Conceptual Politics in Practice

Stockholm Studies in International Relations 2020:3 Stephanie Christine Winkler Conceptual Politics in Practice

How Soft Power Changed the World

Stephanie Christine Winkler Conceptual Politics in Practice

Stephanie Christine Winkler is a researcher at Stockholm University's Department of Economic History, and also affiliated with the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and the Swedish Defence University

ISBN 978-91-7911-342-1 ISSN 2003-1343

Department of Economic History and International Relations

Doctoral Thesis in International Relations at Stockholm University, Sweden 2020

Conceptual Politics in Practice How Soft Power Changed the World Stephanie Christine Winkler Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations at Stockholm University to be publicly defended on Friday 11 December 2020 at 14.00 in Nordenskiöldsalen, Geovetenskapens hus, Svante Arrhenius väg 12.

Abstract Concepts are a key feature of academic research and international politics. Despite the fact that interpreting, classifying and communicating the world through concepts has far-reaching social and political consequences, their various roles and complex dynamics remain poorly understood in International Relations (IR). Instead of disregarding concepts, conflating them with other cognitive terms such as norms, or obsessing about their ability to scientifically capture reality, this dissertation builds on the emerging field of critical concept studies (CSS), which understands concepts as open and contestable interpretive devices that observers use to make sense of the world, often to steer political thought and action. In line with CSS, this dissertation refers to these political struggles as “conceptual politics”—the ways in which actors coin, use, promote, revisit and fight over concepts in anticipation of performative effects—and argues that it constitutes a key facet of politics. The field of CSS is mainly theoretically oriented, and few empirical studies address conceptual politics in practice. The purpose of this study is to further the field of CSS by expanding the notion of conceptual politics. It does so first by developing three issues that previous research presumes are important but does not investigate empirically: the dynamics of feedback loops, or interaction effects between interpretations of the world and the world; reification, the treatment of concepts as if they were real rather than human-made interpretive devices; and travel, the movement of concepts across time, levels and space. Next, the dissertation develops an analytical framework capable of tracing conceptual politics empirically. The dissertation seeks to answer the following key questions: How can we study conceptual politics? How do feedback loops, reification and travel shape conceptual politics? What are the consequences of conceptual politics for world politics? Taking an abductive approach, an analytical framework is developed as a “thinking tool” to trace conceptual politics in practice. Based on a case study design and interpretivist process-tracing, the soft power concept—the ability to affect others through attraction—is subjected to a critical concept analysis of its travel from the US to Japan and China and back to the US again. Although soft power has emerged as a key concern in IR and international politics, the concept and its consequences remain poorly understood. This dissertation finds that the soft power concept has become part and parcel of various political struggles over the “correct” interpretation of reality and the way to act on it. The findings reveal the importance of: continuous efforts to ensure soft power’s position in IR; the concept’s common treatment as if it was real; the interaction effects between its various roles (e.g. social fact and interpretive, foreign policy and socialising tool), which have shaped how “power” and “power shifts” are understood and acted on in international politics; and the emergence of new translations and discrete sites of conceptual politics that rely on, exploit, challenge or even ignore the original concept. From the analysis, a more complete picture of conceptual politics emerges that underscores many dynamics and effects that would otherwise be missed, and advances our understanding of the role of concepts and the consequences of conceptual politics in IR.

Keywords: academia/policy nexus, alliance, China, concepts, critical concept studies, decline, feedback loops, interaction effects, International Relations, Japan, power shift, power, reification, rise, science, security, sharp power, smart power, soft power, travel, United States.

Stockholm 2020 http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-186215

ISBN 978-91-7911-342-1 ISBN 978-91-7911-343-8 ISSN 2003-1343

Department of Economic History and International Relations

Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm

CONCEPTUAL POLITICS IN PRACTICE

Stephanie Christine Winkler

Conceptual Politics in Practice

How Soft Power Changed the World

Stephanie Christine Winkler ©Stephanie Christine Winkler, Stockholm University 2020

ISBN print 978-91-7911-342-1 ISBN PDF 978-91-7911-343-8 ISSN 2003-1343

Cover art ©Kajsa Hammargård Portrait ©Niklas Sagrén

Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2020 Stockholm Studies in International Relations

2018:1 Jakobsson, Elin. Norm Acceptance in the International Community: A study of disaster risk reduction and climate-induced migration. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2018.

2019:1 Bengtsson, Louise. Health security in the European Union. Agents, practices and materialities of securitization. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2019.

2020:1 Silberstein, Daniel. Humanity Washed Ashore: Visual representations of practices, people, and the borders of Europe. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2020.

2020:2 Rosengren, Emma. Gendering Nuclear Disarmament: Identity and Disarmament in Sweden during the Cold War. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2020.

Contents

Acknowledgements v

List of Figures ix

List of Tables xi

I Introduction, theory and methods xiii

1 Introduction 15 1.1 Research problems, aims and question ...... 15 1.1.1 Concepts in International Relations ...... 15 1.1.2 Critical concept studies ...... 16 1.1.3 Research questions ...... 18 1.2 Research design ...... 18 1.2.1 Case study design ...... 18 1.2.2 The soft power concept ...... 19 1.3 Key findings ...... 22 1.4 Contributions and roadmap ...... 25

2 The promise of a critical concept analysis 27 2.1 Literature review: Concepts in International Relations ..... 27 2.1.1 Approaches to concepts in International Relations ... 27 2.1.2 Critical concept studies ...... 31 2.2 Conceptual politics ...... 37 2.2.1 Feedback loops ...... 40 2.2.2 Reification ...... 43 2.2.3 Travelling ...... 45 2.3 Analysing conceptual politics in practice ...... 51 2.3.1 Dynamics of conceptual politics ...... 51 2.3.2 Feedback loops and reification ...... 57 2.3.3 Travelling ...... 57 2.4 A critical concept analysis of the soft power concept ..... 60

3 Research design 63 3.1 Ontology, epistemology, methodology and politics ...... 63 3.2 Research strategies ...... 68 3.2.1 Case study design: Tracing the soft power concept .. 68 3.2.2 Research process ...... 72 3.3 Material ...... 74 3.3.1 Academic texts ...... 75 3.3.2 Wider debate ...... 78 3.3.3 Official material ...... 79 3.3.4 Interview material ...... 80 3.3.5 Participant observation ...... 81

II Empirical Analysis 83

4 Mapping the phenomenon of soft power 85 4.1 Academic publications ...... 85 4.1.1 English: WOS Database ...... 85 4.1.2 Japanese: the CiNii database ...... 91 4.1.3 Chinese: the CNKI database ...... 92 4.2 Newspapers ...... 95 4.3 Conclusion ...... 99

5 A concept is “born”: Soft power in the US in the 1990s 101 5.1 Concept entrepreneurs ...... 102 5.1.1 Joseph Nye ...... 103 5.1.2 Other concept entrepreneurs ...... 105 5.2 Means of conceptual politics ...... 106 5.2.1 Contesting decline ...... 107 5.2.2 Understanding power ...... 111 5.2.3 Coining soft power ...... 113 5.2.4 Solving decline ...... 114 5.2.5 Evoking emotions ...... 115 5.2.6 Promoting soft power ...... 116 5.3 Reification and Feedback loops ...... 117 5.3.1 Soft power as a concept prone to reification ...... 118 5.3.2 Micro-feedback loops: soft power shifts decline .... 119 5.3.3 Macro-feedback loops: Public diplomacy and the engagement policy ...... 121 5.4 Conclusion ...... 126 6 America, get smart: Soft power comes off age 129 6.1 Concept entrepreneurs ...... 129 6.1.1 Joseph Nye ...... 129 6.1.2 Other concept entrepreneurs ...... 131 6.2 Means of conceptual politics ...... 133 6.2.1 Solving America’s problems ...... 134 6.2.2 Reinvigorating soft power ...... 136 6.2.3 Beyond Nye: new sites of conceptual politics ..... 142 6.3 Reification and feedback loops ...... 144 6.3.1 Micro-reflexive loops ...... 146 6.3.2 Macro reflexive loops ...... 148 6.4 Travelling ...... 155 6.4.1 Types of travel ...... 155 6.4.2 Dynamics of conceptual politics ...... 157 6.5 Conclusion ...... 160

7 Japan, be cool: between allied responsibility and soft decline 163 7.1 Soft power travels to Japan ...... 165 7.2 Concept entrepreneurs ...... 167 7.2.1 Nye in Japan ...... 167 7.2.2 Beyond Nye: The ubiquity of Japan’s concept entrepreneurs ...... 169 7.3 Means of conceptual politics: Establish Japan’s soft power potential ...... 173 7.4 Reification ...... 178 7.5 Feedback loops ...... 178 7.5.1 Japan as a cool and benign soft power ...... 178 7.5.2 Japan as an allied soft power ...... 183 7.5.3 Japans as a responsible and proactive soft power ... 187 7.6 Travelling ...... 192 7.6.1 The emergence of new sites of conceptual politics .. 192 7.6.2 Responding to soft power’s travel abroad ...... 194 7.7 Conclusion ...... 198

8 China, be soft: between discourse traps and soft rise 201 8.1 Soft power travels to China ...... 203 8.2 Concept entrepreneurs ...... 207 8.2.1 Joseph Nye ...... 207 8.2.2 Beyond Nye ...... 208 8.3 Means of conceptual politics ...... 211 8.3.1 Promoting soft power, steering China’s rise ...... 212 8.3.2 Contesting soft power and avoiding the discourse trap 222 8.3.3 Sinocising soft power ...... 225 8.4 Feedback loops ...... 229 8.4.1 The emergence of the government as a concept entrepreneur ...... 230 8.4.2 Soft power as a catalyst for new sites of conceptual politics ...... 232 8.5 Reification ...... 235 8.6 Conclusion ...... 237

9 Offspring: The emergence of the sharp power concept 239 9.1 Conceptual politics ...... 240 9.1.1 Concept entrepreneurs ...... 241 9.1.2 Means and sites of conceptual politics ...... 243 9.2 Reification ...... 255 9.3 Feedback loops ...... 256 9.3.1 Micro loops ...... 256 9.3.2 Macro loops ...... 261 9.4 Conclusions ...... 267

III Conclusion 269

10 Conclusion 271 10.1 Key findings and contributions ...... 271 10.1.1 The soft power concept, power shifts, and the US, Japan and China ...... 271 10.1.2 Critical concept studies ...... 276 10.1.3 International relations ...... 283 10.2 Assessing the thinking tools and the way forward ...... 286

IV Appendix cclxxxix

Swedish Summary ccxci

Acronyms ccxcv

Interviews ccxcix

Legislative documents cccv

Bibliography cccix Acknowledgements

Just like concepts travel across time, space and contexts, this PhD journey has sent me across the world, and on the way, I have made many encounters that have changed me and my project for the better. I have been looking forward to writing this section for the last years as I accumulated a profound sense of gratitude. First and foremost, I want to thank my supervisor Linus Hagström whose expertise, guidance and commitment to my project and me have gone beyond anything I could ever have expected. Linus has created a safe environment to nurture my ideas, and his profound belief in my abilities has provided me with the confidence needed to complete the dissertation, while his unfaltering con- viction in his abilities to participate-observe Japanese housewives has taught me that anything is possible. I would also like to thank my other supervisor, Mark Rhinard, for his trust and encouragement, and especially his pragmatism that have helped me make some tough choices exactly at the right time—and for showing me that we remain our parents’ children even as we chair panels. Especially as I was revising the dissertation and the deadline breathed down my neck, their prompt and helpful advice has secured the submission of the dissertation on time. I very much appreciated the assistance and support of my colleagues at the Department of Economic History and International Relations at Stockholm University. Many have read my work closely over the years, and provided me with great feedback. I want to especially thank Stefan Borg for his invaluable feedback and his uplifting enthusiasm. Lisa Dellmuth and Niklas Bremberg (from the Department of Political Science) have discussed my work at 50% and 80% respectively. My PhD companions have been an invaluable source of academic, social and emotional support over the last few years. Kajsa Ham- margård has not only drawn the cover to this dissertation, but has also taught me the importance of drinking enough water, and was my partner in crime when it came to obsessing about Bert and his offspring. Ece Kural, Louise Bengts- son, Jonatan Stiglund, Sarah Backman, Elin Jakobsson and Sebastian Larsson provided useful and pragmatic advice at various points in time, and I especially enjoyed exploring Toronto, San Francisco, Baltimore, Prague or DC with them. I also had the great pleasure of working with the Swedish Institute of In- ternational Affairs where current and former colleagues (especially from the Asia programme) have been an unrelenting source of expertise and support. Karl Gustafsson, Nicola Nymalm, Björn Jerdén, Wrenn Yennie Lindgren, Tim Rühlig, Nicholas Olczak, Anna-Karin Jonsson, Mikael Weissmann, Lucia Ar- dovini and Sebastian Åsberg have provided countless insightful suggestions to further develop my work, and have moreover helped me navigate (Swedish) academia, pushed me to dive into freezing rivers and manage late-night fire evacuations. I am also particularly indebted to Nina Krickel-Choi who in between philosophy and e-sports found time to read and comment on most of my chapters, which helped me a great deal in ordering and presenting my ideas. The Swedish Defence University and the Department of Security, Strategy and Leadership kindly hosted me for the duration of this project. I would like to thank especially Tom Lundborg for the opportunity to develop my own course, as well as my PhD companions, Anna Hammarstedt and Rasmus Andrén for their surprising academic and palaeontological crushes that lightened up my days. Akinbode Fasakin and Costan Barzanje. Jelena Radoman, Sami Siddiq, Frank Esparraga and Mässen have also provided much necessary company and encouragement. I am also especially grateful to Nguyen Ha for her close reading of many of my chapters, her excitement for my work and obsession with Swabian cuisine. Finally, I would also like to thank my former colleagues at Leiden University. Besides being very helpful throughout the application process for the PhD programme, they have been a great source of knowledge and advice over the last few years, and I am especially grateful to Carina van de Wetering, as well as Marat Markert, Timothy de Zeeuw and Jonathan Attey. I also had the great pleasure of studying with teachers who left a lasting impact on my curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Lindsay Black has not only introduced me to the world of International Relations, he has also been a great mentor and encouraged me to apply for the PhD programme in Sweden. Sheila Jasanoff, her hospitality and her “Science, Power and Politics” has opened a whole new world for me. Stefano Guzzini’s “Philosophy of Science” and specifically our discussions around the “non-paper” were also tremendously useful for developing this project. During many seminars and workshops, I have also received invaluable feedback and support for various aspects of my project from Steve Chan, Chiung-Chiu Huang, Oliver Turner, Astrid Nordin, Kosuke Shimizu, Pan Chengxin, Ernils Larsson, Dirk Nabers, Patrick Jackson, Steven F. Jackson, Geoffrey Wiseman, Zhang Qingmin, Matthew Evangelista, George Yin and the late Lili Ling. My research has been made possible by the generous financial support of the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation (MMW 2013.0162). In addition, I am grateful for various grants that enabled my fieldwork and visiting scholarships, specifically, the Forum for Asian Studies, the Theodor Adel- swärds Minne Forskraftstiftelsen and the Rhodin and Bagge donation scholarship. The NIAS SUPRA Nordic Scholarship allowed me to stay two weeks in Copenhagen at the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies where I could pitch my dissertation project for the first time. Finally, I also benefitted from various travel grants from the Stiftelsen Wallenbergsstiftelsens Fond, the Vitterhet- sakademien, the World International Studies Committee and the International Studies Association. In Japan, I gratefully acknowledge the German Institute for Japan Studies for providing me with a workplace and logistical support. I would also like to thank Abe Noriaki and Enoshita Kenji for their invaluable support in arranging interviews, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan for inviting me to the Mirai programme. In China, my gratitude goes to Peking University and Zha Daojiong for hosting me as a visiting scholar. Alexander Badenheim has been extremely helpful to navigate Beijing, and it astonishes me that a decade has passed since we hovered over Genghis Khan’s heirs! Pas- cal Abb, Nadine Godehardt and Paul Kohlenberg were so kind to share contacts with me although we haven’t even met. My dormmate Oyuna Baldakova has shared months of excitement and occasional frustration with me. Finally, my thanks also extend to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China for inviting me to participate and observe a study tour to Sichuan. In the US, I am very grateful for Mike Mochizuki and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs for inviting me as a visiting scholar and helping me make the most out of my stay in Washing- ton D.C. In addition, Richard Haddock, Miriam Grinberg as well as my office mates Daisuke Minami and Kitt McAuliffe have made me feel very welcome. My thanks also extend to Craig Hayden who was so kind to help me arrange interviews in the US State Department. At Harvard University, I am indebted to Alastair Ian Johnston and the Department of Government for their hospitality and advice. I am also grateful for the Program on Science, Technology and So- ciety and especially its fellows for countless thought-provoking conversations. In addition, thanks are also in place for the “Writing Oasis” and its members— especially Louis Gerdelan—as they have provided daily structure, company and accountability first physically and since March also digitally. Suzanne Smith from the Writing Center provided great advice on structuring the first few chapters. Several people also helped me with language-related issues. An- drew Mash has meticulously edited the dissertation, Emma Rosengren came to my rescue with the Swedish summary while Chia-Yuhn Wu and Hanae Iimori have helped me with Chinese and Japanese respectively. I also want to thank my families for their unwavering trust and support in me. My German family and friends have patiently listened to many hours of my musings and happily nodded along. Especially my parents have always been a source of inspiration and encouragement. They sent me to China when I was 15 and knew nothing, and while I still feel that way, this journey has fed years of atonement and curiosity. Lena, Jessi, Anna, Andreas and Christa, thank you for being such a great help during the last few years and months. My Dutch family has likewise been exceptional. Paranymph Mies, Jackie, my not-so-little-anymore brother Vinnie, Bert, Ok en Ien—thank you for your unfaltering support and love. Thanks should also go to my Viggbyholm family and especially Su, Marvin, Ross, Rachel and the others who have kept me sane over the last few months of finishing up my PhD in the middle of a global pandemic. Above fall, my husband Raoul has been my rock throughout the last years. With astonishing patience, humour and compassion, he has dealt with my many big and small dramas, broken down the project into manageable bits and pieces, and made sure that I get enough sleep, daylight and distractions. Thank you doesn’t really cut it. Last but not least, my heartfelt gratitude extends to all the soft power concept entrepreneurs who not only have been extremely kind with their time, but without whom this project would simply not have been possible. List of Figures

