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Taking Soft Power Seriously

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DOI: 10.1080/01495933.2010.520986

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Taking Soft Power Seriously

Matthew Kroeniga; Melissa McAdamb; Steven Weberc
a
Department of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA b Department of Political
Science, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA c Information School, University
of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA

Online publication date: 13 December 2010

To cite this Article Kroenig, Matthew , McAdam, Melissa and Weber, Steven(2010) 'Taking Soft Power Seriously',
Comparative Strategy, 29: 5, 412 — 431
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 Taking Soft Power Seriously

MATTHEW KROENIG
Department of Government
Georgetown University
Washington, DC, USA

MELISSA McADAM
Department of Political Science
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, USA

STEVEN WEBER
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Information School
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, USA

The term soft power is entrenched in the theory and practice of American foreign policy,
yet scholars have not yet developed, or empirically tested, a theory about the conditions
under which governments can use soft power to their advantage—and that makes good
policy hard to design. Drawing on research from the fields of communications, social
psychology, and international relations theory, we develop a theory about the conditions
under which state efforts to employ soft power will be most likely to succeed. We argue
that to apply soft power effectively states must communicate to an intended target
in a functioning marketplace of ideas, persuade the target to change its attitude on
a relevant political issue, and ensure that the target’s newly held attitude influences
international political outcomes. We probe the plausibility of our theoretical claims
through an examination of U.S. attempts to use soft power in the Iraq War, the war
on terror, and democracy promotion. In conclusion, we set forth an agenda for future
research on soft power and provide insights for policymakers interested in using soft
power as a tool of foreign policy.

In his 1990 book Bound to Lead, Joseph Nye introduced the concept of “soft power.”1
According to Nye, soft power is “getting others to want the outcomes that you want.”2
Unlike hard power that encourages changes in behavior through either inducements or
threats, Nye argues that soft power “comes from attraction.”3 Relevant hard-power resources
include military and economic might, but the soft power of a country “rests primarily on
three sources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when
it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as
legitimate and having moral authority).”4 Nye argues that the culture, values, and policies
of the United States, in particular, have historically been very attractive to the rest of the
world and that this has provided the United States with a reservoir of soft power that it
For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article, the authors would like to thank Celeste
Arrington, Naaz Barma, Brent Durbin, Peter Katzenstein, David Patel, Ely Ratner, Jacob Shapiro,
and the participants in the American Soft Power Panel at the 2008 International Studies Association
annual meeting held in San Francisco, California.

412
Comparative Strategy, 29:412–431, 2010
Copyright © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
0149-5933 print / 1521-0448 online
DOI: 10.1080/01495933.2010.520986
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 413

can use to achieve its goals without resorting to bribery or coercion.5 Nye cites numerous
cases, including the fall of the Soviet Union, as examples in which the United States used
soft power to its advantage.6
Nye’s claims about the importance of soft power have had an enormous impact on
the theory and practice of American foreign policy. Scholars have adopted the concept in
their academic writings, pundits have advocated that the United States use more or less soft
power in its mix of foreign policy strategies, analysts have attempted to size up the soft
power of other states, and policymakers have pursued policies that assume that soft power
is an important force in international politics.7
Yet this is all taking place without any real agreement on what soft power actually
means, precisely how it works, and what it takes to deploy it effectively. While there is a
voluminous literature on soft power, scholars have not articulated, in a practical sense, how
governments can use soft power to their advantage, nor have they theorized the conditions
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under which soft power campaigns will be most likely to succeed.8

In this article, we develop a theory about the conditions under which governmental
efforts to employ soft power will be most likely to succeed. We define a state effort to
employ soft power as a coordinated government attempt to convince other actors to do
what they otherwise would not do by using instruments that do not directly affect the
others’ material incentive structure.9 In other words, states exercise soft power when they
use nonmaterial means to achieve specific foreign policy objectives. It is of course the case
that states do not control some resources, such as national culture, that are thought to be
an important part of the broader definitions of soft power and could be resources in a soft
power strategy. For this reason, recommendations for governments to use more or less soft
power in their foreign policy portfolios are at odds with expansive notions of soft power
that include resources governments cannot readily control.10 We invite others to analyze in
future research the more expansive notions of soft power.
In this piece, we analyze government efforts to employ soft power to achieve specific
foreign policy goals. This research question is most amenable to political analysis and
promises to provide useful policy recommendations.
Drawing on research from the fields of communications, social psychology, and inter-
national relations theory, we argue that there are a number of steps that intervene between
a state’s effort to exercise soft power and an improvement in its foreign policy environ-
ment. To apply soft power effectively states must: communicate to an intended target in a
functioning marketplace of ideas, persuade the target to change its attitude on a relevant
political issue, and ensure that the target’s newly held attitude influences international po-
litical outcomes. Each of these conditions is necessary, but when taken together may or
may not be sufficient for a state to effectively employ soft power.
We probe the plausibility of our theoretical claims against evidence from U.S. attempts
to use soft power in the post-9/11 era. This preliminary empirical investigation lends
plausibility to our theoretical claims. The absence of soft power’s three preconditions
contributed to the United States’ failure to win hearts and minds in Iraq and to counter
ideological support for terrorism, but their presence helped Washington promote democracy
in the postcommunist region.
The findings of this article have important implications for scholarly research and
U.S. foreign policy. Although “power” is still a contested concept, scholars have invested
enormous effort in developing theories of how to deploy hard power in the service of state
interests. If soft power is even a fraction as important as hard power is, or could be, then
it seems straightforward that scholars should invest real effort in developing analogous
theories of soft power. As a partial move in that direction, we provide a set of criteria for
 414 M. Kroenig, M. McAdam, and S. Weber

determining the types of policy problems that states may be able to successfully address
using soft power strategies.
In the next section, we present a theory about the conditions under which state soft
power campaigns will be most likely to succeed. We then analyze three U.S. government
efforts to employ soft power—the Iraq War, the war on terror, and democracy promotion—to
assess the plausibility of our theoretical model. Finally, in the concluding section, we
highlight implications of our argument for international relations theory and U.S. foreign
policy.

Toward a Theory of Soft Power

In this section, we develop a theory about the conditions under which states will best
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be able to apply soft power to achieve specific foreign policy objectives. We argue that
there are a number of hurdles that intervene between a state’s attempt to wield soft power
and its ability to achieve its desired outcomes in international politics. If soft power is
an important force in international politics, and if states are to wield soft power as a tool
of diplomacy, then there are three preconditions that should characterize the environment
in which states operate. First, states must be able to communicate to the intended target
in something approximating a functioning marketplace of ideas. Second, the attitudes of
the relevant target must be subject to influence and change. Third, the attitudes of the
target must have causal impact on an outcome in international politics that promotes the
interests of the state attempting to wield soft power. We argue that each of these three
conditions are necessary, but may not be sufficient, for a state to effectively employ soft
power.

Marketplace of Ideas
If states are to shape the preferences of an international audience, or target, then they must
be able to interact with that target in something that functions like a marketplace of ideas.
It is only in such a marketplace that the wielder of soft power or the “sender” can shape the
preferences of others. At the other extreme, if the target is never exposed to the sender’s
message, then it obviously cannot be influenced by it. If the target is exposed to the sender’s
message only in a context that systematically portrays the message as unattractive, and the
sender has no opportunity to correct that bias, it will also be unlikely that the target will
adjust its preferences to the advantage of the potential wielder of soft power.
The sine qua non of a functioning economic marketplace is competition. A functioning
marketplace of ideas also requires competition. There is market failure when the com-
petition of ideas breaks down, undermining efforts to deploy soft power. When national
governments attempt to control the content of information flows to, and within, their soci-
eties, they can exert a systematic influence on the beliefs of their people, masses and elites
alike. Governments shape the messages received by their populace for reasons of domestic
legitimacy and regime survival, but the sometimes unintended consequence is undermining
the soft power of other states. This can be done as authoritarian states selectively permit
information from abroad to enter. This can also be done through official government pro-
paganda that intentionally seeks to tarnish the policies, culture, and values of other states.
In such an environment, the competition of ideas takes place on an uneven playing field
and it will be more difficult for the disadvantaged states to exercise soft power.
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 415

In sum, states wishing to exercise soft power will be more successful in an environment
with a functioning marketplace of ideas. In case of market failure due to government
censorship, or other barriers, steps to overcome the market failure may be necessary before
soft power can be effectively exercised.

