c Esperanto: please add this translation if you can Estonian: please add this translation if you can Finnish: pehmeä valta French: soft power (fr) m, puissance douce f Georgian: რბილი ძალა (rbili ʒala) German: Soft Power f, weiche Macht f Hungarian: please add this translation if you can Indonesian: kekuatan lunak Japanese: ソフト・パワー (sofuto-pawā) Korean: please add this translation if you can Latvian: please add this translation if you can Lithuanian: please add this translation if you can Malay: kuasa lunak Polish: no equivalent term in Polish, but see siła (pl) f Portuguese: please add this translation if you can Romanian: please add this translation if you can Russian: мя́гкая си́ла (ru) f (mjáxkaja síla), мя́гкая власть f (mjáxkaja vlastʹ) Slovak: please add this translation if you can Spanish: poder blando m Turkish: please add this translation if you can Ukrainian: please add this translation if you can

See also

• hard power
• smart power
• sharp power

References

1. Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (1990) Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York: Basic Books, →ISBN

Further reading

• soft power on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• soft power at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• wetproofs