Democracies and Soft Power

• In Event: Power and Democracy

Abstract

Soft power literature has suggested that it is the liberal democracies that end up relying on soft power tools and not the non-democracies. The underlying theory suggests that soft power is an American concept that was created to support the democratization of other countries and spread the liberal ideology. This paper compares two groups of 28 countries to test where the democracies use more soft power than non-democracies. The time-frame is 1995-2010. The findings indicate that non-democracies use a surprising amount of soft power. China uses 87% of soft power compared to the USA’s 83% and Russia’s 81%. Therefore, the findings indicate that all countries use soft power, not just the liberal democracies.

Author

• Judit Trunkos, Robert Morris University