2.1 Summary of literature review ...... 39 2.2 Analytical framework (1) ...... 58 2.3 Analytical framework (2) ...... 60

4.1 Annual growth of soft power publications in WOS dataset .. 86 4.2 Publications per subject category in WOS dataset ...... 87 4.3 Keywords network of WOS dataset ...... 89 4.4 Annual growth of soft power publications in CiNii dataset .. 94 4.5 Annual growth of soft power publications in CNKI dataset .. 95 4.6 Keywords network of CNKI dataset ...... 97 4.7 Annual growth of soft power news articles (English) ..... 98 4.8 Annual growth of soft power news articles (Japanese) ..... 98 4.9 Annual growth of soft power news articles (Chinese) ..... 98

5.1 Nye’s publications 1990–2017 ...... 117

6.1 Soft power 30: Objective sub-indices ...... 154 6.2 Soft power 30: Weighting of subjective sub-indices ...... 154 6.3 Soft power 30: Ranking ...... 154

8.1 Occurence of phrases in Chinese books ...... 222 8.2 Soft power as a discourse trap ...... 226

9.1 Co-occurrence of “united front” and “soft power” in factiva 2007 to 2019 ...... 259

List of Tables

2.1 Guiding questions ...... 62

4.1 Main information about soft power in WOS dataset (1990-2019) 86 4.2 Most productive sources in WOS dataset ...... 87 4.3 Most productive author in WOS dataset ...... 88 4.4 Most cited author in WOS dataset ...... 88 4.5 Most frequently cited manuscripts in soft power WOS dataset 90 4.6 Most productive country in WOS dataset ...... 90 4.7 Most common keywords in WOS dataset ...... 90 4.8 Main information about soft power in CiNii dataset (1992–2019) 93 4.9 Most common words in title in CiNii dataset ...... 93 4.10 Main information about soft power in CNKI dataset (1991–2019) 95 4.11 Most productive sources in CNKI dataset ...... 95 4.12 Most productive authors in CNKI dataset ...... 95 4.13 Most frequently cited soft power publication in CNKI dataset . 96

5.1 Nye’s books ...... 117

6.1 Composition of Nye’s publications ...... 131

7.1 References to soft power in Japanese ministries ...... 179

Part I

Introduction, theory and methods

1. Introduction

1.1 Research problems, aims and question 1.1.1 Concepts in International Relations Concepts are a key feature of international politics. We rely on a plethora of concepts as mental abstractions from the world to interpret, classify, label and communicate the things around us. Since we need to know what we are talking about before we can act, concepts have important social and political consequences. The concept of sovereignty is a good example. Whether sovereignty is understood as a divine right to rule, effective control over territory, international recognition or a responsibility to protect the population makes a profound difference for millions of people in states as diverse as South Sudan, Taiwan or Libya. Another example is the concept of security. Whether security can be applied primarily to states, the natural world or humanity has concrete implications for the formulation of policy priorities. Despite these potentially far-reaching consequences, the phenomenon of concepts—that is, their emergence, dissemination, demise and consequences— is poorly understood and understudied in the discipline of International Rela- tions (IR). For many, concepts simply emerge because they are well formulated, because there is a demand for them or because they are deemed useful by observers of world politics (Checkel 1997; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Gold- stein and Keohane 1993; P. A. Hall 1993; Risse-Kappen 1994). Unfortunately, such scholarship seldom distinguishes between different cognitive terms. Unlike norms, ideas or theories, concepts do not tell us how the world ought to be or how things hang together: they tell us what things are. Consequently, much scholarship overlooks the dynamics that are unique to concepts.1 Other scholars find concepts to be little more than inevitable mental shortcuts that pluck out some aspects of the modern world, but do so with little care for ac- curacy. As the “junk food” of the theoretical world, they are easily portable, deployable and can even go “viral”. Ultimately, however, they lack nutritional

1 As I argue in more detail in chapter 2, this is not to argue that concepts cannot function as ideas or norms, but it is important to recognise that they are first and foremost abstractions from reality.

15 value, for they do not represent reality well. Others see concepts as scientific, value-neutral, parsimonious and accurate abstractions from reality that serve as analytical tools and instruments of social science research. While this makes concepts appear crucial to the successful conduct of scientific inquiry, they are largely seen as representing reality rather than interfering with it (Gerring 2012; Goertz 2006; Kellstedt and Whit- ten 2009; Mair 2008; Oppenheim 1981; Sartori 1984). In such cases, there is little need to focus on concepts as the main object of empirical study.

1.1.2 Critical concept studies By contrast, the emerging field of critical concept studies places the focus on the phenomenon of concepts as part and parcel of international politics. Intro- duced and discussed at length in chapter 2, this is the field of study with which this dissertation primarily engages.2 Critical concept studies is premised on an understanding of concepts as open, contestable and often contested interpretive devices that observers use to make sense of the world, in an aim to steer political thought and thus to try to channel political action. Critical concept studies emphasises that concepts enable and constrain political possibilities, and are therefore performative and can become social facts. Although concepts such as the state would cease to exist without human imagination, they are often mistaken for empirical objects, and treated as if they were real rather than something abstract and man-made. Concepts are thus prone to reify. Finally, critical concept studies holds that concepts are not static but subject to feedback loops in that the performance of a concept as an analytical tool continuously interacts with its performance as a social fact. These dynamics mean that concepts constitute a site of political struggle over how to understand reality and how to act on it. This dissertation refers to such struggles as conceptual politics, that is, the ways in which actors coin, use, promote, revisit and fight over concepts in anticipation of performative effects (based on Connolly 1974; Hobson and Kurki 2012). In a nutshell, rather than treating concepts as any other cognitive item, disregarding them or trying to enhance their ability to capture reality, critical concept studies centre on the diverse roles that concepts play in the world as well as the consequences of such roles. In so doing, critical concept studies underscores the fact that concepts are not a normal, or an inevitable or apolitical phenomenon, but a site of politics that warrants attention.

2 While it shares many concerns, the critical concept literature is relatively diverse. Among the key studies relied on in this dissertation are Berenskoetter (2016a), Bueger (2014), Connolly (1974), Guzzini (2005), P. T. Jackson (2006), and Levine (2012).

16 Despite such advances, previous scholarship has either been overwhelmingly theoretical in its orientation or concerned with the broad global discourses around concepts. Few studies have empirically investigated the phenomenon of conceptual politics in depth and where scholars have done so, their work has primarily revolved around a single concept without considering the broader implications for the general phenomenon of conceptual politics. A clear example is the vibrant field of Critical Security Studies (CSS), which has successfully challenged the meaning and consequences of security but unfortunately shown little interest in other concepts (Fierke 2015; Peoples and Vaughan-Williams 2014). Similarly, democracy scholars have excelled at showing the political nature of the contestation around the concept of democracy, but not probed further into the wider phenomenon (Hobson and Kurki 2012; Ish-Shalom 2013). For these reasons, the picture that emerges of conceptual politics is relatively simplistic and misses important aspects of conceptual politics in practice. Three specific shortcomings are revealed by this dissertation. First and foremost, critical concept scholarship typically presumes the existence of feedback loops but does not empirically investigate how such feedback effects play out in concrete ways. I show how it therefore misses how much practical work goes into the making and dissemination of a concept, at the same time as feedback effects enable and constrain the further practice of conceptual politics. Second, although some critical scholars emphasise the issue of reification, it is typically treated as a methodological problem that needs to be avoided. This overlooks how the treatment of concepts as if they were real further strengthens feedback effects and is therefore part and parcel of the phenomenon of concepts. Third, although some scholars are interested in the circulation of concepts, there is little reckoning with the travelling of concepts as they move across time, fields and space. This dissertation suggests that travelling complicates the notion of conceptual politics as new translations emerge that might struggle with, challenge, subvert, exploit or ignore the original concept, or can often become their own sites of conceptual politics and therefore interact with the original context. The overarching purpose of this study is therefore to further the field of critical concept studies by expanding the notion of conceptual politics through a better recognition of feedback loops, reification and travel. Due to the theoretical orientation of most previous work, a second aim is to develop an analytical framework that is able to empirically trace conceptual politics.3

3 I discuss what it means to develop an analytical framework while holding a critical perspective on concepts in more depth in subsequent chapters.

17 1.1.3 Research questions Expressed as research questions, this dissertation thus seeks answers to the questions: How can we study conceptual politics? How do feedback loops, reification and travel shape conceptual politics? And what are the consequences of conceptual politics for world politics? To answer these questions, chapter 2 engages in a critical discussion of the existing literature on concepts with a particular focus on how feedback loops, reification and travel shape conceptual politics. Based on these exercises, chapter 2 assembles an analytical framework that can be leveraged to empirically investigate conceptual politics. To investigate conceptual politics in practice, this dissertation advances an in-depth case study of the soft power concept in the context of the United States, Japan and China. In so doing, the picture of conceptual politics that emerges through these exercises will fully expose the phenomenon of concepts.

1.2 Research design 1.2.1 Case study design Since this dissertation operates within a monist ontology that understands the world as mind-dependent, I rely on the analytical framework developed in chapter 2 as a heuristic device that helps me organize empirical observations into systematic facts. The purpose of the resulting analytical narrative is to be instrumentally useful and reflexive of the overarching context in which scientific research itself unfolds, rather than provide an exhaustive and “scientific” account of the world (Guzzini 2013c; P. T. Jackson 2011; Leander 2008). Bearing this in mind, the dissertation relies on a single case study of one concept to put the analytical framework to work. I also use interpretivist process tracing. The emphasis on interpretivism means tracing actors’ specific interpretations of reality rather than reality itself. In particular, this approach is interested in the “interaction effects of such an interpretation with the events themselves” (Guzzini 2013b, p. 124). Given my ontological and epistemological commitments, the overall ambition of the case study is with generality rather than generalizability. Hence, while the purpose of the case study design is to be able to reflect on the broader issues of conceptual politics beyond the single case, this should not be mistaken for a (positivist) ambition to build a theory of conceptual politics, derive hypotheses and subsequently test them. That said, any number of concepts could reasonably be subjected to a critical concept analysis, including key IR concepts such as security, sovereignty and hegemony. The question of case selection is analysed in more detail in

18 chapter 3. To engage in detailed empirical analysis, it is advisable to choose a concept that has been around for a shorter period and is narrower in scope. Examples of such concepts might be the Responsiblity to Protect (R2P), human security, normative power, failed state, resilience, rules-based international order or the Thucydides’s trap. All these are examples of contested concepts that were coined some time in the past three decades and that have travelled widely across time, space and fields. Moreover, all these concepts have important social and political consequences. For example, acceptance of a re- conceptualization of sovereignty in the form of the R2P concept requires a state to act on behalf of the population or another state if its own state fails to do so.

1.2.2 The soft power concept This dissertation takes the soft power concept as its central case study. Soft power is typically defined as the “ability to affect others through the co-optive means of framing the agenda, persuading, and eliciting positive attraction in order to obtain preferred outcomes”. It was developed in the late 1980s by Harvard Professor Joseph Nye (2011, p. 21). To further narrow down the empirical focus of this dissertation, the study of soft power was conducted through three sub-case studies of the phenomenon in the US, Japan and China.4 Several factors make soft power an appropriate case for study. First, in terms of theoretical considerations, the concept is likely to offer new theoretical insights on the broader phenomenon of conceptual politics. Soft power constitutes a contested interpretive device through which observers try to make sense of the world and seek to steer political thought and action. While it was originally developed as an analytical construct to draw attention to a phenomenon in the world (why the US was Bound to Lead as the sole remaining superpower for the foreseeable future (Nye 1990a)), it has come to be accepted as self-evident and “real”, while a plethora of observers and diplomats find it extremely important to “invest” in soft power as if it were anything other than an invention of Joseph Nye’s mind. In addition, the performance of soft power as a social fact of politics and an analytical construct suggests the existence of feedback loops between these different levels. Moreover, the soft power concept is also a key example of a concept that has travelled widely. Soft power is therefore ideal for thinking through how reification, feedback loops and travel shape the dynamics of conceptual politics.

4 Besides making the scope more manageable, it also makes empirical sense as while soft power is a worldwide phenomenon, the conceptual politics around the concept have been especially fierce in the context of these states. Chapter 5 provides a broad overview of the soft power concept’s dissemination that further strengthens the case selection.

19 Second, there are also methodological considerations, for the soft power concept is an appropriate pilot study to assess how helpful the analytical framework is in exploring the dynamics of conceptual politics in practice. Third, in terms of practical consideration, the soft power concept was coined relatively recently, which makes an in-depth analysis more feasible as the concept is narrower in scope than most of the big IR concepts and access to material, and especially the people involved in conceptual politics, is also possible. Finally, soft power is itself an intriguing concept. Originally “scribbled out on […] a kitchen table” in Massachusetts in the late 1980s (Nye 2017b, p. 2), the concept has since appeared at nearly every corner of the world and been particularly popular in China, Japan and the US. Academic interest in the concept is staggering. If the number of hits on Google Scholar is taken as an indication, nine articles on soft power have been published on any given day in the past 30 years. Soft power has also arrived in the public sphere. In addition to the more than 62000 newspaper articles published in English between 1990 and 2019,5 as well as a plethora of think tank events and an in-depth discussion on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight in 2018, the concept was even the focus of an award-winning musical: Soft Power - A Play With a Musical (Hwang and Tesori 2018). Soft power has also been influential in the world of politics. In 2017, for instance, the Communist Party of China (CPC) wrote the pursuit of soft power into its constitution (CPC 2017, p. 6). In addition, to “demonstrate the soft power of Japan”, its then prime minister Abe Shinzo dressed as the popular video game character “Super Mario” at the closing ceremony of the Rio Summer Olympics in 2016 (Abe cited in Takamoto 2016). In the US, soft power became a guiding diplomatic principle of the Obama administration, and Hillary Clinton noted that a major accomplishment as Secretary of State was how she “brought power to US leadership” (Clinton 2015).6 Yet, despite all of this attention, the phenomenon of soft power—its emergence, reification and feedback loops, and its profound social and political consequences—is still poorly understood. Most common is the assumption that soft power emerged because politicians and scholars felt that the concept was useful to them. Joseph Nye himself embraces this argument (I#06),7 and it is also common in research on Japan’s and China’s pursuit of soft power.8

5 Query for “soft power” in all news sources listed on the database Factiva. 6 Smart power is a continuation of the soft power concept and a consequence of feedback loops (chapter 7). 7 The interview index can be found in the annex. 8 For Japan, scholars like to point out that soft power became useful because the country has little hard power given its constitutional restrictions (T. U. Berger 2018; Fukushima 2011). For China, soft power is said to be useful because it allows China to diffuse and mitigate the risk that its rise might be perceived as threatening (Lai 2012; H. Wang and Y. C. Lu

20 However, accounts that reduce the success of soft power to its usefulness fail to recognise much of the discursive and disciplinary work required to make a concept “fit” with the world, an aspect that critical concept studies underscores (P. T. Jackson 2006; Laffey and Weldes 1997; Neumann 1999). The fact that Nye has published more than 40 separate scientific articles or books on soft power not only makes the usefulness argument unrealistic, but also has another noteworthy effect. Downplaying the agency and ultimate responsibility of actors that actively shape and promote concepts depoliticises the concept and gives the impression that soft power’s emergence in world politics was a normal and natural phenomenon. Another group of observers perceives soft power to be a typical example of a vacuous concept that became catchy because that is what vacuous concepts do, but that is also “unbearably light” (Layne 2010), a “banal afterthought” (Manor 2019) or “just nonsense from the start” (Shin 2020). For them, soft power does not constitute an important phenomenon that warrants attention. Others have started to recognise some aspects of the political nature of soft power as a concept. For some, soft power is a concept that has been well framed and marketed. Eriksson and Norman (2011) for instance emphasise Nye’s position as a Harvard professor, his framing skills and his access to policymakers as key components in the political utilisation of the concept in US politics. Their analysis provides a good starting point, even if their study is limited to the US academic/policy nexus. However, in addition to failing to account for the dynamics specific to concepts, such frameworks render actors all-powerful and able to manipulate concepts at will. As a result, little autonomous significance is left for concepts or other factors such as feedback loops to shape the arena of conceptual politics (for a similar argument, see Pautz 2011). Finally, some scholars understand soft power as a form of discourse that (re)produces identities and demarcates the boundaries of political life. Calla- han (2015) argues that China’s soft power discourse is a useful heuristic tool for understanding China’s identity dilemma. Similarly, Kiseleva (2015) suggests that Russia’s interest in soft power is linked to its great power identity and its ambiguous love-hate relationship with the West. In contrast to the perspective outlined above, actors are seen as produced by discourse rather than manipulating it (see also Hagström and Nordin 2020; Hagström and C. Pan 2020). While realising the political nature of soft power, such scholarship tends to downplay the role of agency and all the practical work required for the reproduction of a concept such as soft power. In addition, it also neglects the dynamics specific to concepts, which means that it overlooks how feedback loops, reification and the travel of the soft power concept both shaped the original site of concep-

2008).

21 tual politics and fuelled new sites of conceptual politics around the soft power concept. All of this means that previous research on soft power neglects the profound social and political consequences of the soft power concept. This is problematic, as a failure to analyse the soft power phenomenon in depth contributes to the assumption that soft power was an inevitable, natural, apolitical and largely inconsequential phenomenon. By contrast, a critical concept analysis of the soft power concept promises to illustrate how soft power has become a key site of conceptual politics with profound ramifications for the world. In essence, studying the phenomenon of soft power is theoretically meaningful, analytically feasible and empirically crucial, making the concept of soft power an ideal case study for examining how feedback loops, reification and travel shape conceptual politics and the consequences of conceptual politics for world politics. In other words, this dissertation treats the soft power concept as an intriguing case of a concept that speaks to the larger class of concepts in general. As such, the dissertation addresses the specific phenomenon of the concept of soft power, at the same time as it takes soft power as an invitation to take—and a laboratory for taking—a step back and think through the phenomenon of concepts.