Attitude Change
Assuming that a potential wielder of soft power is able to effectively communicate its mes-
sage to an intended target, its work is not yet done. In order to influence the target, at a bare
minimum, the message must result in a change of attitude. Psychological research suggests
that changing strongly held attitudes is most likely to occur under certain conditions.
An attitude is defined as “a general and enduring positive or negative feeling about
some person, object, or issue.”11 Persuasion is “any instance in which an active attempt is
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made to change a person’s mind.”12 According to psychological research, the probability

of attitude change is determined by three factors—the source of the message, the content of
the message, and the recipient of the message.13 When a source is credible and attractive, a
message is repeated and contains emotional content, and the target is in a receptive mood,
attitudinal change is more likely.14
Persuasion is more likely to be successful if the recipient of the message deems the
source to be credible and attractive.15 Credible sources are identified as those that are expert
and trustworthy.16 Research shows that the trustworthiness of a source is undermined if
the source has a direct stake in the matter at hand, especially when the source promotes
a position that clearly furthers his or her own interests.17 Because of this, independent,
third-party sources are often better able to convey a credible message.
Attractive sources are also persuasive because research shows that people want to
please sources that they like.18 There may be limits, however, to the persuasive power of
beauty when it comes to substantial political issues. Experimental research has found that
messages delivered by an attractive woman are more likely to encourage a change in attitude
on trivial issues, such as switching toothpaste.19 In short, expert, trustworthy, and attractive
sources are more credible, and thus more persuasive, than nonexpert, untrustworthy, and/or
unattractive sources.
The message itself, in particular its frequency and content, is also an important factor in
determining the effectiveness of persuasion. Repetition of a message enhances comprehen-
sion and retention. The more often the target of an intended message receives the message,
the more likely it is that he or she will remember it.20 Yet at a certain point, repeated presen-
tations of a persuasive message decrease attitude change while simultaneously increasing
retention.21 The content of a message also matters. Messages that arouse or reduce strongly
felt emotions such as fear are more likely to be retained.22
Finally, factors associated with the messages’ intended target also determine the degree
to which the recipient will internalize the message. People who have low self-esteem are
most likely to be influenced by persuasive communication.23 The target’s experience prior
to receiving a message also matters. People in a good mood are more open to persuasion.24
For example, experiments show that people eating delectable foods while reading a message
are more likely to be receptive to that message.25
The implications of the psychological literature on attitudinal change for soft power
are complicated and cannot be ignored. States seeking to shape the preferences of other
actors will be more effective insofar as their efforts are consistent with basic psychological
laws of attitude change. State efforts to apply soft power are more likely to meet with
success when they communicate through credible and attractive sources, deliver a repeated
 416 M. Kroenig, M. McAdam, and S. Weber

message that speaks to the recipient at an emotional level, and target recipients that are
open to communication.

Attitudes and Foreign Policy

Even if a state is successful in effectively communicating a message in a marketplace of
ideas and in changing the attitudes of its target audience, the state will not have applied
soft power effectively if the new attitude does not result in a noticeable improvement in the
state’s international political environment. Any theory of soft power necessarily assumes
that attitudes held by individuals play a central causal role in determining political behavior
and that the behavior of these individuals can shape relevant international outcomes. There
are reasons to believe, however, that the attitudes of individuals may have a decisive impact
on international political outcomes only under certain conditions. Individuals may not be
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in a position to influence international political outcomes themselves and, even if they are,
structural and material forces compete with and shape individual attitudes as a driver of
international political outcomes. States will be better able to exercise soft power when they
target relevant political actors and when the attitudes held by these actors are not challenged
by competing material forces.
The application of soft power is more likely to succeed when the target of the soft
power campaign is in a position to shape international political outcomes. According to
some international relations scholars, individuals are rarely in such a position.26 There are,
however, certain types of individuals and certain types of issue areas in which individuals
may have a greater ability to shape political outcomes, depending on the type of state in
which they reside. In most states, elites have a greater voice in influencing their state’s
foreign policy than does the average citizen. In open polities, the voice of the average
citizen may count for more in shaping his or her state’s foreign policy than in a state ruled
by an authoritarian regime. In a few select issue areas, such as terrorism, insurgency, or
civil war, the individual is an important political actor in his or her own right. A soft power
campaign directed at these politically relevant actors is more likely to be effective than a
campaign that targets actors that are unlikely to have any role in shaping national foreign
policies, or in directly acting in an international political context.
Even if a wielder of soft power is successful at changing the attitude of a relevant
political actor, however, individual attitudes may still be overwhelmed by material and
structural factors in driving international political outcomes. If the message of the soft
power campaign clashes with material interests of the target audience, whether that target
is a state or a substate actor, it is less likely that the attitude will shape the target’s political
behavior. If, on the other hand, the message expressed in the soft power campaign is
consistent, or at least not in direct conflict, with the target’s core material interests, or if the
target does not possess a clear understanding of its core material interests, the soft power
campaign stands a greater chance of success.
In sum, we propose that attitude change will be more likely to result in a change in
the international political environment when states target relevant political actors and when
the message of the soft power campaign does not conflict with the target audience’s core
material interests.

Summary: A Theory of Soft Power

Drawing on previous research from the fields of communications, psychology, and interna-
tional relations theory, this section described the path by which soft power operates. States
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 417

will be better able to apply soft power when three conditions are present—1) the intended
target exists in a functioning marketplace of ideas, 2) the state can communicate through a
credible source that can deliver a repeated message that speaks to recipients at an emotional
level and the target is open to communication, 3) the political environment is such that
individual attitudes have an impact. These conditions are fairly restrictive and suggest that
the scope for the successful application of soft power in international politics may be more
limited than is generally thought.

Soft Power in Practice

To probe the plausibility of this theory of soft power, we examine soft power campaigns
waged by the United States in the post 9/11 era under the leadership of President George
W. Bush: winning hearts and minds in Iraq, countering ideological support for terrorism,
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and democracy promotion in the postcommunist region.

