Content uploaded by Ben O'Loughlin
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Ben O'Loughlin on May 30, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Strategic narrative: A new means to understand soft power
Abstract
Soft power in its current, widely understood form has become a straitjacket for those trying to understand power and communication in international affairs. Analyses of soft power overwhelmingly focus on soft power ‘assets’ or capabilities and how to wield them, not how influence does or does not take place. It has become a catch-all term that has lost explanatory power, just as hard power once did. The authors argue that the concept of strategic narrative gives us intellectual purchase on the complexities of international politics today, especially in regard to how influence works in a new media environment. They believe that the study of media and war would benefit from more attention being paid to strategic narratives.
... Being associated with the international system, they can include, amongst others, states, great powers, non-state actors, non-governmental organizations, or multinational corporations. Actors within narratives are allied to characteristics, interests and behaviors [46]. Actors are characterized not only by their own self-presentation but also by how others perceive them. ...
... How would the actors in such settings react? This highlights not only the importance of temporality (past experience, present situation and future outlook), but also the need to identify perceived threats and to address by whom and how these threats should be countered [46]. The COVID-19 pandemic has its timely features. ...
... Finally, Issue Narratives "are strategic in the sense of seeking to shape the terrain on which policy discussions take place" ([7]:11). Issue narratives explain why a particular policy is needed and should be adopted as well as how this policy will be successfully carried out [46]. Crucially, the three levels of narrative do not work independently from each other. ...
The paper aims to address the development of China’s narrative power during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on world order. It argues that in the post-pandemic world, the emergence of the authoritarian sub-order would be prompted by China’s more proactive narrative power, given that the climate of opinion is ambiguous when faced with the uncertainty of the pandemic. (This does not imply the end of the existing liberal order; instead, it features the coexistence of both orders.) To understand how China’s narrative power has encouraged the emergence of the authoritarian sub-order to coexist in parallel with the dominant constitutional order, the article first reviews the existing literature concerning the changing world order. In this section, it also briefly defines and differentiates between the constitutional and authoritarian orders, what defines world order, and what distinguishes authoritarian from constitutional liberal order. Second it looks at the theoretical grounding. The nature, role and power of narratives are explored. Ideas about strategic narratives and the economics of attention are discussed. This theoretical background paves the way to examine China’s narrative power during a pandemic. Lastly, it switches to the Chinese perspective to address its support for the plurality of orders and its awareness of the strength of narrative in influencing dominant ideas. It looks at how China’s narrative power has been exercised from three perspectives (formation, projection and reception). Here, it mainly tackles how China has used its narrative power to spin the pandemic to its advantage in the reorganization of world order: improving its international image and advocating the authoritarian order as an alternative. China has been building its narrative along with its changing strategic diplomacy – from restrained and low-profile to proactive and assertive. In the conclusion, some reflections on China’s narrative power and the implications for world order are considered.
... First, the creation of a communication structure, as exemplified by how the United States has been engaged, for the better part of the past two decades, in developing regional media hubs in the Middle East, in order to speak on America's behalf (Kroenig, McAdam, and Weber 2010). Second, the development of a compelling strategic narrative that relies on actors, space and stage: the strategic narrative can clearly identify how the world is structured and who the players are, but also operates at the national level to clearly explain the story of a nation, its people, values and goals (Roselle, Miskimmon, and O'Loughlin 2014). When these elements are combined, and when they operate within a receptive and functioning marketplace of ideas, they help support a specific issues narrative that a state wants to pursue using soft power attributes. ...
North Korea is notable for its isolation, yet the Korean Central News Agency’s daily editions are filled with articles outlining international admiration for Pyongyang and its leader. Is Pyongyang actively promoting soft power as an integral part of not only its survival, but its development strategy? While scholarship on North Korea tends to focus on Pyongyang’s “high profile” relations with China or Russia (Shambaugh 2003, McCormack 2004, Wu 2005) or with nations seeking to cooperate on weapons of mass destruction (Henriksen 2001), little attention has been paid to how the DPRK engages in seemingly peaceful ways with the world. This article examines the notion of hard, soft, smart and other power declensions, and applies a soft-power framework to investigate DPRK rhetoric and the development of partnerships with both states and non-state actors. It suggests that the DPRK has long pursued a strategy of diplomatic diversification, which includes a more sophisticated understanding of power than previously considered in the literature.