1.3 Key findings By applying a critical concept analysis to the concept of soft power, this dissertation illustrates how soft power has assumed a plethora of different roles with important implications for world politics. Specifically, I show how such effects emerge as a consequence of the conceptual politics around the soft power concept, and in particular the dynamics of feedback loops, reification and travel. In principle, the evidence suggests that the soft power concept has taken on three decisive roles. First, as a consequence of conceptual politics, the soft power concept has assumed the role of a widespread interpretive device for making sense of the world that is shared by diverse sets of actors from academia, policymakers, practitioners and the general public all over the world. The further conceptual politics has advanced, the more such observers have begun to rely on soft power to make sense of, label and evaluate the concept of “power”. In so doing, the soft power concept has interacted with the concept of power in profound ways, altering answers to questions on the nature of power and what makes it legitimate or benign, or what forms of power exist and how such forms matter and relate to one another, but also who has power and how much. Thus, the concept of soft power has changed how other phenomena in world politics are

22 understood. Most importantly, it has interacted with the common understanding of “power shifts” and the consequences for global politics when states “rise” or “decline” (see especially chapter 5 and 6)9 Specifically, soft power has enabled a way of thinking about power shifts in which it is not necessary to be concerned about the decline of states such as the US and Japan in so far as it is clear that “decline” constitutes a multidimensional affair that also requires a decline in soft power, which will not be obvious as long as the US (chapter 5) and Japan (chapter 7) maintain their soft power lead and wield it as part of “smart power” (chapter 6). Similarly, the conceptual politics around soft power made China’s rise appear far less threatening because its rise came to be seen as dependent on rising across all dimensions of power, including soft power (chapter 8). For one thing, China still had a lot of catching up to do, but even if its soft power was catching up with other states’, this was a welcome development in so far as it implied that China was genuinely trying to become an attractive state. In a nutshell, for many observers the soft power concept has profoundly shaped their assessments of the dangers associated with power shifts. Second, the soft power concept has taken on the role of a policy tool that states and individuals deem important for a complex variety of reasons, ranging from legitimising existing domestic or international policies, window-dressing purposes, status-seeking, mitigating fears of decline or rise, forging support for policies, fighting over state resources or influencing contentious policy issues, to name just a few of the different policy contexts in which we shall encounter soft power. In a third role, which is a direct consequence of the interaction between the first two roles, soft power performs as a socialising tool, in that it incentivises states and non-state actors alike to first acknowledge the importance of soft power for international politics and then act accordingly (see especially chapters 7 and 8). Besides these broader points, this dissertation also finds that the reification, feedback loops and in particular the travel of the soft power concept has given rise to the emergence of various translations of soft power that have become concrete sites of conceptual politics in their own right. In the US, soft power has fuelled conceptual politics around the sources of the US victory in the Cold War, which in turn has provided a powerful justification for continued US engagement with the world even after the demise of the Soviet Union (discussed

9 Note here that these concepts are also best understood as open and contested concepts that constitute sites of conceptual politics. It is precisely for this reason that soft power interacts with them in such profound ways.

23 in chapter 5). Later, soft power’s travelling has given rise to a renewed focus on public diplomacy as a security issue in the fight against international terrorism (see chapter 6). In recent years, the soft power concept’s translations abroad have led to new rounds of conceptual politics that resulted in the appearance of a new concept. Referring to authoritarian influence operations, the “sharp power” concept has relied on as well as challenged the soft power concept, such as by insinuating that soft power has led to the misleading assumption that China’s rise could ever be a soft one and should be encouraged. In so doing, sharp power has played a significant role in the emerging perception in the US and elsewhere that China’s soft power pursuit constitutes a threat to liberal democracies. This in turn has become a driving force behind the increasingly antagonistic relations between the US and China, with likely profound effects in the near future (chapter 9). In Japan, the soft power concept has fuelled conceptual politics around the issues of Japan’s economic revitali- sation and culture, the US–Japan security alliance and Japan’s re-militarisation (chapter 7). In China, the concept has become a key tool for steering China’s peaceful and soft rise from outside and within the country, just as much as it has become a site of contestation of the hegemonic, US–centric IR discourse. Moreover, it has also fuelled the emergence of conceptual politics around the very nature and identity that makes China Chinese (chapter 8). These different sites of conceptual politics interact in complex ways. For example, if it had not been for the concerns about Japan’s rise in the 1980s, early conceptual politics in the US would not have challenged the rise of Japan as an attractive country. In Japan, however, contestation around the attractive features of its culture has emerged as a dynamic site of conceptual politics. Similarly, China’s embrace and subsequent translations of the soft power concept played a key role in Japan’s increasing contestation of China’s soft power by emphasising the democratic foundations of Japan’s soft power. The original site of soft power, the US, on the other hand, also had to deal with the emergence of a plethora of different soft power translations, which has contributed to a new round of conceptual politics that has ultimately driven a reconsideration of China’s rise that has seemingly culminated in an end to friendly relations with China. The findings of this dissertation illustrate the benefits of critical concept studies and the complexity of concepts as empirical phenomena. In addition, they also underscore what can be gained from an empirical investigation of conceptual politics and a specific focus on the issues of feedback loops, reification and travel. Crucially, the dissertation illustrates that such a focus provides a more advanced and complex understanding of the phenomenon of conceptual politics than was previously available.

24 1.4 Contributions and roadmap This dissertation makes four major contributions to the field of International Relations. First, the dissertation contributes to IR by illustrating the importance of understanding concepts as open, contested and contestable interpretive devices with profound social and political consequences. Rather than conflating concepts with terms such as ideas or norms, obsessing about the appropriate means of concept formation or discounting their relevance all together, I show how the phenomenon of concepts is neither normal, inevitable nor apolitical, but a site of politics proper that warrants our attention. Second, the dissertation makes a methodological contribution by developing a framework that makes it possible to study conceptual politics in practice. By engaging in a critical concept analysis of the concept of soft power, I illustrate how to leverage critical concept studies in concrete empirical research. The framework set out in this thesis is not specific to the case of soft power but can be applied to study a wide variety of concepts. Third, the dissertation contributes to the emerging field of critical concept studies by systematically introducing and critically discussing the strengths, particularities and blind spots of various critical concept approaches. Thus, this thesis brings together a wide variety of literature that is characterised by similar concerns but has thus far remained largely disconnected. This matters because it provides the first comprehensive overview of what promises to be a vibrant and relevant research field. Furthermore, the dissertation advances critical concept studies by firmly incorporating and analysing the notions of feedback loops, reification and travel into the investigation of conceptual politics. In so doing, a more nuanced picture of conceptual politics in practice emerges that is better able to capture the complexity of concepts. The fourth contribution of this dissertation is empirical, as it provides a better understanding of the phenomenon of soft power and the politics around this ubiquitous concept. In particular, it shows the concept’s profound involvement in the ongoing power shift between the USA, Japan and China. This is important as this shift is considered to be among the most severe security risks to global order, peace and prosperity, and is likely to remain a topic of central relevance in the coming years. Chapter 2 introduces the relevant literature on a critical approach to concept analysis and thinks through how the issues of feedback loops, reification and travel shape conceptual politics. Based on this exercise, I introduce the analytical framework for the dissertation. Chapter 3 discusses research design and the choices made in the study. The empirical analysis of the dissertation begins in chapter 4, where I approach the phenomenon of soft power from a birds-eye view. Chapters 5 to 9 trace the conceptual politics of the soft power concept

25 across the USA, Japan and China. Chapter 10 provides the conclusions of the dissertation.

26 2. The promise of a critical concept analysis

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, I engage with the existing literature on concepts and specific work that takes a critical approach to concepts. After assessing various approaches to studying concepts critically in Interna- tional Relations (IR), I introduce the conceptual politics approach. As will become clear, the issues of feedback loops, reification and travel require further elaboration. Based on this discussion, I examine how conceptual politics can be analysed in practice and what it means to subject the soft power concept to such an analysis.

2.1 Literature review: Concepts in International Rela- tions 2.1.1 Approaches to concepts in International Relations The first question that needs to be addressed is what a concept is. Any discussion of how to conceptualise concepts requires a definition of the category of “concepts” itself. This is no easy task as having to conceptualise concepts necessarily has implications for what conceptualisation entails. Moreover, if concepts answer “the most basic question of social science research: what are we talking about?” (Gerring 2012, p. 112), conceptualising concepts becomes a central but also one of the most divisive endeavours of social science research. To make matters even more complicated, if one embraces a central premise of the literature on concept analysis, Gallie’s (1955) argument that many concepts are “essentially contested”, the existence of fierce contestation regarding the appropriate meaning and application of the concept of a concept can also be expected. Scholars have vastly different understandings of what concepts are, the role they play in science and politics, what they do and how they are supposed to be used or studied. Nonetheless, despite the existence of much debate regarding their precise nature, there is some shared ground on concepts in the IR literature. Thus, most scholars agree with the common dictionary defini-

27 tion that a concept is “something conceived in the mind […] [,] an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular instances (Merriam-Webster 2019). Concepts are therefore the “building blocks of thoughts […] [and] crucial to such psychological processes as categorization, inference, memory, learning, and decision-making” (Margolis and Laurence 2011). Put differently, concepts are abstractions from as well as representations of reality. That is not to say that concepts are congruent with or accurate representations of the world out there, but they serve as tools for bringing order to a messy reality (Berenskoetter 2016b, p. 4). As such, concepts can be thought of as mediators between two “worlds”: (a) the material world, with its tangible items such as rivers, mountains and trees, but also social facts such as states, international organisations, regimes or feminism that are the result of human activity; and (b) the world of the mind, thereby upholding the “fragile correspondence between the two worlds” (Schedler 2011, p. 11).1

In terms of the different approaches to concepts in IR, the first distinction can be made between scholars who care about concepts and those who have a pejorative attitude to concepts.2 For the latter, concepts are little more than vacuous and often annoying mental shortcuts that float around with little consequence for world politics. As noted above, and as will be demonstrated time and again, soft power is often seen from this perspective, as a concept that is somehow still around even though it is useless as an analytical concept. My aim is to show that concepts are more dynamic and complex than such accounts suggest, and I therefore do not engage with this scholarship any further. A second distinction can be made between accounts that lump concepts together with norms, ideas or theories, and those that underscore the particularities of concepts. The former approach often focuses on the diffusion and impact of cognitive factors in IR (Checkel 1997; Goldstein and Keohane 1993; P. A. Hall 1993; Risse-Kappen 1994). While this approach advances some helpful tools for thinking about the actors in conceptual politics, such as norm entrepreneurs, the conflation of concepts with norms and ideas is

1 Note here that scholars have vastly different understandings of the nature of the relation between the mind and the world, and thus have vastly different understandings of how concepts precisely mediate between the two worlds. P. T. Jackson (2011, p. 35–36) refers to this as a distinction between scholars who “maintain a separation between researcher and world” (world-mind dualism) and those who maintain “that the researcher is a part of the world in such a way that speaking of ‘the world’ as divorced from the activities of making sense of the world is literally nonsensical” (world-mind monism). There is also an important difference between the social and the material world (discussed later in this chapter). I discuss my own position in more detail in chapter 3. 2 In discussing the literature in IR that speaks to the phenomenon of concepts, Figure 2.1 in the end of this section shows a schematic summary of the following literature review.

28 problematic. This conflation neglects important dynamics that are unique to concepts, glosses over their different purposes in intellectual and political life and misses how these cognitive items evoke different expectations and requirements. Thus, ideas tell us how things in the world hang together, and are typically associated with innovation and change, whereas norms tell us how the world ought to be, and are associated with morality and political activism.3 Concepts, on the other hand, are associated with scientificity and are supposed to reflect the world as it is rather than change it. For these reasons, I do not engage with the norms/ideas literature in much detail. Among scholars who regard concepts as relevant and generally acknowledge their particularities, it is possible to distinguish further between scholars who are interested in concepts as scientific instruments, and those who conceptualise concepts as interpretive devices. Scholars of the former approach, which is sometimes called the scientific or methodological approach to concept analysis, see concepts as scientific, value-neutral, parsimonious and accurate abstractions from reality that serve as analytical tools and instruments of social science research that “focus […] attention on some aspect of reality—to pluck it out from the ubiquity of extant data” (Gerring 2012, p. 125). Much of the literature revolves around advising students and colleagues on how to form concepts in a scientifically acceptable way, spiralling quickly into ever more complex technical guidelines on concept formation (for examples, see Ger- ring 2012; Goertz 2006; Kellstedt and Whitten 2009; Mair 2008; Oppenheim 1981; Sartori 1984).4 Although this literature receives much attention in IR and shapes common expectations about the standards and values of concepts, it is not relevant to this dissertation as I follow the latter group of scholars who conceptualise concepts as interpretive devices. Scholars who see concepts as interpretive devices—and this is the context in which this dissertation operates—are sceptical of such efforts to purge concepts of values and ambiguity, and challenge their treatment as scientific research tools (Dow 2013, 66). Such scholarship can be narrowed down still further but, in principle, there are several assumptions that scholars share and that serve as important starting points for this dissertation. First and foremost, such scholarship sees language in general and concepts specifically as both internally and externally complex, or as embedded in the

3 The literature on ideas and norms is wide-ranging and there are unsurprisingly many different definitions of these terms. Simply put, ideas can be defined as causal beliefs about the “connections between things and between people in the world” (Béland and R. H. Cox 2011, p. 1–2), while norms can be seen as “standards of conduct” (Sandholtz 2007, p. 3). For good discussions on ideas and norms, see Schmidt (2008) and Björkdahl (2002) respectively 4 For more, see Berenskoetter (2016b), Dow (2013), and Guzzini (2005).

29 “conceptual webs” that give meaning to them (Berenskoetter 2016a; Connolly 1974; Freeden 1998; Gallie 1955). As such, concepts require other concepts in order to obtain their meaning. The democracy concept, for instance, is difficult to describe without the concept of equality. As numerous democracy indicators remind us, however, this also means that observers can focus on different aspects that fall within and outside of a given concept and thereby further increase the contestation around the concept. Second, based on the notion that there is no “private language”—that people are born and socialised into language with its rules and conventions that need to be followed if they want to be comprehensible—scholars underscore the fact that concepts are intersubjective in nature and have histories. Therefore, neither language nor concepts are just reflective (epiphenomenal) of reality, but instead are arrived at through an inherently social process that comes with its own rules and conventions that are grounded in context and history. Concepts do not emerge out of thin air. They are not forged in the moment but are assembled from prior discourses and concepts. For this reason, many scholars interested in concepts as interpretive devices focus on tracing conceptual histories (i.e. tracing their genealogy) and are concerned to address what work (rhetoric and otherwise) and context allows concepts to become common sense (Hansen 2006, p. 16; Guzzini 2000, p. 164; Howarth 2013, p. 54; P. T. Jackson 2006, p. 24; 28; Wittgenstein 1968; Freeden 1998, p. 53; for a broader discussion of Wittgenstein in IR, see Fierke 2010). Third, such scholarship assumes that concepts can become so deeply entrenched (or solidified, normalised, stabilised, sutured, fixed in meaning, depending on the specific epistemological “flavour”) that people accept the concept as common sense (“Of course this is how the world is!”). The idea here is that one way of looking at the world becomes the favoured way and increasingly the only way of looking at it. All the work, context and contestation that was once necessary for the concept to attain such status is subsumed in the background. Effectively, the concept has been black-boxed. At the same time, however, critical approaches also underscore that although concepts can become relatively entrenched, this does not mean that the concept is closed-off completely, and that no further contestation is possible or taking place. In fact, a core concern is to disrupt the concepts and discourses that others take for granted, and to shed light on the continuous work required to stabilise the concept in question and make it “fit” the world (Laffey and Weldes 1997, p. 202; Doty 1993; Laclau and Mouffe 1985, p. 113; Howarth 2000, pp. 8–10; P. T. Jackson 2006; Neumann 1999, pp. 33–35). Fourth, such scholarship assumes that concepts do something more than just put a label on an empirical phenomenon, that is, that concepts are performative and have effects on material and social reality. Berenskoetter (2016a, p. 14)

30 suggests, “by giving meaning to ‘things’, concepts don’t just make these things intelligible, they actually make things”. How precisely this is conceptualised depends primarily on the metatheoretical position of the critical scholar. Some would emphasise that concepts are the means by which the world is socially constructed, and that such social constructions have important implications for the world, in that because a concept is taken as a social fact, things happen. Oth- ers would rather look at how concepts (as a specific type of discourse) constitute the world and as such (re)produce identities and demarcate the boundaries of political life (Howarth 2000).5 The difference is primarily one between (mild or thin) social constructivists and post-structural researchers (for a discussion, see Adler 2013; Hay 2002). What is important is that the entrenchment of concepts is consequential and that such consequences are therefore worthwhile investigating.

Among the scholars who see concepts as open and performative interpretive devices, it is possible to distinguish further between those interested in the implications of the above for research and those who more directly place concepts at the centre of attention. For the former group, the necessity of having to conceptualise the world at the same time as they are aware of the ambiguity of concepts and their potential performative effects is a key concern. It certainly warrants attention and is an important dilemma for the methodologically aware scholar. Such debates however belong in the methodology section rather than the theory section of this dissertation. Nonetheless, it should be noted here that there are useful strategies for dealing with this dilemma, be it by embracing concepts as loose “thinking tools” or by adopting a fully fledged “critical methods” modus operandi (Aradau and Huysmans 2014; Leander 2008). The second group of scholars—those who care about concepts and think of them as interpretive devices—have a different agenda; they perceive of concepts as political phenomena that are worthwhile investigating. It is here that critical concept scholarship begins to form.

2.1.2 Critical concept studies To be clear, although there have been some efforts to develop a critical approach to concepts within IR—most notably in Berenskoetter (2016a)—there is no foundational text on critical concept approaches that would corroborate the existence of a distinct approach. Although much of the scholarship ultimately has a great deal in common, there are many different intellectual inroads

5 Such as R. B. J. Walker’s (2011) work on the concept of the state and Campbell’s (1992) work on the concept of security. For a more substantial discussion of identity and foreign policy, see Berenskoetter (2010), Hansen (2006), and Vucetic (2019).