The selection of these three cases offers an important advantage for our research
question and hypotheses. By selecting cases from a single state, at a delimited point in
time, simultaneously engaged in a number of soft power campaigns, we control roughly for
the aggregate soft power resources of the state and other potentially confounding factors
related to the state (including its leadership) and the historical time period. This allows us
to examine how changes in the hypothesized conditions influences the probability that a
soft power campaign will succeed. If, in these cases, the United States experienced varying
degrees of success, and this variation was due in part to the conditions we identify above,
we will have found some support for our argument.
We study what are arguably the three most prominent soft power campaigns directed
at particular audiences and aimed at defined outcomes that the United States has conducted
since 9/11.27 It is possible that some soft power campaigns succeed and others fail because
the government devoted more attention and resources to some soft power campaigns than to
others. By focusing only on the most important soft power campaigns, we can increase our
confidence that any difference in outcomes can be explained by the conditions we identify,
and that those differences are not primarily the result of different levels of government
effort or the commitment of resources.
We also recognize that focusing on a single presidential administration in a single
country limits our ability to generalize our findings. It may very well be the case that
other countries, or other U.S. presidential administrations, apply soft power more or less
effectively than did the George W. Bush administration. Therefore, this research design
does not allow us to draw any definitive conclusions on the overall effectiveness of soft
power strategies.
We examine carefully the effectiveness of the U.S. soft power campaigns in each of
these cases through the lens of our theoretical argument. We seek to understand the degree to
which the U.S. soft power campaign had an effect in each of these cases. We do not contend
that a soft power story can definitively explain lack of support for the U.S. occupation in
Iraq, the strength of international terrorist ideology, and successful democratization in a
single article. Many factors other than the application of U.S. soft power helped to generate
the observed outcomes in each case. Our goal is a more modest one, to assess the impact,
if any, produced by the U.S. soft power campaign in each policy domain.
States often apply hard power and soft power in tandem. In the analysis of soft power
campaigns that follow we seek to isolate and evaluate the effectiveness of the soft power
campaign in isolation. We measure the success or failure of the U.S. soft power campaigns
in each of these cases by examining the goals of the campaign as stated by the U.S.
 418 M. Kroenig, M. McAdam, and S. Weber

government. When we find evidence that a U.S. soft power campaign made noticeable
progress toward its stated goals, the case is scored as a soft power success. On the other
hand, when we find that the U.S. soft power campaign failed to make evident progress
toward its stated goals, the case is scored as a failure.

Iraq War
In the Iraq War, the United States set out to use soft power to win the hearts and minds of
the Iraqi public. Despite a concerted effort, the United States failed in this objective and
a vast majority of Iraqis turned against the U.S.-led occupation. We argue that this failure
was the result of an environment that was not conducive to the application of soft power.
While Iraq did contain a functioning marketplace of ideas, the United States was unable to
persuade Iraqis because the United States lacked credibility as a messenger. Moreover, the
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U.S. occupation clashed with the core material interests of the Iraqi people.
The importance of winning hearts and minds was evident in government rhetoric and
action.28 The U.S. government took a number of concrete steps designed to gain the approval
of the Iraqi people. The U.S. military launched an information campaign that included the
writing and planting of media stories chronicling the good that the U.S. occupation was
doing for Iraqi society.29 The U.S. Army’s National Training Center in California was
transformed from holding Cold War–style tank-on-tank war games to hosting mock Iraqi
villages that provided soldiers experience in mingling with and winning over a civilian
population.30 Most importantly, in 2007 the United States “surged” the number of U.S.
forces in Iraq to better provide population security as dictated by a new counterterrorism
strategy.
Despite a clear recognition of the importance of soft power in Iraq, and a concerted
effort to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi public, the United States failed. In the years
following the U.S. invasion, Iraqi popular approval of the U.S. military occupation steadily
declined. In a 2008 poll, for example, 61 percent of Iraqis said that the presence of U.S.
forces provoked more violence than it prevented.31 Support for attacks against U.S. troops
increased from 47 percent in January 2006 to 61 percent in June 2006.32 And finally, of
Iraqis who said that the country is moving in the wrong direction, 32 percent cited the
presence of the occupation as a reason in June 2006, up from 17 percent in September
2005.33 Not even the U.S.’s new counterinsurgency policy in 2006 and the associated surge
in the level of U.S. forces in Iraq in 2007 succeeded in winning over the Iraqi population.
Only 26 percent of Iraqis agreed that the surge had succeeded, and over half said that it had
made the security situation in Iraq worse.34 In short, in the face of a concerted U.S. effort
to win over the Iraqi people, Iraqi public opinion on the U.S. mission in Iraq deteriorated
over time.
Why did the United States fail to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi public?35
The answer is that the conditions for the application of soft power were never in place in
the Iraqi case. The United States was able to communicate in something approximating
a functioning marketplace of ideas in Iraq, but it was unable to exert soft power because
conditions were not conducive to persuasion, and because the message of the U.S. soft
power campaign clashed with the core interests of the Iraqi people.
The U.S. effort to apply soft power in Iraq was able to access a fairly robust marketplace
of ideas. Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraq was exposed, for the
first time in decades, to a relatively open media and freewheeling political debate. Iraqis
suddenly had a choice among newspapers. The number of available print media proliferated
from a few tightly-controlled outlets prior to the invasion to more than 100 newspapers
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 419

and magazines that were made available within years in Baghdad.36 Iraqis were also able
to gain access to satellite television and foreign news services including Al Jazeera, Al
Arabiya, CNN, and the BBC.37 By 2007, seventy percent of Iraqis had satellite television
in their homes.38 The evidence suggests that mainstream Iraqis had fairly open access to a
range of ideas in the post-invasion environment.
The United States actively attempted to compete in this marketplace of ideas. U.S.
civilian and military leaders appeared on television and radio speaking about the benign
intentions and potential benefits of the U.S. occupation.39 Iraqi leaders themselves spoke
out in public on behalf of the U.S. occupation.40 This was, however, a marketplace, not
a monopoly, of ideas and many others denounced the U.S. role in Iraq. Foreign officials,
members of the Iraqi government, Shiite clerics, al Qaeda leaders, opposition groups in
the United States, and others publicly accused the United States of being a self-interested
imperial power and urged an immediate transfer of sovereignty to Iraq and the redeployment
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of U.S. forces.41 The Iraqi population had a range of products from which to choose in this
new ideational marketplace.
While the United States was able to compete in the marketplace of ideas, the circum-
stances were not conducive to persuasion. Research has shown that self-interested actors
make less credible messengers, and the United States had clearly self-interested motivations
to convince the Iraqi public of the benefits of U.S. occupation. Iraqis were skeptical of U.S.
messages from the beginning of the occupation. According to one Iraqi educator, speaking
in the summer of 2004, the Iraqis “just don’t believe the Americans anymore.”42 Even
attempts to conceal the American hand were largely unsuccessful. The fact that the U.S.
was writing media content for an Iraqi audience was revealed in a New York Times exposé.
The story was met with “shrugs” in Baghdad, where people were already “skeptical about
the media.”43 The absence of independent, third-party sources of the message that the U.S.
occupation was beneficial to Iraq was striking and had a significant impact on Iraqis’ lack
of support for the occupation.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the U.S. efforts to use soft power to win hearts
and minds in Iraq also failed because support for the U.S.-led occupation clashed with the
core material interests of the Iraqi population. Simply put, the U.S. occupation was in direct
conflict with Iraq’s core material interest of regaining control of its lost sovereignty.
Successful occupations are characterized by and are partly a result of a significant
external security threat shared by both the occupied population and the occupying power.44
In the Iraq case, the United States could not claim to be defending Iraq from an even
greater foreign threat, and the Iraqi population was not convinced that a long-term U.S.
military presence was necessary. As a result, and as the polling data show, the Iraqi people
were hostile to U.S. forces from the beginning of the occupation and their resistance only
increased as the U.S. military presence persisted. It is, of course, the case that Iraqi political
actors were sometimes willing to enter into short-term alliances with U.S. forces. But such
relationships, as that between the tribes and U.S. forces, were marriages of convenience;
they never dented Iraqi opposition to the U.S. military presence. For example, in a September
2006 poll, conducted nearly a year after cooperation with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar
began, 98 percent of Sunni Arabs said that they had little no or little confidence in the U.S.
military.45 And, 91 percent of Sunni Arabs said they wanted U.S. troops out of Iraq within
one year.46
With hindsight it is obvious that the United States could have done better in its attempt
to win Iraqi hearts and minds. The prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib and the initial U.S.
counterinsurgency strategy that focused on searching and destroying insurgents alienated
much of the Iraqi population. Yet, it is unlikely that U.S. efforts to win hearts and minds
 420 M. Kroenig, M. McAdam, and S. Weber

could have been successful even with a more thoughtful prisoner policy and a better
counterinsurgency strategy from the beginning.
By 2008, with widespread public support, the Iraqi government negotiated a final status
of forces agreement with the United States. The agreement required U.S. combat forces to
withdraw from Iraqi cities by the close of June 2009 and for all U.S. forces to withdraw
from Iraq by 2010 or 2011. In the words of David Edelstein, “Foreign military occupation
is incongruous with the goals of a national group to govern itself.”47 No amount of U.S. soft
power could have convinced the Iraqi people to abandon their desire to exercise sovereignty.
In sum, the U.S. occupation in Iraq was not a situation conducive to the application of
soft power. The United States was able to compete in a functioning marketplace of ideas
in Iraq, but U.S. messages lacked credibility and contradicted the core interests of the Iraqi
people, undermining the effectiveness of U.S. soft power policies.
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The War on Terror