... Over the years the concept of soft power has been arranged in a plenty of fields. The soft power resources may be found in many spheres and states' activities -public diplomacy [Nye: 2012], cultural policies [Otmazgin 2012], strategic narratives (or meta-narratives) [Miskimmon, O'Loughlin, Roselle 2014], language using by representatives [Hill: 2014], higher education [Trilokekar 2010] and international education [Sayamov 2013]. The soft power may be generated also by the activities of politicized orthodox church [Hudson: 2018] as well as by global sport events [Grix, Houlihan 2014]. ...
The hereby paper presents a theoretical approach to the U.S.–China geopolitical rivalry as the process of dispersion of power from the hegemon to the challenger [Allison] that may toward, through the sphere of influence fragmentation processes, to the polycentricity of the international relations system. In this work the author presents a new theoretical approach to the U.S.–China political rivalry understood as a key element of a process of changing the model of the global hegemonic leadership, shaped most fully since 1991. The paper presents the concept of two theoretical levels – the rational strategy and the political vibrancy – which are a necessary context for identifying the nature of given decision-making processes of the main subjects of contemporary international relations. Thus, through the abovementioned concept the sino-american relations are explained within the methods that are being used by states with particular emphasis on analyzing the operations of the People's Republic of China. Furthermore, the author reasons why China is withdrawing from the use of soft power – understood in the terms of J. S. Nye’s – and why it primarily uses the linking power and sharp power [Walker, Ludwig]. The article ends with a summary in which author, based on the information presented, tries to answer the question – why the liberal international order remains uncertain (or is about to fail).
Through a carefully crafted comparison of East Asia's surviving communist regimes (North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos), this article offers a rare systematic study of how dictatorships manipulate collective memory to their own advantage. I employ methods of narrative analysis to identify different storytelling strategies that may serve to anthropomorphize the regime party as the “hero” in relation to the historical past. Moreover, I rely on quantitative content analysis (N > 2000) to demonstrate that the four communist regimes use propaganda photographs of their respective leaders to communicate collective memory narratives to mass audiences. The article thus makes two original contributions to the literature on autocratic politics. First, I show that narratives provide autocratic regimes with a powerful tool to tap into different sources of legitimacy, including output and identity legitimacy. Second, the findings of the visual content analysis suggest that, contrary to existing views, personalization – at least in terms of media personalization – does not have to come at the expense of the regime party.
This article aims to delve deeper in the underexplored but critical role Arctic Council representations and visual images have played over its first 20 years of existence. Through a visual discourse narrative of Arctic Council publications and media platforms, the article will explore how the Artic Council’s self-constructed visual narrative has evolved over the past two decades, moving from a primarily environmentally focused narrative in 1996 to one imbued with political legitimacy and power in 2016 through strategic communications. The research is multidisciplinary and lends its foundation to four areas of study: (i) international relations, power, and the esthetic turn; (ii) art history, identity, power, and iconography; (iii) the history and production of science visuals in the history and philosophy of science; and (iv) geography, imagined geographies, and border studies. While the research is positioned primarily in the first of these areas, the so-called Esthetic Turn of International Relations, its analysis rests at the nexus of all four. By offering an analysis of 20 years of the strategic visual communication of the Arctic Council, this article aims to fill a gap in current scholarship with a case study of strategic communication strategies in visual imagery and political iconography in perceptions of Northern governance.
A literature review and proposal for an approach to the quantitative measurement of the impacts of soft power.
Germany represents a new and unconventional actor in the field of energy foreign policy. Based on its reputation as an energy transition frontrunner, it is pursuing a soft power strategy aimed at promoting its Energiewende policy approach abroad. Germany’s bilateral energy partnerships, this paper argues, represent the government’s central policy instrument for this purpose. After a discussion of the German energy transition as a soft power resource, the paper provides an in-depth empirical analysis of Germany’s bilateral energy partnerships. The paper argues that the partnerships have been deliberately designed as instruments for mobilizing the Energiewende narrative as soft power. Linking it to concepts in the soft power debate, it discusses the main channels through which the partnerships aim to boost the attractiveness of German policy solutions and persuade partners to consider their adoption. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for further research on the international political economy of energy.