31 to critical concept analysis, which means that there are a host of divisive issues among critical concept scholars that need to be sorted through. Why call it a “critical” approach to concept analysis and present it as a distinct research agenda? I suggest that the most straightforward way to tackle these questions is to consider what the adjective “critical” has done for the study of the security concept, which has become an exhaustive debate with important parallels. Whereas traditional security studies takes the notion of security mostly for granted, the one thing that consolidates Critical Security Studies (CSS) is its challenge to the meaning, practices and consequences of security (Buzan and Hansen 2009; Fierke 2015; Peoples and Vaughan-Williams 2014). In a similar vein, critical approaches to concept analysis challenge the meaning, practices and consequences of concepts (and conceptual analysis). Specif- ically, they question the notion of concepts as analytical tools that scholars need to optimise and make values-free and scientific, or even that it is possible to stabilise or fix the meaning of a given concept. Instead, they treat concepts as complex empirical phenomena and accept their openness and messiness as an inevitable part of political life. Efforts to close down the meaning of concepts are treated with suspicion and the contestation around them is not seen as an obstacle to neat research designs, but as a site of political struggle. They challenge when some concepts assume near-common sense status or when they disappear, and are concerned with the questions of power, resistance and violence that surround the practice of concepts. Finally, critical approaches are interested in the consequences of established meanings and definitions for real world politics. In a nutshell, this approach is interested in the politics of concepts. Among the scholars who would fit such a profile, it is possible to further distinguish between different approaches.6 There are those who adopt a critical approach but make no particularly clear distinction between concepts and other related terms, such as discourse, theory, political thought or scientific knowledge, and those who explicitly address the dynamics of concepts. Both groups are relevant to this dissertation, but the latter to a greater extent. In the former group, it is possible to distinguish between historical approaches, discourse approaches and practice approaches. Starting with historical approaches, previous scholarship has addressed the socio-political context in which texts were written and the interactive relation between conceptual and socio-political history, that is, how sociopolitical history shapes political thought (what are the most pressing issues of our time and what should we do about them?) and how political thought shapes socio-

6 At this point, the distinctions I make are highly stylised for the purpose of clarity.

32 political history. Historical scholars focus on political language as an instrument that allows all kinds of actors to try to steer political thought and action, be it by publishing detailed treatises on “princely” behaviour, distributing pamphlets or, if more contemporary, in a tweet or blog. Foundational texts in this tradition include Farr (1999), Koselleck (1989), Pocock (2009), Skinner (1969), and Tully (1988). Although the interaction effects between political innovation and conceptual change are deemed important, this work is driven by a concern that much conceptual history tends to “discover” the meanings in and intentions behind texts that their authors could never have intended as such ideas were not available in the language of the time. Skinner (1969) in particular draws much from the linguistic theories of Austin, Urmson, and Sbisà (1962) and historical approaches to IR have been particularly popular among scholars interested in speech acts. Their scholarship is typically encountered in the context of critical security studies focused on security utterances as speech acts (Buzan and Hansen 2009; Stritzel and Vuori 2016). Others focus on the conceptual history of concepts such as hegemony (Colás 2016) or sovereignty (Carrai 2019). They do much to focus our attention on the relation between conceptual change and political history but, because historical approaches focus on the longue durée and seldom distinguish between concepts and political thought, their work is less relevant to this dissertation. In addition, because the IR scholars who take historical approaches rarely look beyond the concepts they are investigating, there is no reckoning with the broader implications of their studies for the overall understanding of concepts. Next, some scholars primarily approach concepts as (post-structural) discourses that constitute identities. Usually working in the tradition of scholars such as Foucault (1972) and Laclau and Mouffe (1985), such research is interested in how concepts are assembled into something that is taken for granted. Seminal examples can be found especially with respect to the security concept, such as D. Campbell (1992), Hansen (2006), and Neumann (1999). There are also examples of such scholarship in connection with soft power, such as M. Barr, Feklyunina, and Theys (2015), Callahan (2015), Hagström and C. Pan (2020), and Kiseleva (2015). Berenskoetter (2016b) also falls into this category. This is somewhat ironic as he starts the chapter with a clear discussion of what makes concepts special but this vanishes once he begins to discuss the political/critical approach, which is channelled exclusively through the work of Foucault. While such scholarship is of general importance to this dissertation and has done much to advance the notion of concepts as political and performative, I do not engage with it in too much detail for three reasons. First, scholars of this approach seldom distinguish between the performance of concepts as empirical

33 or analytical objects, and therefore neglect the dynamic nature of concepts as they continuously interact with social reality. Overall, this gives the impression that discourse is static, all-encompassing and global, whereas this dissertation illustrates how concepts are ever-changing, particular and contested at various levels of analysis. Second, such scholarship is typically preoccupied with a specific concept and does not consider the broader dynamics of concepts. For example, while CSS scholars have acted as trailblazers when it comes to critically unpacking the security concept in IR, they have remained tied to the specific logic and grammar of their favoured concept and thereby missed a chance to think through the broader applicability of their insights. Finally, while discourse approaches are particularly strong when it comes to the evolution of discourse in the long term, they seldom address the everyday practice, agency and context that sustains and reproduces concepts.7 A third important approach to concept analysis emerges from scholarship focused on practice. Often working in the tradition of Pierre Bourdieu, the so-called practice turn of IR is, broadly speaking, interested in how “social realities—and international politics—are constituted by human beings acting in and on the world” (Cornut 2010). For many of these scholars, a focus on the many often mundane practices makes it possible to think beyond the linguistic manifestations of discourses. Practices have for instance been studied in the context of diplomacy, security or the discipline of IR (see e.g. Adler-Nissen 2013; Adler 2008; Amoureux and Steele 2015; Bigo and R. B. J. Walker 2007; Hamati-Ataya 2013; Neumann 2002; Pouliot 2010). There are however a number of caveats with practice approaches, as a focus on practice risks overly privileging and romanticising individual agency. In addition, there is a tendency to simply describe what has happened in highly specific localised contexts with little ambition to generalise beyond the individual case. This dissertation underscores the need for detailed empirical research. In addition, it generally subscribes to the notion of concepts as thinking tools, as a way of dealing with the need to rely on concepts in order to engage in a critical concept analysis (Leander 2008, see also chapter 3). Moreover, my critical take on concepts means that I am sympathetic to Bourdieu’s concern with methodological and theoretical fetishism (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Below, I draw on various Bourdieusian thinking tools to analyse the position of actors engaged in conceptual politics. My ambition however is to develop an analytical framework that can be leveraged to study the phenomenon of any

7 My criticism draws here on similar argumentation in CSS where scholars associated with the “Paris School” have brought sociological perspectives to the study of security in an effort to demonstrate the relevance of everyday security practices and context (Peoples and Vaughan-Williams 2014, p. 9).

34 concept, examine the soft power concept and learn something about the ways in which concepts operate. For this reason, I do not engage further with this scholarship. That said, one development in the practice turn that is particularly important is the work of IR scholars such as Bueger (2014) and Bueger and Bethke (2014) who have begun to draw on science studies to think about IR as a scientific practice. The field of science studies has much to offer. It has opened up the black box of science by addressing how science is made, how scientific knowledge becomes solid and how scientific authority is “staged”, as well as how science and society are co-produced and how science is always contextually contingent and its uptake by the public culturally specific and historically and politically grounded (Hilgartner 2000; Jasanoff 2001; Shapin and Schaffer 1985). These are extremely important points that emphasise how the formation and use of concepts constitute specific and often mundane practices. This shows that concepts are typically formed in concrete social spaces, such as the academic environment of Harvard in the 1980s, and have to appeal to specific conventions, such as the rules of concept formation that the dominant methodological approach advances; and that their uptake and objectivity often depend on forgetting that such work ever happened. One concept from science studies that is also particularly helpful is that of epistemic rightness, which helps us to understand the uptake of concepts when they represent reality as it is and should be, i.e. right in the sense of accurate and just. This provides a more nuanced understanding that concepts require “scientificity” but are also embedded in normative worldviews.8 In IR, science studies have made their inroads primarily through Actor- Network Theory (ANT) (Callon 1984; Latour 1993). ANT has allowed a fresh take on materiality and agency, but this has been accompanied by much theoretical baggage, such as a radically different understanding of agency, a commitment to describing rather than theorising actors as they build their networks and, most problematically for this dissertation, a deliberate conflation of theory and empirics (as can be seen in Bueger and Bethke 2014; Callon 1984). ANT thereby paints a picture of a “flat ontology” (Jasanoff 2004, p. 23) and consequently misses the dynamic nature of concepts that this dissertation seeks to address. While I draw little from ANT, the concept of a spokesperson is nonetheless useful and discussed below. By contrast, other scholars carefully establish the relation between concepts and other terms. Here, it is possible to distinguish between such scholars as Freeden (1998) and Ish-Shalom (2013), who focus on concepts as they are nested and decontested in theories, and the closely related literature that

8 I thank Sheila Jasanoff for bringing this point to my attention. See also Jasanoff (2011).

35 developed out of Connolly’s (1993) work on the terms of political discourse, which tends to be especially interested in political struggles around the diverg- ing meanings and interpretations of concepts. The former group is particularly helpful where it discusses the distinction between political concepts and ideologies/theories, in that a “theory is to concepts what language is to words: an organizer, a regulator, a set of rules and uniformities, a grammar, a system” (Freeden 1998, p. 77). Theories can therefore be understood as configurations of different political concepts. By drawing different concepts together and arranging them in such a way that they give each other meaning, such configurations can have a closure effect on the concepts, meaning that concepts become increasingly decontested in the process.9 Another central distinction between concepts, theories, political philoso- phies and ideologies is the constraints placed on them by epistemological or methodological rules (Ish-Shalom 2013, pp. 17–18). What scholars typically expect from concepts differs from what they expect, for instance, of theories. Theories are generally expected to make contributions to science; and in some quarters good theories should be “causal, not driven by data alone, empirical, non-normative, general, and parsimonious” as well as falsifiable, internally consistent, and careful at selecting the dependent variable, while also maximis- ing concreteness and stated in as encompassing a way as feasible (Kellstedt and Whitten 2009, p. 24; King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, pp. 99–114). By contrast, concepts generally require neither falsifiability nor testing. Instead, as much of the methodological literature on concept formation indicates, they are supposed to be carefully formulated and preferably to follow the conventions of the epistemological school of thought. While helpful for understanding the specific role that concepts play, this is as much as I draw from Freeden (1998) and Ish-Shalom (2013): the former because its main focus is on ideologies, which is not relevant to this dissertation; the latter because Ish-Shalom (2013) operates with an understanding of politics that is too narrowly constructed for this dissertation (see note 10).

9 As such, many IR scholars or politicians care far more about why a causes b, rather than what a and b are precisely or what phenomena can be subsumed into a given category. Important conceptual choices are often neatly tucked away in the codebook, even then they can appear fairly arbitrary. A good example of this is the Correlates of War definition of war, where the death of a single person can tip the balance from non-war to war (i.e. from 999 to 1000 battle-related deaths) (Ish-Shalom 2013, p. 211).

36 2.2 Conceptual politics The critical concept approach that I therefore deem most relevant is the one that develops out of the work of William Connolly and those who work in his tradition (Guzzini 2005; Hobson and Kurki 2012). Since Connolly’s (1993) work has been highly influential among critical concept scholars, several of his main points have already been discussed above. His starting point is a staunch critique of the dominance of rationalism in the social sciences (Connolly 1974, p. vii). In addition, his discussion of “cluster concepts” as internally and externally open and with criteria that can be weighed differently resonates throughout the critical concept literature (p. 14). Third, Connolly operates with a notion of the language of politics as an “institutionalized structure of meanings that channels political thought and action in certain directions” (p. 1). Finally, Connolly emphasises that political concepts are not the sovereign territory of (academic) observers but shared with participants in politics, which constitutes an important source of friction and struggle. Although all critical approaches to concept analysis are interested in concepts as political phenomena, what makes Connolly (1974) particularly relevant for this dissertation is his argument that contestation around concepts constitutes a site of politics: Conceptual “contests are not just about the concepts of politics but are part of politics itself” (p. 30, emphasis in the original).10 For Connolly, this is primarily the case because getting others to embrace a specific account of an appraisive concept means encouraging political activity that is in line with such judgements. Even though his discussion revolves around appraisive concepts, arguably, by categorising and labelling classes of phenomena and telling us what can and cannot be subsumed under such classes of phenomena (see also Bartelson 2018, p. 23), such dynamics apply to concepts more broadly. For instance, if people alter the referent object of security away from the state and towards individuals, they are encouraging political activity that takes human security seriously. What security is or is not therefore becomes a site of political struggle, regardless of whether we think of the concept as appraisive. To condense these facets of a critical concept analysis and draw attention to the phenomenon of the politics of concepts, I suggest labelling the ways in which actors coin, use, promote, revisit and fight over concepts—often in

10 In Ish-Shalom (2013), politics only emerges once theories have become public conventions that politicians can exploit. Consequently, academia itself is not seen as a site of politics, and nor are theorists political actors unless they actively choose to be. As I show throughout the dissertation, this constitutes a restrictive understanding of actors that does not capture the dynamics of concepts in practice.

37 anticipation of the concept’s performative effects—conceptual politics.11 Much of the remainder of Connolly (1974) discusses various concepts such as power or freedom, carefully delineating various conceptions of such terms and taking a position on how we can understand power while being attentive to the broader points that his notion of essential contestability raises. In other words, Connolly consciously involves himself in conceptual politics, as do those working in his tradition (Guzzini 2000; Hobson and Kurki 2012). The rationale for doing so is clear: if concepts steer political thought and action, it would be contradictory to claim that Connolly’s intervention does not have a political dimension to it. Part of being a critical concept scholar therefore arguably means accepting that one is inevitably involved in conceptual politics, without succumbing to the narcissism that one’s words have the potential to change the world. This is an extremely important point with methodological implications, and it is picked up again in chapter 3. Another important aspect that Connolly (1974) discusses at some length is the question of the relation between conceptual revision and political reform. Not unlike historical approaches to conceptual history, Connolly is interested in thinking through how coining new concepts, or revisiting old ones, shapes political reform and vice versa. In other words, he suggests that concepts and social reality interact. That is not to say that concepts can arbitrarily be changed by manipulative actors and hence have the desired real-world results. As Con- nolly argues, the “burden of argument must be on the reviser” (p. 34) who needs to convince a “significant number of participants” (p. 180) that his arguments in favour of revising a concept are reasonable. This understanding of the relation between concepts and political life requires a conceptualisation of agents as being able to revisit, tweak and hone concepts intentionally, and hence as being responsible for the repercussions of such efforts.12 The reflexive capacity and responsibility of agents is a crucial point that sets Connolly’s (1993) work apart from the work of other critical scholars, (especially discourse approaches and Ish-Shalom (2013)), and one that this dissertation embraces. This also means embracing a broader notion of what precisely conceptual politics entails. While Connolly (1974) is primarily concerned with steering

11 This terminology originates in Hobson and Kurki (2012) who draw directly from Connolly (1974) to address the phenomenon of democracy. 12 This becomes clear particularly in the second edition of the The Terms of Political Dis- course where Connolly discusses his approach in juxtaposition to Foucault’s, agents are seen as “capable of forming intentions, of deliberately shaping […] conduct to rules, of appreciating the significance of actions for other […] of exercising self-restraint;” and we are therefore said to be “worthy of being held responsible for conduct that fails to live up to expected standards” (p. 233).

38 political action through language, it is reasonable to expand the scope to also consider any behaviour that assists the steering of action by focusing on concepts as conceptual politics. Organising a workshop and inviting academics and politicians to discuss the concept, for instance, should also reasonably fall into the category of conceptual politics. To summarize the discussion until this point, Figure 2.1 provides a schematic overview over the literature review.

Figure 2.1: Summary of literature review

Pejorative Methodological Concepts in IR approaches Yes approaches

Distinction b\w Can concepts be Are concepts concepts and a scientific Concepts as interpretive Yes Yes No taken seriously? other cognitive representation of devices items? the world?

Ideas and norms No approaches Concepts as What is the key Implications thinking tools concern? for research (see ch. 3)

Critical concept studies Concepts studied as a political phenomenon

Special No dynamics for Yes concepts?

Concepts Historical Discourse Practice within approaches approaches approaches Conceptual politics theories

In addition to the discussion in this section, there are three additional aspects that this dissertation suggests shape the dynamics of conceptual politics and require further discussion, namely the issues of (1) feedback loops, (2) reification and (3) travel, and how they shape the dynamics of conceptual politics. As we will see in the following discussion, while critical concept studies assumes

39 the existence of feedback loops, it has thus far remained theoretically driven and has not yet thought through how to conceptualize and empirically study feedback loops. While the issue of reification has been recognized as a central dynamic of concepts, it has treated reification as a methodological problem rather than as a phenomenon that is part and parcel of conceptual politics and therefore needs to be studied on its own account. Finally, critical concept studies neglects how wildly concepts can travel as the move across time, contexts and spaces. Due to these blindspots, it becomes necessary to think through how feedback loops, reification and travelling shape conceptual politics, and how these dynacmics can be studied empirically.

2.2.1 Feedback loops What are feedback loops and why should we care about them? Although Con- nolly (1974) does not explicitly address the notion of feedback loops, it is important to understand that they are baked into the issue of conceptual politics, and are therefore important for understanding how concepts operate. Most critical approaches emphasise that actors coin, use and promote concepts in anticipation of desired real-world effects, and that one aspect of this means that these concepts must be revisited or tweaked in order to maintain their future performance (Connolly 1974; Farr 1999; Guzzini 2016; Ish-Shalom 2013; P. T. Jack- son 2006; Skinner 1969). Despite this, feedback loops are an under-examined aspect of conceptual politics that require further development in order to provide a fuller understanding. Feedback effects are therefore understood as taking account of previous experience and adapting behaviour accordingly. If certain events can be anticipated, behaviour can be adapted before they occur, in much the same way as one adjusts the steering of a car if one sees a pothole in the street. In policy terms and norms scholarship, feedback effects are an important mechanism by which such ideas are adapted to become successful (Acharya 2014a; Béland 2005; P. A. Hall 1993; Pierson 1993; Prantl and Nakano 2011). While this is important work and suggests that such forms of learning and lesson-drawing are one reason why concepts emerge, the focus is primarily on the role of feedback loops in the world “out there”, as if our own scholarship of the world does not interact with the world. As long as we are analysing “natural” phenomena, this is not problematic. Quarks do not care about our ideas about quarks, or even that they are called quarks (Hacking 1999, p. 32). In this context, there is one “level of action”—what quarks do and for what reason—and one “level of observation”, where people try to make sense of what quarks do.13These

13 The term “level of observation and action” was first used by Guzzini (2000).

40 levels are neat and clearly distinguishable. We might be able to manipulate quarks through experimentation, but quarks will return to their normal shape regardless of the knowledge that we have gained about them. There is however a crucial difference with the social world, with its individuals, communities, states, companies, stock markets, feminism or anarchy. Our interpretations of the world can “loop” right back into it. When Karl Marx observed the world in the 19th century, his analysis of capitalism did not just stay at the level of observation—as any history book can attest, it made a profound difference as people began to reconsider the world around them. To tease this dynamics further out, we need to draw from the work of Guzzini (2000). In his discussion of constructivism, Guzzini (2000) points towards so- ciologist Anthony Giddens (1984) who has noted that “the concepts and theories developed […] [in the social sciences] apply to the world constituted of the activities of conceptualizing and theorizing agents”. This is a double hermeneutic position, in that we the scholars need to “interpret an already interpreted social world”. Here again it is important to underscore that we do this in the same terms as those observed (Guzzini 2000, p. 162; see also Connolly 1974). In this context, to talk of a feedback loop means referring to the interaction between first order and second order interpretations. Say, for instance, that someone who is prone to violent outbursts towards his wife is ordered by the courts to seek counselling. After several sessions, the therapist comes to the conclusion that the man has suffered from child abuse. Leaving aside the questions of whether child abuse causes adult violence and whether child abuse is objectively bad. This information can lead to a (self) re-evaluation of the individual’s past. As Hacking (1995, p. 68) argues, “individuals explain their behavior differently and feel differently about themselves. Each of us becomes a new person as we redescribe the past [and so] constructed knowledge loops in upon people’s moral lives, changes their sense of self-worth, reorga- nizes and reevaluates the soul”. Such interaction effects therefore lead us to a problematique of social science research, as we have to account for two levels of observation (#1 and #2): one where my observations occur and one where other people’s observations occur. Unless we hermetically seal off our observations, these two levels are prone to interact. Guzzini (2000) refers to this phenomenon as a micro reflexive loop. How we interpret, classify and categorise people (and by extension states too) can lead them to reconsider their own past and seek explanations for their identity or behaviour, and perhaps even to adapt it. If such looping effects “rewrite the soul”, it is also clear that the question of an actor’s secure sense of self is at stake, especially where the discrepancy between first and second order interpretations is particularly pronounced. This can for instance be the case