The United States has also sought to apply soft power to counter ideological support for
terrorism. Again, despite a concerted effort by the United States, global support for terrorist
ideology shows no sign of abating and, according to some measures, may be increasing. The
inability of the United States to counter ideological support for terrorism can be attributed
to an environment hostile to the application of soft power. The societies and groups to
which the United States has targeted its message largely lack functioning marketplaces of
ideas and the U.S. message is not credible to the target audience. For these reasons, the
application of soft power has been an ineffective tool for countering ideological support for
terrorism, despite the importance of individual attitudes as a driver of terrorist behavior.
In the 2005 National Defense Strategy, the United States presented a three-pronged
strategy for winning the war on terror.48 The first two elements of the strategy, attacking
terrorist networks and defending the homeland, were definitively in the realm of hard
power. The third and, according to many Pentagon officials, the most important element
of the strategy was “countering ideological support for terrorism.”49 As part of this soft
power strategy, the United States declared its intent to “Support models of moderation in
the Muslim world by helping change Muslim misperceptions of the United States and the
West.”50 According to the 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, “winning the
War on Terror means winning the battle of ideas.”51
A special task force on “strategic communications” was set up at the Defense Science
Board that argued, “the United States is engaged in a generational and global struggle
about ideas.”52 Under the leadership of Karen Hughes as Undersecretary of State for
Public Diplomacy, the State Department established regional media hubs offering U.S.
spokespeople with foreign language skills to speak on America’ behalf in media outlets
throughout the Middle East.53 The United States government also increased the budget
for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. agency
responsible for dispensing foreign aid, by 60 percent, from 5 billion in 1998 to 8 billion in
2003.54 The United States funded a variety of pro-American media in the Muslim world,
including H1 magazine, Radio Sawa, and the Al Hurra television station.55 Furthermore,
the United States established reeducation facilities, such as the “House of Wisdom” in Iraq,
to teach moderate Muslim theology to detainees captured in the war on terror.56
Despite this widespread effort to communicate throughout the Muslim world, the
United States largely failed in its effort to apply soft power to its advantage in the war
on terror by the end of the Bush administration. The war on terror will probably be a
“generational struggle,” but it is nevertheless troubling that after a sustained multiyear
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 421

effort to counter ideological support for terrorism, the United States made real progress on
very few of its stated objectives. The United States, since 9/11, avoided a major terrorist
attack, and while the causes of this can be debated, it is not likely the result of a waning
of terrorist ideology globally, as is evidenced by the string of attacks in other parts of the
world.57 Terrorist ideology continued to flourish globally with the help of the internet.58
The low public opinion of the United States in the Muslim world, often thought to be
one of the factors contributing to terrorism against the United States and its allies, did not
improve by the end of the Bush administration. In fact, a 2006 study found that people’s
“attitudes toward U.S. foreign policy actually worsened slightly since they started listening
to Radio Sawa and Al Hurra.”59 The U.S. failure to use soft power effectively in the war
on terror was severely pronounced in some of the most important countries. In Egypt and
Pakistan, for example, 60 percent and 41 percent of their respective publics possessed either
positive or mixed views of al Qaeda in 2006.60 According to Doug Miller, chairman of the
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international polling firm Globescan, “The fact that so many people in Egypt and Pakistan
have mixed or even positive views of al Qaeda is yet another indicator that the US war on
terror is not winning hearts and minds.”61
Why did the United States fail in its effort to use soft power to counter ideological
support for terrorism? Part of the reason was that the United States was not able to compete
in a functioning marketplace of ideas in most of the societies where a threat of jihadi
terrorism exists. In the 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, the United States
acknowledges that “terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information
about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The
distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices
and self-serving propaganda.”62 In other words, many countries of the Middle East and the
broader Muslim world lack a functioning marketplace of ideas. They are disproportion-
ately authoritarian.63 These governments often take measures, generally for the purposes
of domestic stability, that have the effect of preventing meaningful competition in their
domestic marketplaces of ideas. Foreign media content containing ideas about democracy
and freedom is filtered.64 Radical religious groups, extremist parties, and fundamentalist
madrassas are supported to shore up the legitimacy of secular regimes.65 Domestic problems
are externalized and blamed on an “imperial” United States.66 The lack of a functioning
marketplace of ideas in this region contributes to the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories.67
Due in part to these phenomena, public opinion of U.S. foreign policy in 2005 was lower
in the Middle East than in any other world region.68 The inability of the United States
to communicate in this region is aptly described by Norman Patizz, an American media
entrepreneur, who notes that “there is a media war going on [in the Muslim world] with
incitement, hate broadcasting, disinformation, government censorship, self-censorship, and
America is not in the race.”69
Another limiting factor on the United States’ effort to counter ideological support for
terrorism is the logic of persuasion. U.S. efforts to communicate directly with the Muslim
world were thwarted by a lack of credibility. Expert messengers are more persuasive than
nonexperts, but U.S. government officials are hardly qualified to discuss the intricacies of
Muslim theology and the consistency, or lack thereof, of terrorism with the teachings of
the Koran. U.S. strategists have recognized this and sought to adjust strategy appropriately,
aiming to communicate through surrogates whenever possible.70 Attempts to channel a
message in this way can be vastly self-defeating, however, when surrogates are revealed
to be non-independent third parties. For example, audiences in the Middle East generally
know which media outlets receive U.S. support and, accordingly, discount the messages that
they receive from those sources. According to Al-Ahram Weekly, an Egyptian newspaper,
 422 M. Kroenig, M. McAdam, and S. Weber

Arab youth listen to Radio Sawa, a U.S. funded media outlet, but “they take the U.S. sound
and discard the U.S. agenda.”71
In the war on terror, individual attitudes have had an important, though mixed, effect on
international political outcomes. Ideas have a critical (but by no means exclusive) impact
on individual decisions to join a terrorist organization. Exposure to radical ideology is
an important component leading an individual to become a terrorist. While containing an
undeniable ideological component, however, many of the factors that convince people to
turn to terrorism are material in origin, not ideational, and thus cannot be addressed with
soft power tools. Social science research suggests that many factors may contribute to
the production of a terrorist. Few opportunities for political participation, low levels of
social integration, personal loss, and foreign occupation are among the variables that have
been linked to a higher risk of terrorism.72 The United States can combat some of these
risk factors through the application or withdrawal of hard power, but few of them can be
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addressed through the application of soft power alone.

The United States was largely unsuccessful in its attempt to use soft power to counter
global ideological support for terrorism. This failure was due, at least in part, to the absence
of the conditions necessary for an effective soft power strategy. Attitudes may be influential
in determining the strength of the international terrorist movement, but the United States
was unable to participate in debates in key regions in which terrorist ideology flourishes
and a lack of credibility further hindered U.S. efforts to change attitudes on important
terrorism-related issues.

