Soft Power: dividing potential and actual

Soft power is one of the key concepts in political and international relations theory in the post-Cold War period. As pointed out by the author of this theory, Joseph Nye, soft power “is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies.” Soft power represents the alternative to hard power, which means military and economic capabilities. This concept emerged due to the demand of the new world order for the new sources of trust, transcendent values to underpin international society, which had previously been provided by ideological paradigms. The weakness of this theory, like all complex concepts, lies in the difficulty of measuring of its actual effects. This problem can be partially solved by using a composite index, as is done, for example, in The soft power 30 report. However, the effectiveness of soft power depends on the context of relations between states, and this aspect is not taken into account in this case. Since there are always two subjects in the transition to soft power - the source and the receiver of soft power - and since the receiver can vary significantly (economically, culturally, etc.), we cannot expect the same effect of soft power in different countries. To address this problem, the author proposes to divide soft power into two dimensions – potential and actual. In this theoretical framework, potential soft power manifests the virtues of a given state, but not particularly in relations to any state. Actual soft power is the outcome of potential soft power and can only be measured in relation to a given country. As a result, the gap between potential and actual soft power can be identified, allowing the impact of soft power to be articulated more accurately. And, as a consequence, it will allow decision-makers to manage and to adjust policy more effectively.