41 if someone’s self-perception as a peaceful personality is not recognised by an outsider, or when the soft power of a state is labelled malign.14 Classifications of people do not simply rewrite the soul and change their self- perceptions. As research on racial categories in South Africa under apartheid or in medical research illustrate, they can have profound effects on the biographies of individuals and communities (Bowker and Star 1999; Epstein 2007). It is therefore reasonable to assume that the effects of such classifications, and how they interact with the reality they are meant to describe, is a phenomenon that not only relates to questions of individual identity, but also has the capacity to order society—including international society as a whole. In one of the few works to address feedback loops empirically, while discussing the concept of war, Bartelson (2018, p. 23) raises the important question of how looping effects can be applied to concepts rather than (groups of) people. Arguably, the way a concept is used affects which phenomena are subsumed under such a category, such as for instance what counts as war/non-war, a successful/failed state or hard, soft or sharp power, as well as a rise or decline. That these are neither politically neutral decisions nor simple facts, but instead sites of political struggle should be clear, given my emphasis on conceptual politics. Consider here for instance the importance of classifications such as democratic/non-democratic states or successful/failed states, which are crucial to state identity and significantly shape how such states can engage in diplomatic or economic activity. For Bartelson (2018, p. 24), feedback loops for concepts occur at the level of observation. He is interested in how the belief that war is constitutive of political order has interacted with the meaning of war in international thought (although he also subsequently analysed the consequences of these beliefs more broadly). To some degree, if the concept observed circulates primarily in scholarly writings, this is academic business as usual. Scholars revisit and revise previous concepts, analyse them with regard to their ability to capture reality, and revise the concept accordingly to make it more representative of reality, which in turn alters our perceptions of reality. At the same time, not all academic concepts are used only as analytical tools by scholarly observers. Heads of government, for instance, might also rely on such concepts in order to understand the world, and this might interact again with scholarly observations of the concept. Guzzini’s (2000) notion of macro-reflexive loops, on the other hand, also refers to feedback loops that connect the two levels of observation and action proper. Thus, concepts can perform in the social world as first-order interpre-

14 There is an overlap with ontological security studies here that would go beyond the confines of the dissertation, for a discussion, see Mitzen (2006) and Steele (2008).

42 tations or as social facts, and this can again interact with both scholarly and lay people’s interpretations of the social world, which alters the concept’s performance in the world, and so on and so forth. As “self-fulfilling prophecies”, such loops are central to understanding how the social world emerges, and why for instance the concept of anarchy is so central. As Guzzini (2000) is careful to point out, such processes are not individualistic, but intersubjective.

All in all, it is reasonable to assume that both micro and macro feedback loops constitute important facets of conceptual politics. However, while critical concept scholarship generally presumes the existence of feedback loops, there has been little work to follow up with empirical research.15 Guzzini (2000, 2005, 2016) for example has repeatedly emphasised the relevance of feedback loops and typically advances short examples to demonstrate the logic of his theoretical points, but does not follow up with empirical work.16 Similarly, although Ish-Shalom (2013) promises to take the interactions between theories and the world seriously, his hermeneutic mechanism and empirical focus suggest a linear model of theories that migrate into politics. In other words, feedback loops were analytically not fully developed and empirically not yet ex- plored in detail. Focussing on how feedback loops unfold in practice is likely to reveal a more comprehensive picture of conceptual politics.

2.2.2 Reification The previous section revealed the important difference between the two levels of observation and action. In practice, however, much of the literature (especially on soft power) struggles with such distinctions, and it is common to see scholarship or commentary which mistakes concepts for empirical objects. This mistake—which is typically called the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (Whitehead 1925) and sometimes also reification—refers to the phenomenon of how something abstract and man-made, such as a concept, is increasingly treated as if it were real, and as if there were an empirically correct answer to what its essential characteristics are (Levine 2012). The reification of concepts constitutes a particularly problematic challenge for research. If we think of a given concept as a pair of prescription glasses that helps the researcher to understand the world—that is, to sharpen, filter and simplify it—it is clear that they should not be mistaken for the world itself (P. T. Jackson 2006). Researchers should not forget that they are wearing glasses, or

15 An exception is Bartelson (2018) who however does not venture beyond the specifics of the war concept, and works largely in the discourse tradition of Foucault. 16 A short paragraph in Guzzini (2013c, p. 299) touches upon looping effects, but it comes late in the book and has the appearance of an afterthought.

43 that these glasses are human-made. Especially once a given concept becomes popular among observers, it is crucial to avoid as much as possible reliance on the same glasses as those we are observing. If we want to understand the performance of the concept of human security (a) as an empirical object, for example, and how others rely on it to make sense of their world, as well as the potential performance of the concept as a social fact (b), it would be wise not to rely ourselves on the analytical tool of human security, and instead to focus on the interaction between (a) and (b). This becomes all the more important once we consider what reification does to concepts beyond giving us a methodological headache. Concepts that reify appear normal, common sense and real, rather than the outcome of complex social, political and economic processes and struggles (P. L. Berger and Luck- mann 1966). As noted above, this kind of forgetting is a key aspect that stabilises concepts as epistemically correct representations of reality. In this context, much ink has been spilled over the precise ontological status of a reified concept. What difference, if any, does it make to think of the state, for example, as a materialised “thing”, or just as something that people treat as if it is a thing, or a person (see for instance P. T. Jackson 2004; Neumann 2004; Wendt 2004; Wight 2004)? Just how real do concepts become? For P. T. Jackson (2006), a concept such as “Western civilisation” cannot be granted any material status. Others, notably Berenskoetter (2016b, p. 14), hold that concepts can become entwined with material reality, that is, they can make “things”. In his distinction between the natural and the social world, Guzzini (2000) similarly suggests focusing analysis on what concepts do at the level of action. At the end of the day, this question boils down to one of philosophical ontology, our “hook-up” with the world or how the individual researcher approaches the question of the distinction between mind and reality (P. T. Jackson 2011). I discuss the position of the dissertation in more detail in chapter 3, but here I should note that my thinking is more in line with the likes of Berenskoetter (2016b) and Guzzini (2000). Thus, I hold that concepts can become “social facts” that are so deeply entrenched in our political life that we might just as well recognise them as hard “things”. Perhaps a concept is indeed originally simply an analytical construct but once it is picked up in the world, and the more it is treated as if it were real, the more it hardens and becomes real—it has reified. Understood in this way, the reification of concepts constitutes a particular type of performative effect that plays an important role in hardening the concept and making it appear as if it is real. This in turn needs to be seen as an important facilitator of interaction effects between the levels of action and observation. In sum, due to these potentially profound consequences of reification, I argue that we need to shift the discussion from reification as a methodological prob-

44 lem towards treating reification as part and parcel of the phenomenon under investigation (see also Kaczmarska 2019). Consequently, the empirical analysis needs to be particularly attentive to the question of reification.

2.2.3 Travelling The third issue that this dissertation argues requires further attention is the question of travel. In a nutshell, although some critical concept scholars are interested in the circulation of concepts, there has been little reckoning with the voracious travel of concepts as they move across time, fields and space, and the diversity of the roles that concepts can play. There are two key reasons for this. First, critical concept studies have been primarily concerned with conceptual politics as it occurs in Western political thought and practice (see e.g. Berenskoetter 2016b; Connolly 1974; Guzzini 2005; Koselleck and Richter 2011; Skinner 1999).17 This is problematic because it has simply failed to probe questions linked to what happens when a concept becomes spatially mo- bile, in terms of what this means for the concept itself and the places it travels to and from. For a discipline that is interested in the international, this overlooks the different levels at which concepts can be contested (i.e., contesting global discourse or domestic discourse). It also risks casting the non-Western “other” as a passive recipient and adopter of already black-boxed concepts, rather than as an active participant in conceptual politics. Guzzini (2016) provides an example of what such neglect looks like and why it is problematic. To suggest how a critical conceptual analysis might look, he identifies Joseph Nye’s promotion of the concept of soft power to China as a political intervention intended to persuade China to adopt a softer stance on global politics. This is an important argument (especially since I address the soft power concept as a case study) and it serves Guzzini’s purpose well to indicate the possibilities of a critical concept analysis. However, it also leaves China out of the equation and, as a consequence, overlooks an important site of conceptual politics. How does China engage with concepts, and specifically foreign concepts? What is the socio-political context in which conceptual politics occurs in China? How (if at all) does China engage in international conceptual politics? What are the implications for conceptual politics elsewhere? The second aspect where the existing critical concept literature falls short is in considering what kind of social facts a concept can embody. Although critical approaches suggest that concepts make “things”, there is no systematic discussion of what these things are or the consequences if a concept assumes

17 There are a few exceptions to this general observation (Carrai 2019; Cheney 2017; Vuori 2014), which are discussed in more detail below.

45 as many different roles and produces as many different things as the soft power concept has. Importantly, critical approaches do not yet consider how such different manifestations interact in different ways with the concept’s performance as an analytical construct. This is problematic, first and foremost because it is reasonable to assume that how a concept travels, where it travels to and what it becomes all shape conceptual politics in profound ways. Hence, we can expect that something happens to conceptual politics as it is set in motion. This means that our understanding of conceptual politics needs to be adapted to better account for travel. At the same time, it is just as reasonable to suggest that the form that conceptual politics takes will shape the concept’s further travel. In other words, conceptual politics and travel seemingly have a dynamic relationship. For this reason, it is necessary to expand the notion of conceptual politics through the addition of a better reckoning of travel. What does it mean to think of concepts as travelling? In a nutshell, this refers to how concepts can move across contexts (academic, political, business etc.), space (i.e. the US, Europe, China, Japan, Indonesia etc..), time and levels (i.e. between the levels of observation and action), which taken together form the shape that conceptual politics takes and that is likely to further shape the travel of concepts. In order to arrive at this notion of travelling and to think through what it means to set conceptual politics in motion, I draw on literature that originates in area studies. Driven by an interest in the intellectual history of specific areas, a number of important efforts have sought to examine the ways in which local intellectual environments have dealt with foreign ideas. While most of these have developed separately to either Skinner or Koselleck, some scholars have also explicitly sought to build bridges to conceptual history, most notably through the work of Marvin Richter. Even though it is extremely rich and relevant, such scholarship is underutilised in studies of critical concept analysis which treats the non-West as rather passive recipients of conceptual politics. In principle, there are many examples of scholarship interested in the role of foreign ideas in regional intellectual history. Although neither China nor Japan were hermetically sealed off from foreign influences prior to the 19th century—as a matter of fact, it would be impossible to understand Japan’s intellectual history without considering the role that China has played in it—most attention has been paid to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where political upheavals in China and Japan sustained a deep and often proactive engagement with Western knowledge of politics, the military, science and new tech- nologies (see for instance Goldman and L. O.-F. Lee 2001; Richter 1947).18

18 There are many examples of political upheavals, from the Opium wars to the forceful

46 While most such scholarship is clearly historical in its orientation and seldom interested in the broader implications or processes of travel—the purpose is rather to better understand the intellectual landscape of their respective regions of interest—three aspects are important for this dissertation. First, such scholarship draws attention to the role of translation. While early studies of translation held that translations should transfer the meaning of a word (or text) from one language to another as literally or faithfully as possible, most scholars now see processes of translation as complex and multi- layered encounters between two languages that provide an important window into transcultural histories of thought. Languages are characterised by different rules, conventions, political cultures and histories. This makes it impossible to simply transfer meaning, but also means that such encounters need to “be placed within the context of intercultural communication under the conditions of radical inequality in the power of participants”, such as for instance between the British Empire and China after the Opium wars (Richter 2005, p. 8; Draude 2017; Lackner, Amelung, and Kurtz 2001). Such participants can be producers or receivers, and the role of the translator is a special one. As intermediaries, translators operate “between two sites in a liminal space that does and does not belong to both ‘source’ and ‘target’ cultures”, and they often find themselves caught in contradictory relationships, having to deal with the untranslatable in the midst of power disparities (Bassnett 2013, p. 341; drawing from Benjamin 1923; Bhabha 2012). A second important and closely related point from such scholarship is the relation between original ideas (or concepts) and their translations. As several scholars critique, there is a tendency among scholars of intellectual history to compare translations to their original, and to conclude that any deviation (for instance between Rousseau’s conception of democracy and Sun Yatsen’s) is a defective copy, a misunderstanding at best and a misappropriation at worst. How- ever, such an approach belies how translations can “creatively alter, extend, or even undermine established European conceptions” (Kurtz 2001, p. 147). For this reason, Draude (2017, p. 591) suggests treating originals as catalysts that “might unleash a dynamics of transformation and change within the target context”. Moreover, although continuities might seemingly be observed between the use of concepts in one context and another, these might “disguise significant alterations in meaning and use” (Richter 2005, p. 16). Consequently, it is important to realise that one is dealing with a plethora of translated concepts rather than sub-par copies of the original.19

opening up of Japan, the Meiji Restoration, the Sino-Japanese war or the end of the Qing dynasty and the May 4th movement. 19 In this, there is an important parallel with literature interested in the diffusion and locali-

47 Third, scholarship also finds that the way such concepts are used in local contexts often has little to do with staying true to the original. Rather, they are often used in internal discussions over the future direction of a country. For example, Western concepts were strategically used to encourage political reform in disputes among intellectual groups in China in the late 19th century. After much back and forth, this culminated in the breakdown of the Qing empire and the beginning of China’s republican era (Lackner, Amelung, and Kurtz 2001). Moreover, the flow of knowledge was not a simple one-way street from the West to the passive rest (Draude 2017; Richter 2005). Non-Western countries also made use of existing conventions to enhance their international position. This can be seen particularly well with respect to key concepts of international law. For instance, Chinese diplomats strategically relied on the notion of sovereignty to reinforce their position vis-a-vis Tibet in discussions with the British (Cheney 2017). In a recent study, Carrai (2019) also illustrates the creative and often strategic use by China of the concept of sovereignty over the past 150 years, from when China early on relied on established notions of sovereignty to fend off its disintegration, to now when it holds on to an absolute conception of sovereignty as no-interference mixed with a deep-running suspicion of re-conceptualisations through the Responsiblity to Protect (R2P). Although the literature discussed here is historical in origin and orientation, especially on the third aspect, the connection to the notion of conceptual politics is clear, and hence most helpful for thinking about what happens to conceptual politics as concepts travel. Thus, this literature draws our attention to the complex and multi-layered processes of translation that culminate in a plethora of translated concepts, the role of translators, the creative agency of the recipients and, finally, the different levels of conceptual politics—the domestic contestation of concepts that shapes a state’s course of action, and international contestation to contest or shape the international order. It should be noted that many of the concerns raised above are also addressed in the diffusion of norms/ideas literature, such as the different stages of dissemination and the role of contestation, localisation and feedback effects (Acharya 2014b; Adler-Nissen 2014; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Prantl and Nakano 2011; Sandholtz 2007; Wiener 2014). Many of the points made by Draude (2017) are also targeted at the norms literature. In general, it is possible to draw on this literature to provide a better reckoning of travelling. However, such literature neither engages with the concepts literature nor accounts for the specific dynamics of concepts. There is therefore little need to draw on this large literature as the above discussion is sufficient to address how travelling shapes concepts and conceptual politics, as I demonstrate below.

sation of ideas or norms, see e.g. Acharya (2004).

48 So how does travel shape the dynamics of conceptual politics? In principle, it is reasonable to distinguish among travel across contexts, space, time and levels, where concepts can be translated in a plethora of ways. Travelling between contexts can be thought of as concepts that move between different scholars, academic disciplines (e.g., how the concept of translation travelled from translation studies to IR or how the nudge concept travelled from behavioural science to economics) or vocations (from academia to business to diplomacy to journalism or drama). Spatial travel refers to how concepts can move between regions and states, such as between the US and Japan. Travel across time can be conceptualised as occurring in distinct phases. Since I do not want to give the impression that I conceptualise travel as a linear pathway, I do not refer to such phases as emergence, cascade or internalisation, as is common in the norms literature. Instead, it is reasonable to distinguish between the journey of a concept in an early, medium or late phase of travel. These are each characterised by different dynamics (see below). Travelling across levels is an aspect we have in some senses come across already, as an alternative way to describe the reification of concepts is to think of it as the journey of an analytical construct from the level of observation to the level of action. In that respect, feedback loops can also be understood as part and parcel of travel, in that a concept can travel forth and back between the levels of observation and action. That said, the conceptualization of travelling proposed in this chapter goes further as it forces us to think specifically about the politics of translations and recipients of conceptual politics. In the context of types of travelling, the key implication here is that something happens to concepts as they travel, but that travelling also has an impact on the context in which the concept in question travels. This means that concepts change through travelling, but the places that host concepts also adapt in potentially profound ways to welcome such foreign visitors, accommodate them or resist them. At the same time, as the discussion on translation as an encounter between two languages and cultures makes clear, translation processes are complex, multidimensional, coinciding and performative. How a concept is translated in one context can be different in another. Hence, the more a concept travels, the more likely it is that a plethora of differently translated concepts will emerge. Here, we can distinguish between translation processes as they play out at the level of observation and translation processes between the levels of observation and action. For the former, concepts can travel primarily as analytical constructs from one observer (or observing context, such as academic disciplines or countries) to another, whereas the latter refers to the translation of concepts into something other than a concept, such as a policy, a norm or a musical.