Democracy Promotion
The United States has also attempted to use soft power to promote the spread of democ-
racy around the globe. Unlike in the other two issue areas, the U.S. democracy promotion
campaigns met with some success as evidenced by a spate of electoral revolutions in the
postcommunist region. We argue that the successful influence of these U.S. democracy pro-
motion efforts is due to the presence of the necessary conditions for an effective soft power
campaign. In the countries that experienced electoral revolutions, there was a functioning
marketplace of ideas, the United States identified and supported credible messengers to
transmit ideas about democratization, and ideas about the best practices for bringing down
authoritarian regimes could significantly impact the outcome.
In recent years, the United States has devoted a disproportionate amount of its democ-
racy promotion attention to the postcommunist region. The proportion of countries receiving
USAID democracy assistance, and the duration of time over which the countries receive
assistance, are higher in the postcommunist region than in other world regions. A sur-
vey of USAID funding from 1990–2003 “reveals that the postcommunist region stands
out as a clear priority for USAID with respect to democracy assistance.”73 Other U.S.
government-funded democracy promotion organizations such as the National Endowment
for Democracy have similarly concentrated their resources on the postcommunist region.
The U.S.’s soft power strategies aimed at promoting democracy in the postcommunist
world since the end of the Cold War have met with notable success. The rate of elec-
toral revolutions in this region has been staggering. According to a recent study, “pivotal
elections that have either enhanced or introduced democracy have taken place in eight
countries, or 40 percent of the twenty postcommunist countries that remained eligible for
such revolutions.”74 The well-publicized “color revolutions” swept through Georgia (The
Rose Revolution, 2003), Ukraine (The Orange Revolution, 2004), and Kyrgyzstan (The
Tulip Revolution, 2005).
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 423

The available studies on the wave of electoral revolutions in the postcommunist region
all identify American democracy promotion efforts as an important contributing cause
of these revolutions, and some scholars go so far as to argue that the revolutions were
significantly engineered by the United States.75 For example, in a recent study on Ukraine’s
Orange Revolution, Michael McFaul writes that the ideas and resources provided by the
United States and other external actors “did play a direct, causal role in constraining
some dimensions of autocratic power and enhancing some dimensions of the opposition’s
power.”76 The United States invested in opposition, media, and civil society groups, signaled
their displeasure with incumbent authoritarian regimes, and intervened to prevent incumbent
regimes from stealing elections.77
Of course, the spate of democratization cannot reasonably be attributed to U.S. democ-
racy promotion efforts alone. Favorable domestic conditions as well as other sources of
international support played an important role in bringing down dictators. Still, the avail-
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able evidence indicates that without America’s soft power campaign to spread democracy
to this region, it is probable that at least some of the electoral revolutions would not have
occurred. As such, democracy promotion is best scored as a case of soft power success.
Why was the U.S. soft power campaign to promote democracy in the region more
successful than similar campaigns in the Iraq War and the war on terror? The answer can
be found by looking at the conditions necessary for the effective deployment of soft power.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the postcommunist region has experienced the
establishment of a rough-and-tumble marketplace of ideas. In countries that later experi-
enced electoral revolutions, some restrictions on political parties were lifted, independent
media outlets operated more freely, and civil society organizations flourished after the fall
of communism. For example, scholars have characterized the Georgian media as “relatively
open.”78 The Ukrainian government wielded tight control over formal media outlets, but
they allowed the operation of several leading NGOs formed expressly to advance the cause
of democratic development.79 Civil society groups such as Pora were able to communi-
cate their ideas throughout the country using political and social analysis, broad-based
mobilization, and citizen participation.80 They shrewdly focused on the dissemination of
pro-democracy information and communication—areas ripe for public consumption given
the sterile state media and closed political channels. As time went on, these groups used
their energy and financial resources to find other ways to provide voter information and
education. Pora and other vigorous civil society groups in Ukraine are emblematic of the
types of ideational marketplaces that were allowed to flourish in the postcommunist region.
The conditions for persuasion were also present in that the senders of the democracy-
promotion messages were perceived as credible by the target audience. The U.S. hand
was largely hidden in this soft power campaign and the United States worked indirectly
through local pro-democracy groups on the ground. Particularly important in these local
groups were the graduates from previous electoral revolutions.81 These former members
of the democratic opposition in other revolutions had experience in toppling dictators,
giving their message enormous credibility to the local populations intent on repeating those
achievements in their own countries. Beyond their expertise, the graduates were also seen
as trustworthy by the target audience. Unlike some of the local democratic opposition that
stood to gain political power, or the United States that stood to gain geopolitical influence
from a successful democratic transition, the international graduates were perceived as being
motivated by democratic ideals.
Democracy promotion strategies were also conducive to soft power strategies because
of the important role of attitudes, unimpeded by countervailing material factors, in the
democratic transitions. Students of democratization frequently point to ideas and culture to
 424 M. Kroenig, M. McAdam, and S. Weber

explain crossnational patterns of democratization.82 In democratic transitions (as opposed

to democratic consolidation), the ideas of elites are thought to take on an even greater causal
importance.83 In the particular case of the electoral revolutions, scholars have identified an
innovative set of strategic ideas that allowed democratic opposition groups to succeed in
overthrowing the previous political order—“the electoral model of regime change.”84 This
model of regime change contains standard and interchangeable parts that include: the forma-
tion of a unified opposition, the utilization of international election monitoring, and prepa-
rations for public protests if the authoritarian incumbents attempt to steal the election.85
This electoral model diffused throughout the postcommunist world as the graduates
of previous transitions, funded by American and international democracy promotion cam-
paigns, taught it to democratic opposition groups in other countries. The American soft
power campaign succeeded in identifying the international and domestic actors that shared
U.S. goals and in enhancing their effectiveness by linking them with more experienced
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counterparts from countries that had successfully undergone democratic transitions.

The structural and material factors that were in place in the postcommunist region did
not clash with these ideas, but helped to facilitate democratic transitions. These factors
include: the lack of politicized militaries, historical experience with (largely fraudulent)
elections, highly educated populations, and the potential rewards of EU membership.86
One may question whether successful U.S. efforts were more the result of hard power,
rather than soft power, as we claim. While the United States clearly provided material
support to pro-democracy groups, the democratic transitions in these cases are better char-
acterized as resulting from soft power, as we define it. By facilitating interaction between the
graduates of previous democratic openings and antiregime forces, the United States helped
to disseminate a set of ideas about how to pry a democratic opening out of a fraudulent elec-
tion. The electoral model of regime change diffused by U.S. democracy promotion efforts
bolstered the effectiveness of antiregime forces and loosened authoritarian governments’
grip on power without directly altering the material costs and benefits of either set of actors.
Finally, one could question whether these electoral revolutions should really be consid-
ered cases of success, given the extent of democratic backsliding in some of these countries
subsequent to the democratic openings. Certainly, U.S. democracy promoters would have
preferred further democratic consolidation in these cases, but we employ a more modest
measure of success—visible progress toward the stated goal of the soft power campaign.
There is no doubt that the color revolutions exceed this more modest threshold. McFaul
assesses that “Even if Ukrainian democracy does slide back toward autocracy over the long
run, the Orange Revolution will still remain a dramatic case of democratic breakthrough,
and may be the most important instance of democratic breakthrough in this decade.”87
In sum, the U.S. effort to use soft power to spread democracy achieved some success
in the postcommunist region. It is no coincidence that this environment was also conducive
to the exercise of soft power. In the postcommunist region, a robust civil society sustained
a free marketplace of ideas, the graduates of previous electoral revolutions were persua-
sive democratic messengers, and the idea of the electoral model of regime change was
indispensable to the democratic transitions. Had any of these three conditions been absent,
it is much less likely that the U.S. would have succeeded in using soft power to spread
democracy in the postcommunist region.

