The Rhetoric of Soft Power: Public Diplomacy in Global Contexts provides a comparative assessment of public diplomacy and strategic communication initiatives in order to portray how Joseph Nyes notion of soft power has translated into context-specific strategies of international influence. The book examines four casesJapan, Venezuela, China, and the United Statesto illuminate the particular significance of culture, foreign publics, and communication technologies for the foreign policy ambitions of each country.
This study explores the notion of soft power as a set of theoretical arguments about power, and as a reflection of how nation-states perceive what is an increasingly necessary perspective on international relations in an age of ubiquitous global communication flows and encroaching networks of non-state actors. Through an analysis of policy discourse, public diplomacy initiatives, and related programs of strategic influence, soft power in each case represents a localized set of assumptions about the requirements of persuasion, the relevance of foreign audiences to state goals, and the perception of what counts as a soft power resource. This timely analysis provides an unprecedented comparative investigation of the relationship between soft power and public diplomacy.
Craig Hayden is assistant professor of international communication at the School of International Service at American University. He has taught at the University of Virginias Department of Media Studies and at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. Craig was named a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy in 2009. He blogs at the International Media Argument Project (www.intermap.org).
Hayden (American Univ.) offers a welcome, much-needed analysis of what has become one of the most discussed concepts in international relations--soft power. Joseph S. Nye's concept of soft power has gained much attention in recent years, yet a thl£J
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