49 While concepts can therefore in principle be translated in countless ways, this does not mean that the original concept becomes obsolete and vanishes to perform as an analytical construct. Nor does it mean that a concept’s translations are defective copies or mutually exclusive. It is possible to imagine for instance that a concept can continue to perform as an interpretive device while also being translated into a norm and a policy; that is, as something that describes the world, should be upheld in the world and is implemented in the form of a policy. Understood in this way, translation becomes a creative and potentially em- powering process that can alter, extend or challenge the original concept and result in distinct analytical constructs or diverse social facts. Such translation processes might be directed at the original context of the concept, but might just as well also become sites of conceptual politics in their own right. In this context, whether the translated concept is seen as part and parcel of conceptual politics by either original concept entrepreneurs or translators/recipients is a particularly interesting empirical question. Finally, once concepts have travelled so prodigiously that they have been translated in manifold ways, it is important to consider how this interacts, in terms not only of the interaction effects at the level of action (i.e. between policy tool and musical), but also the performance of the concept at the level of observation. For instance, once a concept has become a specific foreign policy tool, much additional research typically follows to make sense of this specific foreign policy tool, which can in turn further shape the concept’s use in foreign policy. These can be seen as a plethora of different feedback loops that might loop back into the original concept and target its performance in the world or set a new process of conceptual politics in motion.

In sum, since critical concept studies has been overwhelmingly concerned with conceptual politics as it occurs in Western countries, it has treated the recipients and observers of conceptual politics as a passive bystanders, and thereby overlooked potentially far-reaching sites and dynamics of conceptual politics. In addition, it has not yet conceptualized what types of different roles concepts can assume as they travel, and how such patterns shape the dynamics of conceptual politics. To address these blindspots, I have drawn from area studies and firmly anchored the role of translators and translations in my account of conceptual politics.

All in all, in this section I have discussed the main shortcomings of critical concept studies and specifically conceptual politics. Based on this, the next section will conceptualize conceptual politics and the issues of feedback loops, reification and travelling. In so doing, it will become possible to put conceptual politics into practice.

50 2.3 Analysing conceptual politics in practice In order to analyse conceptual politics and the subsequent roles of feedback loops, reification and travelling, I begin by discussing the distinct components of conceptual politics. To be clear, although I refer to my analytical framework throughout the dissertation, because it is my understanding that methodology is part and parcel of politics (see chapter 3), the following needs to be understood as an overarching thinking tool that helps me to focus on the empirical research rather than an operationalisation of the key scientific concepts used in the dissertation, which positivist approaches would require.

2.3.1 Dynamics of conceptual politics To begin with, it makes sense to break down the dynamics of conceptual politics into the actors engaged in conceptual politics, and the means through which conceptual politics occurs.

Concept entrepreneurs Throughout the theory section of this chapter, I repeatedly refer to actors who coin, use, promote and revisit concepts, often in anticipation of real-world effects. While many critical concept scholars downplay the role of agency (especially from discourse approaches) , as discussed before, this dissertation assumes actors to be capable of coining, promoting and revising concept in anticipation of performative effects. In so doing, it becomes possible to focus attention on the many mundane practices and the effort that goes into conceptual politics. Who are these actors and why do they become involved in conceptual politics? I refer to the key actors engaged in conceptual politics as concept entrepreneurs.20 In principle, anyone can be a concept entrepreneur—scholars, intellectuals, journalists, bureaucrats, advocacy groups, politicians or the critical scholar—as long as they participate in conceptual politics, that is, are involved in coining, using, promoting, contesting or revisiting concepts, often in expectation of real- world effects. This is arguably a broader conceptualisation of entrepreneurship than is common elsewhere, as it includes actors that become involved with a concept even without explicitly choosing to influence politics. The reason for taking this position is that the notion of conceptual politics underscores that conceptual analysis is part and parcel of politics, which cannot therefore hinge on an active decision to pursue political goals on the part of concept en-

20 In this, I follow the common terminology of norm, frame or policy entrepreneurs (Béland 2005; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Kingdon 1984; Rhinard 2010).

51 trepreneurs. That is not to say that some might not actively choose to promote concepts in policymaking. Nonetheless, to capture conceptual politics in its en- tirety, such differences should be established empirically rather than presumed a-priori.21 Importantly, while I hold that concept entrepreneurs can reflexively engage with concepts, I do not conceptualise them as endowed with predetermined interests and identities. Rather, their identities and interests emerge through the process of conceptual politics. Not all concept entrepreneurs engage in conceptual politics with the same degree of intensity and dedication. Some concept entrepreneurs might come back to a concept time and again and engage in conceptual politics, while others might quickly embrace the concept as a favoured way of looking at the world, but not discuss it much further. Nor do all concept entrepreneurs engage in conceptual politics with the same resources and capabilities. Here, Bourdieu’s (1986) discussion of different forms of capital—something which actors try to accumulate and mobilise to promote their position within a specific context (“field”)—is instructive. Be- sides economic capital, individuals can accumulate cultural capital (i.e. an individual’s education) as well as social capital (the connections and social obligations that individuals can have and use to their advantage). These different forms of capital are to some degree convertible, but they are in principle assets that need to be mobilised in specific situations. Particularly relevant here is the notion of symbolic capital, which refers to the recognition of an individual’s capital and authority, alongside a misrecognition that such authority might have vested interests (Bourdieu 1986; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 119; Swartz 2013, p. 102). The type of capital that a concept entrepreneur can accumulate and leverage in specific contexts is important for her capacity to successfully engage in conceptual politics. In the academic context, some concept entrepreneurs might have more cultural capital (such as an Ivy League degree) or social capital (such as connections to influential politicians) and be in a better position to have others (also from other contexts) recognise such forms of capital as relevant (i.e., symbolic capital) compared to other concept entrepreneurs. It is little surprise that many concepts emerge from particularly prestigious research institutes, and far less often from provincial colleges. In general, however, even if concept entrepreneurs are endowed with different capitals, this should by no means be taken as determining whether or how a different concept becomes successful, as much also hinges on particular strategies as well as the context

21 It is here where my understanding of concept entrepreneurs and Ish-Shalom’s (2013) discussion of theoreticians on the one hand and political entrepreneurs, on the other, diverge most clearly.

52 in which conceptual politics occurs. One special concept entrepreneur can be the spokesperson of a concept. The notion of spokesperson is one that I borrow from ANT theory (Bueger 2014; Callon 1984; Latour 1993) and refers to an actor or a group of actors that is characterised by its ability to establish itself as the sole representative and spokesperson of scientific knowledge and claims— or in the case of this dissertation a specific concept. To do so, spokespersons need to be apt at transforming other actors or scientific knowledge (i.e. fitting the concept to concept entrepreneurs), that is, assigning other actors specific roles with specific identities and specific problems, and making them dependent on the spokesperson’s solution (i.e. establish themselves as an “obligatory passage point”, as ANT refers to it). If done well, this is an important pathway for new actors to become concept entrepreneurs (in ANT terms, to become enrolled). From the perspective of ANT, the more successful such transformation processes are, the more stabilised the scientific knowledge becomes. Applied to concepts, such stabilisation processes mean that the concept becomes increasingly black-boxed and difficult to contest.22 For what reasons do concept entrepreneurs become involved in conceptual politics? Prior to the analysis, we can imagine that concept entrepreneurs might become involved because they perceive a concept to be epistemically right, in that the concept represents the world as they feel it is or should be. Others might embrace a concept for concrete career reasons, such as when academics use a specific concept in their work because they hope it will increase its impact or attract funding. In politics, some actors might rely on a specific concept to le- gitimise previous and future policies, that is, “borrow” the authority that comes with certain terms that are shared among observers and practitioners of politics. Others who contest the overall validity of a concept might become “anti”- concept entrepreneurs, and become active in trying to discredit the concept by pointing out its deficiencies. It is therefore helpful to distinguish between those concept entrepreneurs who share a weak commitment to the concept—that does not amount to much more than “the concept matters”—and those who are cat- egorically opposed to the concept or simply do not care. In general, the fit between a concept and a new concept entrepreneur is something that needs to be actively produced and requires continuous work and effort—or, as I suggest above, it requires adequate transformation work. While this dissertation therefore affirms the agency and responsibility of actors engaged in conceptual politics, it is important to underscore that I do not perceive actors to have stable and predetermined identities. Instead, they

22 ANT technically refers to such processes as “translation” work but because I rely on a slightly different take on translation that has developed separately from ANT, I refer to this as transformation to keep the framework simple. For a comparison see Draude (2017).

53 emerge through conceptual politics. Nor should the above be seen as implying that the emergence and dissemination of concepts hinges only on the ability of actors to manipulate concepts at will. Rather, what is possible is in large part shaped by the context in which concept entrepreneurs operate (including the conventions of scientific or diplomatic practice) and, more importantly, by previous rounds of conceptual politics and their feedback effects.

Means of conceptual politics The next important dimension to consider is how concept entrepreneurs engage in conceptual politics. What is at stake here is a consideration of the work that is necessary to establish a “fit” between a concept and potential concept entrepreneurs, and how concept entrepreneurs might encourage the performative effects of concepts. First, when it comes to understanding how concepts are fitted to new concept entrepreneurs, the most central aspect that critical approaches emphasise is the role of the storylines with which concept entrepreneurs try to convince each other that their interpretation of reality is the best one, and that the specific concept should therefore be embraced (Hagström and Gustafsson 2019; P. T. Jackson 2006).23 To understand more clearly how this occurs, it is first necessary to briefly consider what the story lines, often also called narratives or frames, are. Simply put, narratives are characterised by a relatively clear and sequential order that provides a definition of a problem and why it matters to the audience, proposes a solution and suggests a course of action. Recalling the discussion on spokespersons above, narratives are the crucial medium through which concept entrepreneurs try to transform other actors and assign them specific identities, roles and interests, thereby making themselves indispensable inevitable. In the course of specific debates, such narratives are mobilised by concept entrepreneurs to garner support for their position. Narratives are not necessarily adequate representations of reality, in that they do not retell events as they were, but can dramatise them, exaggerate problems or play down obstacles. In doing so, they simplify and order complex issues and place the unknown into a framework that is familiar to the audience. In this way, narratives often exhibit, rather than demonstrate explanations, although both can also occur in parallel. Previous research has found that arguments, including scientific arguments, that are presented in a narrative form are more readily remembered and believed (Hagström and Gustafsson 2019; Rhinard 2010; P. T. Jackson 2006; Polkinghorne 1988; Autesserre 2012; Hagström and Gustafsson 2019). An- other important aspect of narratives is that they often evoke powerful emotions such as shame, regret or pride, thereby exploiting potential inconsistencies or

23 The empirical findings also underscore the relevance of narratives.

54 insecurities in their audience. Particularly when an audience is invested in the identity expressed in the narrative, the narrative becomes more readily acceptable (Solomon 2014; Subotić 2016).24 Based on such narrative and framing research, it is reasonable to suggest that concepts can be promoted through the use of narratives. For instance, in developing a new concept, an academic might suggest that a certain facet of reality is not well understood (problematisation), which requires a better conceptualisation (solution) and a course of action (a research paper). Once concepts perform as social facts, concept entrepreneurs might critique such a performance (problematisation), call for an evaluation of it (solution) and suggest that a certain course of action is necessary to address the problem. Particularly important in this context is the ability of concept entrepreneurs to successfully hook narratives up to the pre-existing worldviews of the audience, or more broadly to shape and tweak the concept to fit the context. I noted above that concept entrepreneurs that wish to revise a concept need to convince their audience that they have good reasons for doing so.25 Equally important is the capacity of concept entrepreneurs to draw lessons from the performance of a concept as either analytical construct or empirical object, and tailor the concept accordingly. For instance, if the concept is challenged on account of its fuzzy boundaries with adjacent concepts, a concept entrepreneur might opt to respond and clarify such boundaries. Similarly, if the concept’s performance as a social fact does not yield the desired results, a concept entrepreneur might point out the flaws and areas for improvement. A reflexive and repeated engagement with the concept therefore constitutes an important way to enhance the concept’s future performance by sharpening the concept and fending off criticism. Among scholars interested in the role of narratives or frames, one divisive aspect is the question of whether the concept needs to be presented as clearly and unambiguously as possible, or whether some vagueness would be bene- ficial to its likelihood of attracting new concept entrepreneurs. Here, some would suggest that the clarity of a concept is an important factor in making

24 Other strands of the literature also underscore this point as it suggests that states often comply with social norms to avoid disapproval (especially from peers) and embarrassment when such norms are violated, and that recognition (or non-recognition) of status and es- teem are important drivers of state behaviour and of socialisation processes (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, pp. 903–904; Checkel 2005; Johnston 2008). 25 This point also plays an important role in frameworks on agenda-setting and advocacy that suggest that new policies or norms need to be linked with or nested in existing “worldviews”, “institutionalised ideational frameworks” or “prevailing public sentiments” (Gold- stein and Keohane 1993; Eriksson and Norman 2011, pp. 424–425; J. L. Campbell 1998, p. 400; see also Rhinard 2010).

55 that concept more readily acceptable. Much of the methodological literature on concept formation would underscore this point, and some of the norms literature suggests the same (Franco, Meyer, and K. E. Smith 2015; Jakobsson 2018). Others hold that a degree of ambiguity allows a broader set of concept entrepreneurs to become involved. This for instance is the position of P. T. Jackson’s (2006), who suggests that it is a weak prior commitment to a given concept (technically a “rhetoric commonplace”) among an audience that allows contestants to try to formulate a more specific version of the concept, apply it to a new situation in the hope that the audience follows because of its pre-existing commitment (see also Rhinard 2010). However, rather than suggesting that it is either one or the other (precise or vague), I argue that it is the ability of concept entrepreneurs to shape concepts in different degrees of complexity that is more decisive. In other words, whether the concept should be complex and clearly formulated or remain vague depends primarily on the context. As I discuss above, most members of an academic audience would shun endorsing vague concepts and prefer complexity boiled down into parsimonious and concrete concepts. Enrolling concept entrepreneurs from such an audience is therefore likely to require transparency, such as when the concept entrepreneur clearly discusses the boundaries of the concept and justifies the methodological choices made. Enrolling concept entrepreneurs from a policy field, on the other hand, is likely to be more successful if the concept is more broadly formulated, as this allows a wider variety of viewpoints to be incorporated which tends to be more important in policy settings. At the same time, scientific knowledge also needs to be presented as clean, clear and factual, which requires concept entrepreneurs to keep the complexity and controversy around the concept in the background. That is not to say that there is no expectation among policymakers that scientific knowledge must undergo rigorous contestation among scholars to ascertain its validity. It is rather a matter of not being directly faced with such controversies, but instead being able to trust scientific claims. In this sense, concept entrepreneurs that are able to transform symbolic capital from an academic context into a policy context are in a good position to enrol new members. Similarly, concepts that have various layers of complexity are also likely to resonate in diverse settings. These points are empirically derived. Beyond such rhetorical means of engaging in conceptual politics, concept entrepreneurs might also rely on other means to ensure that the right people in the right places are exposed to the right version of the concept. Thus, concept entrepreneurs might organise workshops, conferences or panel discussions, publish special issues or edited volumes, or incorporate the concept into the classroom. They might also offer funding to support specific work, or leverage potential connections in policymaking circles to promote the concept, for

56 instance by initiating track 1.5 diplomacy. All in all, the means of conceptual politics should be seen as a complex process of transforming diverse audiences, and thereby enrolling them in a fashion that the concept entrepreneur deems desirable. Ultimately, the aim is to become a central spokesperson for the concept, to establish a hierarchy among different concept entrepreneurs and ensure that only one specific interpretation of the concept circulates. In other words, concept entrepreneurs work towards the black-boxing of the concept to keep any potential contestation of the concept at bay.

2.3.2 Feedback loops and reification How can feedback loops and reification be studied in practice? Based on the above discussion, it makes sense to think of three distinct levels of analysis: one level of action (the world “out there”, the globe) and two levels of observation (the glasses), as visualised in figure 2.1. At the first level of observation (#1), concept entrepreneurs make sense of what happens at the level of action (i.e. interpretation). Such interpretations can have performative effects on the world, that is, they loop into it. The subsequent arrows indicate that such macro-loops continue to connect the level of action with the level of observation (#1). The second type of feedback loop (which also continues) connects the levels of observation and indicates that interpretations of the world require interpretations as micro loops, which can in turn interact with interpretations of the world and hence also have performative effects. This is how micro and macro feedback loops are linked together. The notion of reification is expressed by the small symbol of spectacles that move from the level of observation (#1) to the level of action, meaning that a concept is increasingly treated as if it were real and hence as a performative effect, and becomes akin to a “thing” in the world that can in turn lead to feedback loops. Inside the schematic of conceptual politics, we see the combination of concept entrepreneurs and the means of conceptual politics that have to deal with the overall dynamics of feedback loops and reification.

2.3.3 Travelling Based on the discussion of how travelling complicates conceptual politics, it is reasonable to assume that the movement of a concept across time, space and context shapes the individual components of conceptual politics discussed above. With respect to concept entrepreneurs, there is another type of concept entrepreneur that it is important to focus attention on. The translator—as mediator between the original and the target context—plays a key role in fa-

57 Figure 2.2: Analytical framework (1)

Action

Reification Feedback loops Conceptual Politics ...