Conclusion: How to Use Soft Power

In order to advance our understanding of soft power, this article developed a theory of
governmental efforts to employ soft power that takes seriously the “power” part of the
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 425

equation. The question is, “What would it take for a government to be able to successfully
employ a soft power strategy?” In this article, we have identified and explored the mech-
anisms by which soft power would take effect and have found that the environments in
which soft power can work are restrictive. Only when there is a functioning marketplace
of ideas, when a messenger and message are credible, and when individual attitudes can
shape international politics does the application of soft power have a reasonable chance
of success. We then explored these theoretical claims through analysis of three U.S. gov-
ernment efforts to employ soft power. The three soft power preconditions were present as
the United States promoted democracy in the postcommunist region, leading to a series of
electoral revolutions. We demonstrated that at least some of these conditions were absent
in the Iraq War and the war on terror and, accordingly, the United States was unable to win
hearts and minds in Iraq or to counter ideological support for terrorism (see Table 1).
Foreign policy actors have many reasons to experiment with soft power, not merely
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because its use can be less costly than hard power. But, soft power comes with its own
quite striking limitations. Our research suggests that soft power strategies will be unlikely
to succeed except under fairly restrictive conditions. It may very well be, then, that the
U.S. foreign policy elite is at risk of exaggerating the effectiveness of soft power (rather
than underutilizing it) as a tool of foreign policy. After all, international communication
is fraught with difficulties, persuading people to change firmly held political views is
hard, and individual attitudes are often thought to have an insignificant role in determining
international political outcomes. Soft power, therefore, will probably be considered a niche
foreign policy option useful for addressing a small fraction of the problems on Washington’s
foreign policy agenda. Analysts who suggest that soft power can easily be substituted for
hard power or who maintain that soft power should provide an overarching guide to the
formulation of U.S. foreign policy are badly mistaken. It is not conducive to good policy
to employ the idea of soft power as a way of arguing against the use of military force, for
example.
Although there are serious constraints on the exercise of soft power, this research
identifies the circumstances under which the application of soft power will most likely
succeed. The United States can use soft power to its advantage when it seeks to reach a target
audience in a society characterized by a functioning marketplace of ideas, that is receptive to
communication and persuasion, and whose ideas are likely to shape international outcomes
in a way that is favorable to U.S. interests.

Table 1
Taking Soft Power Seriously

Cases

Iraq War on Democracy

Independent Variables War Terror Promotion

Functioning marketplace of ideas X X

Persuasion conditions present X
Attitudes likely to shape outcome X X
All soft power conditions present No No Yes
Dependent Variable
Soft power success No No Yes
 426 M. Kroenig, M. McAdam, and S. Weber

Two practical recommendations follow from this analysis. First, policymakers who
want to deploy soft power as a first resort need to think about “shaping the battlefield” for
soft power just as boldly as military strategists do before deploying hard power. The United
States should seek to advance a functioning marketplace of ideas in societies in which
such an environment does not currently exist. Washington is constrained in its ability to
employ soft power in part because many of the most important audiences, from the point of
view of U.S. foreign policy, are in closed societies. We saw, for example, that Washington
was unable to counter ideological support for terrorism in part because it was unable to
communicate to publics in the Middle East. By more forcefully advocating for open media
and a reduction of government censorship in these countries, the United States can expand
the range of situations in which it can effectively exercise soft power.
Second, when waging soft power campaigns, Washington should avoid direct com-
munication and instead seek to transmit messages through intermediaries who are more
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trusted by target audiences. That is not a euphemism for propaganda. Soft power campaigns
are most successful when the messenger is trusted by the target audience, but messengers
promoting a message that advances their own self-interest are inherently perceived as less
trustworthy. For example, we saw that the Iraqi population discounted Washington’s at-
tempts to publicize the benefits of the U.S.-led occupation for Iraqi society. On the other
hand, we saw that the graduates of electoral revolutions were able to more credibly dis-
seminate Washington’s message about best practices for bringing down dictators to other
postcommunist countries. Independent, third-party sources of messages, not beholden to
U.S. interests, are perhaps the most valuable assets a soft power strategist can have.
The field of international relations often responds to real world problems. During the
Cold War, much scholarship was devoted to understanding nuclear deterrence theory.88 This
development of theories of hard power helped to propel forward international relations the-
ory, while simultaneously serving as a guide to the formation of U.S. policy. As of yet, there
are no equally extensive and refined bodies of theory for soft power. But American foreign
policy will always, and may increasingly, contain an important soft power component. At
present, the United States finds itself in a battle for hearts and minds in multiple counterin-
surgency campaigns, seeks to address rising tides of anti-American sentiment, and attempts
to counter ideological support for terrorism. If the academic community wishes to inform
these debates, it is imperative that scholars adopt an ambitious research agenda centered on
answering critical questions about soft power.

Notes
1. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York:
Basic Books, 1990).
2. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public
Affairs, 2004), 5.
3. Ibid., 6.
4. Ibid., 11.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., x.
7. See, for example: Nye, Jr., Soft Power; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Soft Power,” Foreign Policy, no.
80 (Autumn 1990): 153–171; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “The Decline of America’s Soft Power,” Foreign
Affairs, vol. 83, no. 3 (May/June 2004): 16–20; Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Power
and Interdependence in the Information Age,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 5 (September/October
1998): 81–94; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “US Power and Strategy After Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 82, no. 4
(July/August 2003): 60–73; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Soft Power and American Foreign Policy,” Political
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 427

Science Quarterly, vol. 119, no. 2 (July 2004): 255–270; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Propaganda Isn’t the
Way,” The International Herald Tribune, January 10, 2003; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Ignoring Soft Power
Has A High Cost,” The Chicago Tribune, May 16, 2004; Josef Joffe, “The Perils of Soft Power,”
New York Times Magazine, May 14, 2006; Joshua Kurlantzick, “China’s Charm: Implications of
Chinese Soft Power,” Policy Brief Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2006; Kurt
Campbell and Michael O’Hanlon, Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security (New York:
Basic Books, 2006); David Edelstein and Ronald Krebs, “Washington’s Troubling Obsession with
Public Diplomacy,” Survival, vol. 41, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 89–104; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Paradox of
American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go it Alone (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002); Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500
to Today (New York: Gotham, 2006); Thomas L. Ilgen, Hard Power, Soft Power and the Future of
Transatlantic Relations (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006); Zakir Hussain, “PM Lee
‘Uses Smart Power,”’ The Straits Times (Singapore), December 2, 2006; Catherine Lim, “A Dash of
Tolerance and a Big Helping of Smart Power,” The Straits Times (Singapore), December 7, 2006;
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Scott Atran, “Soft Power and the Psychology of Suicide Bombing,” Terrorism Monitor, vol. 2, no. 11
(June 2004): 1–4; “CSIS Commission on Smart Power: A Smarter, More Secure America,” Center
for Strategic and International Studies, November 2007.
8. See, for example: Joffe, “Perils of Soft Power”; Kurlantzick, “China’s Charm”; Campbell
and O’Hanlon, Hard Power; Edelstein and Krebs, “Washington’s Troubling Obsession ”; Ilgen, Hard
Power, Soft Power; Hussain, “PM Lee ‘Uses Smart Power”’; Lim, “Dash of Tolerance”; Atran, “Soft
Power and the Psychology”; and “CSIS Commission on Smart Power.”
9. This definition draws on Robert Dahl’s widely used definition of power and is consistent
with Nye’s original conceptualization of soft power, “getting others to want the outcomes that you
want . . . through attraction rather than through coercion and payments” (Soft Power, 5–15). For
Robert A. Dahl’s discussion of power, see “The Concept of Power,” Behavioral Science, vol. 2
(1957): 201–215. For other conceptualizations of power see Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall,
“Power in International Politics,” International Organization, vol. 59 (Winter 2005): 39–75; Steven
Lukes, Power: A Radical View (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); David A. Baldwin, “Power
Analysis and World Politics,” World Politics, vol. 31, no. 2 (January 1979): 161–194; and Morton
Bachrach and Peter Baratz, Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1970).
10. Furthermore, many analysts advocating that states use more soft power appear to be arguing
simply that states should adopt policies that are more attractive to an international audience. But it is
difficult to see what, if anything, this has to do with power. States can adopt policies that are popular
internationally without convincing another actor to do something that it otherwise would not do. In
fact, to the degree that states compromise national goals in order to please international audiences,
there is an inherent tension between the acquisition of soft power resources and the exercise of power.
11. Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo, Attitudes and Persuasion: Classic and Contempo-
rary Approaches (Dubuque: Wm. C. Brown Company Publishers, 1981), 7.
12. Ibid., 4.
13. Social psychological theories of attitude change include the Hovland attitude change ap-
proach (which is used as the basis for the discussion of attitude change in this article), Carl Iver
Hovland, Irving Lester Janis, and Harold H. Kelley, Communication and Persuasion (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1953); cognitive dissonance theory, Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive
Dissonance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957); attribution theory, Harold H. Kelley, “At-
tribution Theory in Social Psychology,” in David Levine, ed., Nebraska Symposium on Motivation,
vol.15 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 192–238; self-perception theory, Daryl J. Bem,
“Self-Perception Theory,” in Leonard Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,
vol. 6 (New York: Academic Press, 1972), 1–62; and schema theory, Shelley E. Taylor and Jen-
nifer Crocker, “Schematic Bases of Social Information Processing,” in E. Tory Higgins, C. Peter
Herman, and Mark P. Zanna, eds., Social Cognition: The Ontario Symposium (Hillsdale: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 1981), 89–134. For a concise overview of these schools of thought, see Deborah
 428 M. Kroenig, M. McAdam, and S. Weber

