Joseph Nye defined soft power as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.” Empirical research on soft power concentrates mostly on public opinion surveys to measure the level of attraction, however these studies do not give accurate comparative picture. Due to the ambiguous nature of attraction, some scholars prefer focusing on the policy implications and concrete outcomes of soft power.
Favorability or attraction towards another country may be a consequence of a multiplicity of factors. As explained by Nye, political values, culture and foreign policy practices are key contributors of soft power. However none of these factors have proven causal links to the more concrete aspect of “soft power” or attraction. There is an overlap between the studies on soft power and national image.
In this study we took the analytical dimensions of country image as indicators of soft power in order to evaluate those variables. Three important indicators of national image are cognitive, affective and conative factors. Cognitive dimension is about beliefs of a country’s normative attribute economic, political performance; affective is about affection to country’s people and conative is about contact and interaction with the other. The cognitive dimension, or assessment of economic, political values and social system, is related to a shared value system and the assessment of good and bad/ success and failure.
To investigate whether cognitive, affective or conative dimensions of are more influential aspects affecting soft power, we conducted three original public opinion polls conducted in three multiethnic and multireligious states of the Middle East, namely Egypt, Iraq and Iran. The surveys have been conducted from early 2011 to early 2012 with about 1,100 individuals for each country. Using these three surveys in a multivariate analyses, we test our arguments above, finding support for some of them.