Concept entrepreneurs Performative Interpretation effects

Means of conceptual politics

Observeration #1 Feedback loops Conceptual ... Politics Performative Interpretation effects

Observeration #2

cilitating the journey of concepts and hence becomes a key actor in conceptual politics. Who are these translators and where can they be found? Here, it is reasonable to assume that translators often occupy a space between original and target context, for instance people who quite literally move between different contexts. This could be the Chinese scholar studying in the West, the US journalist working in Japan or the academic scholar travelling in the world of business. Empirical work must focus on whether such translators are caught in contradictory relationships and, if so, how this influences translation work. In addition to the role of the translator, as concepts begin to travel and appear in manifold translations, it is reasonable to assume a diversification of concept entrepreneurs. Given that concepts are typically formed in academic settings, early on, it is most likely to be academic concept entrepreneurs who engage in conceptual politics. As the concept travels, however, non-academic concept entrepreneurs will also become involved. We might for instance expect the emergence of concept entrepreneurs from state institutions, media outlets and international organisations. Relatively late in the journey, concept entrepreneurs might be found among the general public, those who need to concretely implement concepts as policies or even the audience for musicals. Once concepts start to travel wildely, this is also likely to complicate the strategies on which concept entrepreneurs can rely, as it reduces the scope

58 of concept entrepreneurs to tweak and revisit concepts. Indeed, establishing spokespersonship becomes increasingly complex as a concept travels and is potentially translated in a plethora of different ways. Consequently, establishing control and consistency over translation processes—ideally by establishing oneself as a spokesperson and by enrolling local translators—becomes increasingly important but also increasingly challenging, particularly when the translated concept is far removed from the original, and when concept entrepreneurs or translators have little need to engage or interest in engaging with the original concept. Furthermore, while conceptual politics early on might revolve primarily around the epistemically right interpretation of reality and appropriate lesson-drawing, later on it is likely to revolve primarily around ascertain- ing the right performative effects while increasingly trying to deter unwanted performative effects. The more a concept travels, then, the more conceptual politics might assume the shape of traditional politics. For example, early on there might be conceptual politics around how to reinterpret sovereignty as R2P, whereas later politics around R2P might revolve increasingly around the implementation of R2P policies. How does travelling shape feedback loops? Here, I suggest that early on during a journey, feedback loops are likely to occur primarily between the levels of observation (i.e. fine-tuning the concept when it encounters feedback and criticism) to enhance its epistemic rightness. Once the concept has travelled, however, it is reasonable to assume that feedback loops will occur as a response to the concept’s performance as an analytical tool, or in its translation as a policy, norm or musical in any context or space. Once we are dealing with a plethora of different concept translations, it is reasonable to assume that we will also be dealing with a plethora of different feedback loops around these translations. These different loops may interact—conceptual politics in country A might incorporate the performance of a concept in country B—but, crucially, translated concepts might also become a sight of their own conceptual politics.26 How a concept travels, where it travels to and how it is translated thus shape conceptual politics. Of course, will also further shape how concepts travel. For instance, conceptual politics in context A might respond to the performative effects of conceptual politics in context B, such as when concept entrepreneurs try to exert control over the concept’s travel pathways. In terms of visually integrating this with Figure 2.2, Figure 2.3 shows that once concepts travel in different ways, several coinciding sites of conceptual politics emerge that are

26 In a discussion on the social mechanisms of foreign policy crises (unrelated to concepts), Guzzini (2013c, pp. 255–256) emphasises that process-tracing is a multi-layered process that is attentive to timing and sequencing.

59 Figure 2.3: Analytical framework (2)

Conceptual Travelling Politics Travelling across space & context across space & context Conceptual Conceptual Politics Politics

Conceptual Politics CP

CP CP

CP CP Travelling across time CP CP

characterised by different dynamics, and that further shape travelling.

2.4 A critical concept analysis of the soft power concept To conclude, in this chapter I have discussed different approaches to concepts in IR and carved out a critical concept analysis that is particularly attentive to the phenomenon of conceptual politics. Based on this, I have discussed literature that speaks to the issues of feedback loops, reification and travelling and thereby provided a better reckoning of these specific aspects of conceptual politics. In so doing, I have discussed how feedback loops and reification processes fuel conceptual politics and moreover how travelling complicates the notion of conceptual politics as new translations emerge that might struggle with, challenge, subvert, exploit or ignore the original concept, become their own sites of conceptual politics and therefore start to interact with the original context. I have furthermore translated these theoretical discussions into an analytical framework that (as a thinking tool) can put conceptual politics into practice. Hence, I have advanced a more nuanced and complex picture of conceptual politics that is able to capture the complex phenomenon of concepts and in particular the social and political consequences of concepts. Before moving

60 onto the research design chapter, it is useful to shortly bring the soft power concept back into the picture in order to think through what it means to subject the concept to a critical concept analysis centred on the conceptual politics around it. To begin with, based on the discussion in this chapter, there are several analytical steps through which we can take the soft power concept (or any other concept for that matter). First of all, it is necessary to treat the soft power concept not simply as a vacuous albeit catchy concept, but to open up its blackbox and investigate its internal and external dynamics. Second, it is necessary to understand the concept as an interpretive device that observers rely on to make sense of the world. While some observers might treat it as a scientific and value-free instrument of social science research, I suggest to see it as a concept that is internally and externally open and hence embedded in conceptual webs with other concepts. This makes the concept prone to conceptual contestation. Moreover, based on the critical approaches to concept analysis, the soft power concept should not be seen as epiphenomenal to reality, but as a concept with performative effects. Next, rather than relying on the concept myself to make sense of the world, the concept needs to be placed in the centre of my empirical attention, i.e. soft power does not explain something in the world, it is something that needs to be explained. These steps are corroborated by the broader critical concept analysis literature. Based on my discussion of conceptual politics, I propose that in order to address the soft power concept as a whole phenomenon, the best strategy is to examine the conceptual politics around the concept. This implies that this dissertation needs to address the guiding questions in Table 2.1.

61 Table 2.1: Guiding questions

Dynamics of conceptual In what ways do concept entrepreneurs coin, use, politics revise or promote the soft power concept in anticipation of what kind of performative effects? Concept entrepreneurs Who are soft power’s (anti-) concept entrepreneurs, how do they become involved in conceptual politics, how do their identities and interests emerge through conceptual politics? Means of conceptual pol- What means do concept entrepreneurs rely on to itics coin, use, revise or promote the soft power concept? Feedback loops How does soft power loop between the levels of observation, i.e. do observers use it to make sense of other people’s interpretation of the world, and if so, does this interact with such interpretations? Does this interact again with the level of action? How does the soft power concept loop between the level of action and observations, and if so, how? That is, is it used as an analytical tool for interpreting the world out there, and if so, how does this feed back into the world and back into the interpretation of the world? Reification Is soft power a reified concept, i.e. one that observers treat as if it was real rather than a human construct? Do observers typically mistake it for an empirical object, and if, so how and with what consequences? Travelling How does the soft power concept travel, and in what ways is it translated? In what ways does soft power’s travelling shape the dynamics of conceptual politics? How does this shift concept entrepreneurs, means of conceptual politics and feedback loops? Consequences What are the consequences of conceptual politics around the soft power concept?

62 3. Research design

3.1 Ontology, epistemology, methodology and politics At the centre of any research project, certainly in the case of a dissertation, lies something which might half-jokingly be referred to as the “holy trinity of research”—ontology, epistemology and methodology, which compel the researcher to take a stance on what constitutes reality, what it is possible to know about it and how the procedures of scientific enquiry are supposed to look. Given the nature of this dissertation, chapters 1 and 2 have already established much of my stance on these questions, which means that I do not have to go into great detail here. For one, this dissertation can be seen as belonging to the tradition of critical International Relations (IR) scholarship, which questions “the prevailing order of the world and [asks] how that order came about” and, unlike problem-solving theory, “does not take institutions and social and power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing” (R. W. Cox 1981, p. 129). Second, based on chapters 1 and 2, it should also be clear that I operate within constructivism. Of course, constructivism itself is difficult to pin down as it involves “meta-physics, social theory, and IR theory and research strategies” (Adler 2013, p. 114) and spans a wide array of research that is distinguished by remarkably different ontological, epistemological and methodological approaches. Particularly important for this chapter, constructivist researchers seldom make substantial methodological claims with regard to the character and philosophical status of knowledge, and constructivist research can and does take place in different methodological traditions (P. T. Jackson 2011, pp. 201–207). For some scholars, a constructivist agenda means a focus on the ideational factors— ideas, norms or identity—that cause outcomes alongside or in juxtaposition to material factors, and adopting a language that is reminiscent of (neo-)positivism, in that they develop and test hypotheses and establish generalisable theories. Other constructivists operate within a world view that focuses primarily on the constitutive character of discourse.1

1 For a broader discussion of the different constructivist “schools”, see Adler (2013) and Hay (2002).

63 This dissertation understands constructivism primarily as the social construction of meaning/knowledge, the construction of social reality and their interaction, meaning that I focus on the social context in which the identities and interests of observers emerge (following Guzzini 2000, p. 149). For instance, at the same time as I am interested in how actors tweak, revisit and promote concepts, I need to consider the social context in which their own identity has been formed (and continues to be formed). This means that my ontological “hook-up” to the world is one of world-mind monism (P. T. Jackson 2011), I see the world out there as inseparable from the collective, intersubjective activities undertaken to make sense of it. As should be clear from chapter 2, I also hold that such activities—including the production of knowledge through concepts—can both alter first-order observations and loop back to the level of action.2 This ontological commitment is also indicated in Figure 2.2 (last chapter), where we can see how the feedback loops between the levels of observation and action schematically illustrate the interactions between the world, the intersubjective interpretation of it (level of observation # 1) and the observation of the observation (level of observation #2). In principle, there are no limits to the amount of levels of observation, as it is possible to conceive of A observing B observing C observing D observing the world, while all the while feedback loops unfold. In addition, recall the discussion on the difference between the material world with items such as rivers and mountains, which are unimpressed by our conceptualisation and classification of them, but the tremendous impact it can make on an individual, a group or state to be (collectively) interpreted as a perpetrator (Giddens 1984; Hacking 1999; see also P. T. Jackson 2011, p. 157). All of this is to say, the world and our interpretation of it cannot be separated. This implies an important commitment to a reflexive awareness that grounds “knowledge in the social situation of the researcher […] [and argues] that what we know is inseparable from where we are situated when we produce knowledge” (P. T. Jackson 2011, p. 39). We have already come across various facets of reflexivity, such as when I emphasised the capacity of actors to coin, revisit and fight over concepts. Reflexive loops are a different expression of feedback loops, in so far as the levels of action and interpretation stand in reflexive

2 I rely on monism/dualism terminology in this chapter because I find it useful, but it is not without its critics (see e.g Michel 2013; Suganami 2013).

64 relation with one another.3 What does a reflexive position mean for making empirical claims? How can readers evaluate such claims? Given my interest in a conceptual politics that relies on concepts as tools of political intervention, these are extremely important questions that speak to my own positionality in the research project, but also to a particularly vexing problem in critical concept analysis. As argued above, concepts are integral to making sense of the world, just as they are sites of political struggle. If this is the case, how is it possible to establish concepts and leverage them for research without engaging in politics? In other words, how can I rely on the key concepts developed in chapter 2—conceptual politics, concept entrepreneurs, feedback loops, reification and travel—to make sense of the soft power concept or any other concept? Does this make me a political actor? These are uncomfortable questions and, unfortunately, there is only limited help from the critical concept literature. Many accounts simply gloss over these questions and only discuss concepts channelled through the participants in conceptual debates, rather than reflecting on where they themselves fit in such debates (Berenskoetter 2016a; Bueger and Bethke 2014; Koselleck 1989; Skinner 1978). The most concrete advice comes from P. T. Jackson (2006, p. 8) who argues that “social science can and should remain firmly on the analytical side of that gulf and avoid converting its concepts and terminology into ‘political advertisements’ and ‘weapons of war”’. While making a tempting argument, by challenging the notion of “the West” (the concept he investigates), he is arguably advancing a claim regarding the “true” nature of “the West” and trying to fix its meaning (as empty, basically), just like other critical scholars who participate more directly in conceptual politics. Connolly (1974), Guzzini (2005), Hobson and Kurki (2012), and Ish-Shalom (2013) for example all set out to “fix” the concepts they study by taking a stance on what “power”, “democracy” or “interest” really is and how it should be studied—even if that means subjecting the concept to a critical concept analysis—but they show little reflexivity when it comes to their role in the research process. As suggested above, this dissertation argues that critical concept scholars who challenge the meaning, practices and consequences of concepts are necessarily participants in conceptual politics. Indeed, as Sylvester (2013, p. 134) notes, “every study is positioned socially, which means that every study is political, whether the politics are admitted or not”.

3 Giddens (1984) and Guzzini (2000) for example both label such interaction effects as reflexive. Seen from this perspective, a critical concept analysis implies a reflexive analysis of the concept in question. For a broader discussion of reflexivity in IR, see Amoureux and Steele (2015) and Hamati-Ataya (2013).

65 That said, this does not mean that one has to actively participate in conceptual politics around concepts by trying to fix the meaning of the concept under investigation. Certainly, the concept this dissertation addresses is shared by observers and practitioners alike, and by opening its black box and showing its profound political and social consequences, the dissertation is necessarily participating in conceptual politics. Nonetheless, to understand the concept as an interesting phenomenon does not require me to stake out a position on whether the concept is an adequate representation of reality, or on the integral aspects that should be subsumed into such a category. One challenge of a reflexive position then is to differentiate between concepts as empirical phenomena that are subjected to a critical concept analysis, and the tools relied on to engage in such a critical concept analysis. Arguably, the first necessary step is to clearly distinguish between these two different roles, which for this project means that the concept under investigation, soft power, is exclusively dealt with as an empirical phenomenon that requires understanding, rather than something that I use to understand something else. That is not to say that I will not be dealing with the performance of soft power as an analytical tool. However, it is a tool that other scholars use, not me. To make this conceptualisation of soft power as an empirical phenomenon abundantly clear, I only deal with the concept after the chapters on theory and methodology. The second step is to understand the key concepts developed in chapter 2 as thinking tools and the analytical framework as something that serves to organise empirical observations into systematic facts without claiming that the resulting analytical narrative provides an exhaustive and representative account of what has truly happened in the world. Such a narrative is not concerned with generalisability but with generality: “the ‘generality’ of an analytical claim means that its logical form is devoid of specific references to particular empirical instances, but this emphatically does not mean that the relations and characteristics that it instrumentally posits have the same epistemic status as a generally valid empirical law” (P. T. Jackson 2011, p. 153; see also Guzzini 2011, 2013c). In other words, analytical narratives are not based on a notion of causation as deterministic and regular (if x, y, z are present, then outcome q will follow),4 can only be assembled after the observed events and are as such not meant to predict outcomes in the future. Thus, what makes empirical claims scientific is how far the narrative is instrumentally useful. From this perspective, the thinking tools of conceptual politics, feedback loops or reification help me to discover where and how to look to investigate the phenomenon of the concept (soft power), and to compose and present an analytical narrative that helps to

4 For a substantial treatment of causation, see Kurki (2008).

66 understand what has happened in a particular case and where things might have gone differently. The third step is to rely on concepts as thinking tools if they have not yet emerged in politics itself in order to minimise confusion and potential interaction effects between my observations of the world and those who observe the world. As such, the terms developed in chapter 2 are not shared among observers and practitioners of politics, that is, they remain firmly anchored in the conceptual world. Thus, because none of the actors who coin or promote concepts woke up on a Monday, put on a concept entrepreneur hat and decided to engage in something they would call “conceptual politics”, it becomes possible to rely on such terms to make sense of soft power. Where does this leave me when it comes to the advancement and evaluation of empirical claims in this dissertation? In a nutshell, it is key to understand that the knowledge claims I advance are neither from everywhere nor from nowhere; they are situated but aspire to be as disinterested as possible (P. T. Jackson 2011, p. 173; see also Bourdieu 2004; Haraway 1988). In terms of Figure 2.2, this requires a continuous awareness of a third level of observation at which I am located and from where the entire research process and all knowledge claims unfold, and from where I aim to provide an analytical narrative that offers greater understanding of the phenomenon of concepts. In such an understanding, the analytical framework and its individual thinking tools are an ideal-type account of the processes of conceptual politics that help me to establish an analytical narrative for understanding what has happened in the specific case of the soft power concept, which can then help me reflect further on the ideal-type of conceptual politics, which can then be used to also address concepts other than soft power.5 Finally, it is important to recognise that the discussion here is not devoid of politics itself, as the above position-taking is an exercise that seeks to establish that this project falls within the boundaries of what IR deems to be a piece of scientific work. Eventually, neither theory, ontology, epistemology

5 In P. T. Jackson’s (2011) formulation of reflexivity as a methodology, the status of knowledge is ultimately a device for increasing self-awareness which is meant to de-naturalise what is taken for granted and thereby seeks to provoke social change (P. T. Jackson 2011, pp. 198–200). This emancipatory dimension of reflexivity certainly applies to many of the scholars discussed in the respective chapters. At the same time, an interest in reflexivity as a phenomenon—such as in Hacking (1999)—arguably does not necessitate an emancipatory concern. In terms of P. T. Jackson’s (2011), I thus lean towards analyticism, although it should be noted that I follow Suganami (2013, p. 262) in his argument that the distinction between analyticism and reflexivity is not so much between phenomenalism/transfactualism but rather whether the scholar primarily seeks to provide a persuasive narrative (as I do) or to disrupt and change the world.

67 nor method can be considered apolitical and merely scientific, as they are part and parcel of specific political visions of how the world around us is supposed to be understood, look and be researched (Aradau and Huysmans 2014). From this, it follows that methods “are not simply techniques of extracting information from reality and aligning it with—or against—bodies of knowledge. Methods are instead performative practices experimentally connecting and as- sembling fragments of ontology, epistemology, theories, techniques and data through which substantive effects are obtained” (p. 3). Effectively, this means that methods should be understood not as value neutral strategies for gathering data, but as political. Such an understanding of methods and the role they play in research poses certain challenges for the researcher, in terms of the researcher’s positionality, ethical responsibility and, of course, material selection. Certainly, throughout the research process, the selection of specific interview partners or archive articles, rather than others, also orders reality and thus creates a specific, hygienic representation of reality (p. 9) that is communicable to an outside audience. This is precisely one reason for making reflexivity a focus of the project.

3.2 Research strategies Notwithstanding the challenges that come with understanding methods as performative, it is necessary to define the scope of the research study in order to structure the research process. This involves difficult choices, as delimiting the scope of analysis includes and excludes aspects, which means that it shapes the results in profound ways. As noted above, it is necessarily a political choice and as such requires as a minimum a reflection on my own positionality. Per- haps the most central of these choices is the question of case selection, to which I turn below.

3.2.1 Case study design: Tracing the soft power concept Based on the above discussion, a case study design is appropriate for this dissertation as it allows me to develop an in-depth analytical narrative of the phenomenon of concepts. While there is significant disagreement among scholars regarding the precise nature of cases or case studies, a case study design can generally be seen as a specific research strategy that is characterised by an in- depth analysis of a single or a small number of cases in order to better understand the larger universe of similar cases (Gerring 2004, p. 342; A. L. George and Bennett 2005, p. 17; Levy 2008, p. 2). For instance, events such as the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, the Korean War or the escalation of the Vietnam War

68 can be seen as cases of the phenomenon of group think (Janis 1983). Gener- ally speaking, much of this research is obsessed with various levels of causality and the generalisability of different types of case studies, and typically involves highly technical discussions (Beach and Pedersen 2016; A. L. George and Ben- nett 2005; Gerring 2004). As discussed above, this dissertation sees causation as something that is supposed to make the world more intelligible and can only be established after the outcome has been observed. It is moreover concerned with generality rather than generalisability. Nonetheless, it is useful to take some cues from this literature in order to set limitations to the scope of research. Since the dissertation is interested in tracing the phenomenon of concepts (i.e. this is the universe of cases), this presents several choices. For one, I could either opt for a multi-case study or a single case study. A multi-case study would look at different concepts and rely on the thinking tools developed in chapter 2 to provide in-depth analytical narratives of the concepts and various outcomes. The point here is not so much to test hypotheses, but rather to specify particular configurations unique to the individual concept. The ambition is to learn something more general about the politics around concepts. One way of going about this would be to make use of cases where conceptual politics is likely to be pronounced as well as cases where it seems less obvious. While certainly a viable approach, the research process would be lengthy as a great deal of material would need to be collected on each case. Moreover, unless the concepts were relatively similar, it might be difficult to compare any subsequent findings and to say much about the process of or consequences for conceptual politics. For this reason, this study opts for a single case study that explores the phenomenon of one concept in depth. Given the novelty of such an approach, it is reasonable to choose a case that can function as a pilot study as if my analytical framework does not address this case well, it is unlikely to be persuasive in other contexts. In terms of settling on a specific case, there are many exemplars that could illustrate the dynamic of conceptual politics in IR. There are many concepts that could be considered in Berenskoetter’s (2016) edited volume—from power to security, rationality, sovereignty, war or hegemony. While all of these are central and basic concepts of IR, they are also generally very broad and have been crucial to global politics for many centuries. To be able to engage in a detailed empirical analysis, it is more reasonable to choose a concept that has been around for less time, such as the concepts of the Responsiblity to Protect (R2P), human security, normative power, failed state, resilience, rules-based international order, Thucydides’s trap or soft power. All of these are examples of contested concepts that have been coined some time in the past three decades and that have travelled widely across time, space and fields. Moreover, all these concepts have had important social and political consequences.