Welch Larson, Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation (Princeton: Princeton Univer-

sity Press, 1985), 24–65. For more recent treatments, see Dolores Albarracin, Blair T. Johnson, and
Mark P. Zanna, eds., The Handbook of Attitudes (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005);
Gerd Bohner and Michaela Wanke, Attitudes and Attitude Change (New York: Psychology Press,
2002); and Timothy C. Brock and Melanie C. Green, eds., Persuasion: Psychological Insights and
Perspectives (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005).
14. Here we focus on only some of the most important findings in this literature. Persuasiveness
also depends, for example, on whether or not the targets are in a deliberative mode or processing
information more reflexively, using heuristics. The other findings of the social psychology literature
may also have application to soft power, but they are not explored here.
15. Hovland, Janis, and Kelley, Communication and Persuasion; Festinger, Theory of Cogni-
tive Dissonance; Kelley, “Attribution Theory”; Bem, “Self-Perception Theory”; Taylor and Crocker,
“Schematic Bases”; Welch Larson, Origins of Containment; Albarracin, Johnson, and Zanna, Hand-
book of Attitudes; Bohner and Wanke, Attitudes and Attitude Change; Brock and Green, Persuasion.
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16. Hovland, Janis, and Kelley, Communication and Persuasion; Festinger, Theory of Cogni-
tive Dissonance; Kelley, “Attribution Theory”; Bem, “Self-Perception Theory”; Taylor and Crocker,
“Schematic Bases”; Welch Larson, Origins of Containment; Albarracin, Johnson, and Zanna, Hand-
book of Attitudes; Bohner and Wanke, Attitudes and Attitude Change; Brock and Green, Persuasion.
17. Hovland, Janis, and Kelley, Communication and Persuasion; Festinger, Theory of Cogni-
tive Dissonance; Kelley, “Attribution Theory”; Bem, “Self-Perception Theory”; Taylor and Crocker,
“Schematic Bases”; Welch Larson, Origins of Containment; Albarracin, Johnson, and Zanna, Hand-
book of Attitudes; Bohner and Wanke, Attitudes and Attitude Change; Brock and Green, Persuasion.
18. Alice H. Eagly et al., “What is Beautiful is Good, but . . . : A Meta-Analytic Review of
Research on the Physical Attractiveness Stereotype,” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 110, no. 1 (1991):
109–128.
19. Ibid.
20. Petty and Cacioppo, Attitudes and Persuasion.
21. Richard L. Miller, “Mere Exposure, Psychological Reactance, and Attitude Change,” Public
Opinion Quarterly, vol. 40 (1976): 229–233.
22. Irving L. Janis and Seymour Feshbach, “Effects of Fear-Arousing Communication,” Jour-
nal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 48 (1953): 78–92.
23. Miriam Zellner, “Self-Esteem, Reception, and Influenceability,” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, vol. 15 (1970): 87–93.
24. Richard E. Petty et al., “Positive Mood and Persuasion: Different Roles for Affect Under
High- and Low-Elaboration Conditions,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 64, no.
1 (1993): 5–20.
25. Irving L. Janis, Donald Kaye, and Paul Kirschner, “Facilitating Effects of ‘Eating-While-
Reading’ on Responsiveness to Persuasive Communication,” Journal of Personality and Social Psy-
chology, vol. 1 (1965): 181–186.
26. See for example, Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw
Hill, 1979) and John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton,
2003). For a competing perspective that gives individual attitudes more causal weight in explaining
international outcomes, see, for example, Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International
Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization, vol. 52, no. 4 (1998): 887–917.
27. On U.S. soft power campaigns in these three issue areas see, for example, Alexan-
der T. J. Lennon, The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Using Soft Power to Undermine Terror-
ist Networks (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003); Alexandra Silver, “Soft Power: Democracy Promo-
tion and U.S. NGOs,” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder (March 2007), available from
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10164/soft power.html; and Carnes Lord, Losing Hearts and Minds?
Public Diplomacy and Strategic Influence in the Age of Terror (Westport, CT: Praeger Security
International, 2006).
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 429

28. Rick Atkinsio, “Iraq Will Be Petraeus’s Knot to Untie: General Known to See Peace as Still
Possible,” Washington Post, January 7, 2007, p. A1; Department of the Army, Counterinsurgency Field
Manual No. 3–24, December 2006, available from http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf.
29. Jeff Gerth and Scott Shane, “U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraqi Papers,” New
York Times, December 1, 2005.
30. Michael R. Gordon, “Military Hones a New Strategy in Iraq,” New York Times, October 4,
2006.
31. Steven Kull, “Iraqi Public Opinion on the Presence of U.S. Troops,” Testimony Be-
fore House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Hu-
man Rights, and Oversight, July 23, 2008, available from http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/
articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/517.php?lb=brme&pnt=517&nid=&id=.
32. World Public Opinion.org, “Baghdad Shias Believe Killings May Increase Once U.S.-led
Forces Depart But Large Majorities Still Support Withdrawal Within a Year,” Program on Interna-
tional Policy Attitudes, November 20, 2006, available at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/
Downloaded By: [University of California, Berkeley] At: 07:26 14 December 2010