This article assesses Russian strategic narratives towards its interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014–16) based on a new database of 50 statements posted on the websites of the Russian Mission to the United Nations and the President of Russia homepage. By looking more broadly at Russian strategic narratives aimed at persuading other global actors and publics abroad and at home, this article identifies how Russia attempted to develop a story that could win global acceptance. This analysis shows that contrary to traditional Russian emphasis on sovereign responsibility and non-intervention, Russia supported claims for self-determination by separatist groups in Georgia and Ukraine. Russia used deception and disinformation in its strategic narratives as it mis-characterized these conflicts using Responsibility to Protect (R2P) language, yet mostly justified its own interventions through references to other sources of international law. Russian strategic narratives focused on delegitimizing the perceived opponents, making the case for the appropriateness of its own actions, and projecting what it proposed as the proper solution to the conflicts. It largely avoided making any references to its own involvement in the Donbas at all. Additionally, Russia’s focus on the protection of co-ethnics and Russian-speakers is reminiscent of interventions in the pre-R2P era.
Just as politicians and diplomats are struggling to come to terms with the impact of the communications revolution in international politics, so too are the academic fields of International Relations and International Communications. Although it is a decade since the twin impacts of satellite television and the Internet began to attract serious attention, scholars are still struggling to understand how to locate innovations in communications within the practice of world politics. Very often discussions are anecdotal or simplistically generalized, reaching conclusions that either the communications revolution is sweeping away the states system or is largely unimportant or that it is having some impact but it is not quite clear what.1 There is a growing body of work that allows us to move beyond these generalizations but much of this is dispersed across relatively specialized debates on topics such as transnational advocacy networks, transparency, deliberation or information warfare and is only just beginning to find its way back into the mainstream theoretical debate.2 This chapter sets out to offer one way of making sense of the impact of the communications revolution in contemporary international politics.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has progressively adapted itself to the new strategic environment. This has meant a shift from a defensive posture to a more proactive risk management strategy. A key component of this mandate is contributions to international peacemaking and peacebuilding operations. In both the Balkans and Afghanistan, NATO has worked to utilize its military assets to create and maintain peace so that civilian organizations can administer aid, development programs, and good governance projects. These multifaceted operations, however, are complex and rely on well-structured relationships between the different civilian-led international organizations on the ground and NATO. Sadly, as the case of Afghanistan illustrates, these organizations have proved woefully inadequate in terms of providing sustainable peacebuilding. The hypothesis is that international organizations do not play well on the ground in conflict or postconflict environments because they were meant to manage a balance of power, rather than an absence of power. These organizations are more worried about their bureaucratic turf than they are sustainable outcomes.
Published at a time when the U.S. government’s public diplomacy is in crisis, this book provides an exhaustive account of how it used to be done. The United States Information Agency was created in 1953 to "tell America’s story to the world" and, by engaging with the world through international information, broadcasting, culture and exchange programs, became an essential element of American foreign policy during the Cold War. Based on newly declassified archives and more than 100 interviews with veterans of public diplomacy, from the Truman administration to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nicholas J. Cull relates both the achievements and the endemic flaws of American public diplomacy in this period. Major topics include the process by which the Truman and Eisenhower administrations built a massive overseas propaganda operation; the struggle of the Voice of America radio to base its output on journalistic truth; the challenge of presenting Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and Watergate to the world; and the climactic confrontation with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. This study offers remarkable and new insights into the Cold War era.
How do states sustain international order during crises? Drawing on the political philosophy of Lyotard and through an empirical examination of the Anglo-American international order during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Bially Mattern demonstrates that states can (and do) use representational force--a forceful but non-physical form of power exercised through language--to stabilize international identity and in turn international order.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, China is poised to become a major global power. And though much has been written of China's rise, a crucial aspect of this transformation has gone largely unnoticed: the way that China is using soft power to appeal to its neighbors and to distant countries alike. This book is the first to examine the significance of China's recent reliance on soft power-diplomacy, trade incentives, cultural and educational exchange opportunities, and other techniques-to project a benign national image, position itself as a model of social and economic success, and develop stronger international alliances. Drawing on years of experience tracking China's policies in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa, Joshua Kurlantzick reveals how China has wooed the world with a "charm offensive" that has largely escaped the attention of American policy makers. Beijing's new diplomacy has altered the political landscape in Southeast Asia and far beyond, changing the dynamics of China's relationships with other countries. China also has worked to take advantage of American policy mistakes, Kurlantzick contends. In a provocative conclusion, he considers a future in which China may be the first nation since the Soviet Union to rival the United States in international influence.
This book examines the concept of new public diplomacy against empirical data derived from three country case studies, in order to offer a systematic assessment of policy and practice in the early 21st century.