articles/home page/275.php?nid=&id=&pnt=275&lb=hmpg1.
33. International Republican Institute, “Survey of Iraqi Public Opinion: June 14–June 24,
2006,” July 18, 2006, available from http://www.iri.org/.
34. Kull, “Iraqi Public Opinion.”
35. There are contending answers to this question; our purpose here is not necessarily to take
sides in this debate but to use the evidence from it to evaluate a theory of soft power. For other
answers to this question see, for example: Dr. Samer S. Shehata, House Subcommittee on National
Security, Prepared Testimony on Iraq: Winning Hearts and Minds, June 15, 2004, available from
http://ccas.georgetown.edu/files/Shehata Testimony.pdf; and Lord, Losing Hearts and Minds?.
36. BBC News, “Country Profile: Iraq,” [updated January 22, 2007; cited April 21, 2007],
available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle east/country profiles/791014.stm.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. See, for example, Jennifer Loven, “Bush Speaks to Iraq Leaders Amid Violence,” Associ-
ated Press Reports, February 25, 2006.
40. See, for example, Dexter Filkins, “Where Plan A Left Ahmad Chalabi,” The New York
Times Magazine, November 5, 2006, p. 46.
41. See, for example: Christine Ollivier, “Chirac Says U.S. Led Invasion of Iraq Allowed
Terrorism to Spread,” Associated Press, January 6, 2007; Osama bin Laden, taped speech released
on February 11, 2003, available from http://www.cnn.com/interactive/world/0302/timeline.bin.laden.
audio/frameset.exclude.html; Michael Rowland, “Camera Turns on Michael Moore,” ABC Transcripts
Australia, March 14, 2007.
42. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “An Educator Learns the Hard Way,” Washington Post, June 21,
2004, p. A1.
43. Jeff Gerth, “Military’s Information War is Vast and Often Secretive,” New York Times,
December 11, 2005.
44. David Edelstein, Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).
45. World Public Opinion.org, “Most Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Out.”
46. Ibid.
47. David Edelstein, “Occupational Hazards: Why Military Occupations Succeed or Fail,”
International Security, vol. 29, no. 4 (Summer 2004): 49–91.
48. Department of Defense, The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America,
March 2005, available from http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2005/d20050408strategy.pdf.
49. Ibid., 11.
50. Ibid.
51. The White House, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, September 2006, p. 1,
available from http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nsct/2006/.
 430 M. Kroenig, M. McAdam, and S. Weber

52. Defense Science Board, Task Force on Strategic Communication, September 2004, p. 3,
available from http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/commun.pdf.
53. Karen P. Hughes, “Testimony before the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcom-
mittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs,” April 19, 2007, available from http://
usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=texttrans-english&y=2007&m=April&x=2007041919
0631xjsnommis0.8693048.
54. Todd Moss, David Roodman, and Scott Standley, “The Global War on Terror and U.S. De-
velopment Assistance: USAID Allocation by Country: 1998–2005,” Center for Global Development
Working Paper, no. 62 (July 2005).
55. Shehata, House Subcommittee on National Security, Prepared Testimony.
56. Walter Pincus, “U.S. Working to Reshape Iraqi Detainees: Moderate Muslims Enlisted to
Steer Adults and Children Away from Insurgency,” Washington Post, September 19, 2007, p. A1.
57. See, for example: Aidan Lewis, “Death Toll in Algeria Bombings Hits 33,” Associated
Press, April 12, 2007; Julia Preston, “Victims of Bombings in Israel Seek Damages in New York,”
Downloaded By: [University of California, Berkeley] At: 07:26 14 December 2010

The New York Times, January 7, 2006, p. B3; “Roadside Bombings in Iraq Kill Two Security Forces,
Wound at Least 12,” Associated Press, April 6, 2006; “Putin Meets Beslan Mothers in Delicate
Balancing Act,” Agence France Presse, September 2, 2005; Associated Press, “Jordanian Victims
Honored,” The Houston Chronicle, November 11, 2005, p. B5; “London Bombings Relief Fund,”
The Evening Standard (London), July 14, 2005; Marina de Russe, “Spanish Terror Victims Decry
Politicisation of Their Cause,” Agence France Press, June 9, 2006.
58. Evan F. Kohlman, “The Real Online Terrorist Threat,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 5
(September/October 2006): 115–124; Steve Berriman, “Internet Spreading Dangerous Ideology,”
CBS News, February 1, 2007.
59. Mohmmed el-Nawawy, “U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Arab World: The News Credibility
of Radio Sawa and Television Alhurra in Five Countries,” Global Media and Communication, vol. 2,
no. 2 (2006): 183–203.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. The White House, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, 10.
63. M. Steven Fish, “Islam and Authoritarianism,” World Politics, vol. 55, no.1 (October 2002):
4–37.
64. “Bloggers May Be the Real Opposition,” The Economist, April 12, 2007.
65. See, for example, Jack Beatty, “The Real Roots of Terror,” The Atlantic Monthly, December
5, 2001.
66. Ibid.
67. See, for example, Jefferson Morley, “Amman Bombing: Spinning a Conspiracy Theory,”
Washington Post, November 15, 2005; Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Con-
spiracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).
68. Giacomo Chiozza, “Disaggregating Anti-Americanism,” in Peter Katzenstein and Robert
O. Keohane, eds., Anti-Americanism in World Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006),
93–126.
69. Nathan Guttman, “Good Morning Baghdad, This is Washington Calling,” Haaretz (2004),
available from http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=219301.
70. Defense Science Board, Task Force on Strategic Communication, 48–59.
71. Cited in el-Nawawy, “U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Arab World,” 189.
72. See, for example: Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2005); Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Robert Anthony Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic
of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005); Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, “The Quality of
Terror,” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 49, no. 3 (July 2005): 515–530; Jerrold M. Post,
The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to Al Qaeda (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007); Rex A. Hudson and Marilyn Lundell Majeska, “The Sociology and Psychology
of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?,” ed. Federal Research Division (Washington, DC:
 Taking Soft Power Seriously 431

The Division, 1999); and Jeff Victoroff, “The Mind of the Terrorist,” Journal of Conflict Resolution,
vol. 49, no. 1 (2005): 3–42.
73. Valerie Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, “Favorable Conditions and Electoral Revolutions,”
Journal of Democracy, vol. 17, no. 4 (2006): 5–18, 12.
74. Ibid., 7.
75. See, for example: Graeme Herd, “Colorful Revolutions and the CIS,” Problems of Post-
communism, vol. 52 (March–April 2005): 3–18; Bertil Nygren, “The Beauty and the Beast: When
Electoral Democracy Hit Eurasia” (unpublished manuscript, 2005); Bertil Nygren, “Putin’s Attempt
to Subjugate Georgia: From Sabre Rattling to Purse Policy” (paper presented at ICSEES, Berlin, July
2005); Bunce and Wolchik, “Favorable Conditions”; Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik, “Interna-
tional Diffusion and Postcommunist Electoral Revolution,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies,
vol. 39, no. 3 (September 2006): 283–304; Michael McFaul, “Transitions from Postcommunism,”
Journal of Democracy, vol. 16, no. 3 (2005): 5–19; Michael McFaul, “Ukraine Imports Democracy:
External Influences on the Orange Revolution,” International Security, vol. 32, no. 2 (Fall 2007):
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45–83.
76. McFaul, “Ukraine Imports Democracy.”
77. Bunce and Wolchik, “Favorable Conditions,” 15; Andrew Wilson, Ukraine’s Orange Rev-
olution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 187.
78. Bunce and Wolchik, “International Diffusion.”
79. Wilson, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, 183–187.
80. Pavol Demes and Joerg Forbig, “Pora—‘It’s Time’ for Democracy in Ukraine,” in Anders
Aslund and Michael McFaul, eds., Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine’s Democratic
Breakthrough (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006), 85–102.
81. Bunce and Wolchik, “Favorable Conditions”; Bunce and Wolchik, “International Diffu-
sion.”
82. For cultural approaches to democratization see, for example: Lucian W. Pye with Mary
W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1985); Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); and Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy
Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
83. Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions
from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1986); Giuseppe Di Palma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990).
84. Bunce and Wolchik, “International Diffusion,” 6.
85. Bunce and Wolchik, “Favorable Conditions,” 6.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid.
88. See, for example, Bernard Brodie, The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1946); Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980); Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1967); Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and
the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).

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