69 From such cases, I have selected the soft power concept. Various theoretical, practical and empirical considerations make soft power an appropriate case study. The concept is likely to offer new theoretical insights for the broader phenomenon of conceptual politics as it constitutes a contested interpretive device that is shared by both observers and practitioners of politics who aim to steer political thought and action. The performance of soft power as a social fact in politics and as an analytical construct also suggests the existence of feedback loops between these different levels as well as reification effects. In addition, soft power appears to be a concept that has travelled widely across time, space and contexts. All of this makes soft power ideal for considering and investigating how the dynamics of conceptual politics are shaped by reification, feedback loops and travel. In terms of practical considerations, the concept’s relatively recent emergence allows access to material and the concept entrepreneurs involved in conceptual politics. Moreover, compared to concepts such as sovereignty, which have been around for hundreds of years, the amount of potential material on soft power is more manageable. Finally, as discussed in the introduction, the soft power concept is an intriguing empirical case with profound social and political consequences that will become clear from the empirical analysis. In addition, another practical reason that makes soft power an ideal case study is the fact that the funding for my dissertation explicitly calls for engagement with the concept. It is necessary to narrow down the scope of the study still further, and I have done so by focusing the analysis on three states. First, I have selected the United States as a first sub-case as it was the context in which the soft power concept was originally coined. Next, I have selected Japan as it was the earliest and most eager country to pick up the concept in the 1990s. The third sub-case study is China. As we will see especially in chapter 4, as China is the most studied country when it comes to soft power and has also shown tremendous interest in the concept. These three states effectively serve as my sub-case studies and the empirical core of my dissertation. I apply my analytical framework in each of the following chapters to the US (chapters 5, 6 and 9), Japan (chapter 7) and China (chapter 8), respectively. In addition to making the management of empirical material more manageable, a focus on conceptual politics in three different states has two further benefits. First, it allows me to take seriously the implications from scientific studies that the practice of science and the uptake of scientific claims can differ significantly from one context to another. By focusing the analysis on how science in general and conceptual politics specifically is carried out in the US, Japan and China, this will undoubtedly sharpen the notion of conceptual pol-

70 itics.6 In addition, it will help me to address the West-centrism of previous critical concept literature and cast light on the involvement of the “other” in conceptual politics. To trace the soft power concept as it moves across time, space and levels, I will also rely loosely on what Guzzini (2013c) refers to as interpretivist process tracing. Generally speaking, process tracing is a single-case research strategy that seeks to establish a causal mechanism between an event and an outcome. In contrast to other common formulations of process-tracing (Beach and Ped- ersen 2016; A. L. George and Bennett 2005), Guzzini’s (2013) variant is not built on a Humean, Bayeseian, deterministic and or regular understanding of causation, but instead seeks to establish causality through social mechanisms that are less widely applicable but can still be transferred from one case to another. The aim of interpretivist process-tracing is to explain how a specific process has unfolded, or how a specific outcome has come about, and where things could have gone differently. It does so by adopting an “instrumentalist position” on thinking tools as heuristic devices that help to order and classify empirical observations not so much to adequately capture reality, but to make sense of reality (Guzzini 2011, p. 337). In doing so, it is similar to efforts by scholars such as Balzacq (2011), Banta (2013), and Pouliot (2015), who are interested in developing process-tracing into a “thicker” interpretivist method. Interpretivist process tracing does not claim to establish universal laws, which would be at odds with its monist underpinnings, but is more ambitious than purely descriptive accounts such as an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) approach would be. Interpretivist process tracing is thus interested in the generality of heuristic devices from one case to another, rather than the generalisability of a universally valid theory such as conceptual politics. In essence, interpretivist process tracing can be seen as an appropriate method for an analyticist position that underscores world-mind monism and phenomenalism, as discussed above (P. T. Jackson 2011). What makes interpretivist process tracing particularly appropriate for this dissertation is its emphasis on an understanding of international events as the analytical starting point, and not so much the events themselves (Guzzini 2013c, p. 4). In this way, it underscores that the level of action requires interpretation, but also that such interpretations interact with other interpretations that can in turn shape the level of action.

6 In fact, comparative analysis of the uptake of scientific claims is explicitly encouraged in some parts of science and technology studies (see especially Jasanoff 2000).

71 3.2.2 Research process Overall, the research process followed an abductive approach that moved back and forth between empirics and theory (see also Guzzini 2013a, p. 49). The starting point was a substantial engagement with the soft power concept as an analytical lens, as the project that I was hired to undertake originally envisaged a conceptualisation of soft power as a form of power that (akin to discursive power) explains how and why events in international politics are understood in one way rather than another. The idea was that a conflict between for instance Japan and China would be won or resolved not so much by who has more material power, but by whose representation of reality is more persuasive. The conceptualisation of soft power thus followed Bially Mattern’s (2005) work on soft power as coercive and a form of representational force. However, the more I immersed myself in the soft power concept, the more puzzled and subsequently uneasy I became about its general use in analytical frameworks. Part of my concern and confusion was with the sheer quantity of adjective + power formulations that all seemed to share a common concern with the power of and power over meaning-making, from discursive power to ideational power, productive power, rhetorical power, agenda-setting power or narrative power (Foucault 1980; Gustafsson 2014; Hagström 2015b; Hagström and Gustafsson 2015, 2019; Hajer 1993; Lukes 1974). Why use “soft power” at all if we had all these other terms? Were they interchangeable? What does soft power do for a framework and what would it do in my own framework, especially given the distance between such a conceptualisations and the original notion of soft power? The other half of my concern was with the analytical usefulness of the soft power concept, as the deeper I immersed myself in the soft power literature the more I felt confused and alienated about what the precise point and value of the soft power concept was. At the same time, I became in- trigued with the popularity of the concept throughout the world and the power it had over me to have to deal with soft power. Thus, in a first formulation of the research problem, I wondered how a concept as vacuous as soft power had become such a ubiquitous analytical tool.7 Although I could not put my finger on it, what had happened at this point was that the soft power concept had changed its role. From something that I relied on to understand the bilateral conflict between Japan and China, it had become something that required explanation. Soft power therefore became an empirical observation that drove my research curiosity to find out how the

7 To be fair, a small part of the project was interested in the “soft power of the soft power concept”, but it simultaneously sought to maintain soft power as a useful analytical category once properly operationalised—a tension that in hindsight speaks of the ubiquity of reification in social science research.

72 concept had become possible. At this point, I began to consult the literature that studies concepts critically, and from there I moved back and forth between empirical observations and the theoretical framework required to make sense of such observations. Over time, I came to understand three factors. First, that soft power was not a particularly unique phenomenon, and so my research question became about concepts in general and how we can study them critically. Second, that advancing a pejorative account of soft power as a vacuous concept does not do justice to its dynamics and the consequences of its emergence as a key concept in IR, and moreover downplays the work and effort required for soft power to emerge and unfold in the way it did. I realised that there were several critical moments at which the concept might have faded away, but where a combination of context and persistence were key to its continued relevance. Hence, soft power needed to be understood more broadly not just as an analytical tool that sticks despite its vacuity, but an intriguing phenomenon. Third, I noted that while the critical concept literature had made many important theoretical advances, there was not much empirical literature to follow up and illustrate how such dynamics might play out empirically. It therefore became necessary to immerse myself further in the empirical material. At this point, I had developed a loose understanding of concept entrepreneurs who became involved in concepts for a variety of reasons, and this was sufficient to start collecting more empirical material. To do so, I had to narrow down the scope of the research, which was when I embarked on the bird’s-eye perspective of the soft power concept that further informed my case selection of the US, Japan and China. Based on this exercise, I began the fieldwork phase in Japan, China and the US in order to collect material. Through continuous reflection on the material, I was able to further clarify and refine my theoretical understanding of conceptual politics in practice. In so doing, three aspects struck me as particularly important. First, I noticed early on the prevalence of observers who treated soft power as if it was something real that could be accumulated, stored and wielded according to necessity. In trying to make sense of this observation, I realised that a key feature of my empirical observations was the issue of reification. Learning more about reification in turn helped me to understand my unease about relying on soft power as an analytical concept. However, I also noticed that the theoretical literature typically discusses reification as a methodological problem rather than a phenomenon, and so I incorporated it in more detail into the analytical framework. Second, I noticed that feedback loops were omnipresent but, while there was some discussion of feedback loops in Guzzini (2000), there had been little empirical work on looking at them in practice. It was therefore clear that it would be meaningful to firmly incorporate the study

73 of feedback loops into what had begun to emerge as “conceptual politics”. A final observation that led me to reflect back on the framework was the ubiquity and diversity of different manifestations of soft power that seemed to involve disparate sets of concept entrepreneurs, means of engaging in conceptual politics, targets of conceptual politics and overall sites of conceptual politics. Especially during my fieldwork in Japan and China, I realised that critical concept studies had been overwhelmingly concerned with the steering of political thought and action in Europe or the US as an overarching discourse, with little concern for the receiving end of conceptual politics and the new sites of conceptual politics that I saw emerging. Thus, it became necessary to consult literature that could help me to understand the dynamics of concepts as they travel across time, space and levels. In the presentation of the research project, I have opted to provide an analytical narrative that I hope appears organised and transparent in its discussion of empirical observations so that it provides a good picture of conceptual politics in practice. Nonetheless, it should be abundantly clear that the many different aspects of this project are intertwined, which makes it difficult to distinguish between their various functions in practice.

3.3 Material In order to analyse conceptual politics in practice, this dissertation has made use of various types of sources and material. Some of this material, such as governmental, academic or public material, is accessible online. I have also collected material during fieldwork. The following list is an overview of these trips: • Japan, various locations, 7 September 2016 to 16 September 2016. I participated as an observer in the so-called Mirai programme, a short-term cultural exchange programme organised biannually by Ministry of For- eign Affairs of Japan (MOFAJ) for European and Central Asian students. • Boston, USA, 18 October 2017, interview with Joseph Nye • Tokyo, Japan, 5 November 2017 to 3 December 2017, for the purpose of conducting interviews • Beijing, China, 15 January 2018 to 14 March 2018, as a visiting scholar at Peking University, for the purpose of conducting interviews • Washington DC, New York and Los Angeles, USA, 1 May 2018 to 15 July 2018, visiting scholar at George Washington University, Sigur In- stitute for Asian Studies, for the purpose of conducting interviews and collecting think tank material • Beijing and Sichuan Province, China, 11 August 2018 to 21 August

74 2018, participant observer in study tour to Tibetan areas of Sichuan province, organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of External Security Affairs; also able to conduct interviews • Boston, USA, 28 August 2019 to 30 January 2020, visiting fellow at the Department of Government at Harvard University, informal participant observation of Harvard University culture

To organise the material, I primarily relied on the Citavi computer program. Citavi is a reference manager that offers a plethora of different reference types that in addition to books and articles also covers empirical material such as interviews, legal documents, speeches and websites as individual references. Each reference can be tagged with keywords, an evaluation and a summary. References can also have PDF documents such as interview transcripts attached, and these documents can be coded with keywords and comments. For example, I might code one academic publication as “US-Japan alliance”, and use the same keyword on a sentence from an interview transcript. US- Japan security alliance hence shows two entries. Citavi also offers a powerful search function. For instance, I might want to look at references that contain the words “soft power” in their full text but only for Chinese publications prior to 2005. Citavi is in some ways similar to qualitative text analysis software such as NVIVO, but more intuitive and cheaper. It also provides the correct reference for the eventual manuscript. This section reflects on the various types of material that I relied on, starting with academic texts. With the exception of the collection and narrowing down of academic texts, material collection and analysis occurred in parallel rather than in succession, and the order of presentation does not indicate relevance.

3.3.1 Academic texts Since the dissertation is concerned with the phenomenon of a concept that has emerged in an academic setting, the natural starting point is to collect and highlight the academic texts that touch on the soft power concept in order to gain an oversight of the concept in question. It is important to note that such material is collected as empirical material that requires analysis, not as the foundation for a literature review of the soft power concept. Since google scholar is infamous for its opacity regarding the inclusion of documents—not every text is included and not every text is academic—I primarily relied on curated academic databases that only include texts from academic sources. For English texts, I made use of the Web of Science (WOS),

75 which next to Scopus8 is one of the best known and respected databases. The WOS is a commercial database so universities must pay for access. The WOS records information (metadata) on authors, such as affiliation, as well as abstracts, keywords, citations and cited references (if indexed in the WOS), all of which provides important clues on the phenomenon from a bird’s-eye perspective.9 Searching for “soft power” in the topic field (i.e. searching titles, keywords and abstracts) between 199010 and 2019 returned 1710 distinct publications. For Japanese11 soft power publications, I asked the Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator (CiNii) for the Japanese translation of soft power (ソフトパワー). CiNii is a database that collects academic information on articles, books, journals and dissertations (National Institute of Informatics 2020). Unfortunately, it does not record metadata such as the number of citations, which limits the opportunities for a bird’s-eye analysis, but at least it is possible to see how many publications emerged in each year. A search for “soft power” between 1990 and 2019 returned 394 distinct publications in Japanese. For Chinese academic articles, I made use of the China Academic Journals Full-Text Database from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) curated by Tsinghua University. The CNKI is more comprehensive than the Japanese database as it also registers keywords and abstracts, but unlike the English WOS it is unfortunately not possible to download the citation count or cited references. Searching for the common translations of soft power in Chinese—ruan shili (软实力), ruan quanli (软权力), ruan guoli (软国力) and ruan liliang (软力量)—which are discussed in more detail in chapter chapter 8, returned results for more than 18,000 Chinese academic articles. The sheer quantity of these results posed a particular challenge, as it would be impossible to read all of these articles in a single lifetime. To guide my research process and help me find out where to look (read and analyse) in more detail, I therefore relied on a bibliometric analysis (found in chapter 4). Bib- liometrics refers to the application of (usually) descriptive statistics to (primarily academic) publications and their metadata (Thomas Reuters 2008, p. 3).

8 WOS is preferable for its data quality (fewer faulty or missing observations). 9 In terms of the individual databases in the WOS, I selected the Social Science Citation Index, the Arts and Humanities Citation Index and the Book Citation Index-Social Sci- ences & Humanities. None of these different indexes cover all the soft power literature (e.g. single-author books are excluded) and there can also be missing or wrong metadata. Nonetheless, it is the best approach to compiling a soft power dataset that is as complete as possible. 10 The first soft power publications emerged in 1990. 11 It should be noted that I do not speak Japanese and have often relied on online translations and the support of colleagues where something remained unclear.

76 While bibliometrics are perhaps both a blessing and a curse for scholars who need to justify their research or to apply for new positions by illustrating the impact and relevance of their recent work, bibliometric analysis is also increasingly used to map the development of scientific fields, including IR. Scholars have used the information contained in bibliometric data to map and quantify issues such as regional divides, gender divides, and theoretical and methodological divides in the discipline of International Relations and beyond, in the process quantitatively supporting arguments that IR remains an Anglo-Saxon discipline that privileges certain modes of thinking and doing IR (see e.g. Kris- tensen 2012). At the same time, however, with the exception of less than a page in Bueger’s (2014) work on the failed state concept, such work has primarily been concerned with the broad question of IR as a field rather than specific publications, scholars and their journeys. As I illustrate below, bibliometrics can just as well be used to track an individual concept as it travels across academic literatures. What was especially useful with regard to bibliometric datasets is that their metadata allowed me to identify important aspects of the concept, such as the most central and productive authors, the most cited publications, the most common keywords, which keywords occur typically together and who cites whom. From such an analysis, a first cut can emerge of the phenomenon of the concept. For instance, it became clear early on that the soft power concept has been particularly important in the context of China and Japan. In engaging in such an analysis and also visualising it, I relied on the R- package bibliometrics and the VOSviewer (Aria and Cuccurullo 2017; van Eck and Waltman 2014). Both programs are free and come with extensive docu- mentation. Bibliometrics has the advantage that it functions in the R- language environment and treats bibliometric datasets as data frames, which allowed me to clean and organise the data relatively easily. This is often necessary as bibliometric metadata is often misspelled or miss-categorised. There were for instance at least 20 different spellings of Joseph Nye. Another reason for using R is the option to create subsets of the data, for instance including or excluding observations such as those written in the 2000s by Germany-based authors and that contain the word “France” in the abstract. This allowed me to ask all kinds of queries of the dataset and to explore it, helping me to get a better overall grasp of the broad patterns of the soft power concept, and later on to quickly locate specific articles. VOSviewer, on the other hand, is especially useful for visualising bibliometric networks. While such an analysis of the metadata is extremely helpful, it is important to note that the actual text, be it an article or a book chapter, is not part of the dataset. This is an important limitation, as the ensuing analysis is dependent on the author’s ability to capture the essence of her text in the title, keywords and

77 abstract, which as we all know is not always successful. Of course, it would be ideal if the text could be included, but this is not practically possible unless one is dealing with relatively few academic articles, has extensive subscriptions to journals, is able to parse PDF documents into plain text, has enough time to retrieve articles or has funding for research assistants, none of which was the case for this project. In general, while bibliometric analysis is a powerful method for navigating large quantities of academic text, it is important to emphasise that this only provides a first cut of the phenomenon. The ensuing analysis in chapter 4 is thus no replacement for an in-depth analysis of the soft power phenomenon. Instead , it is helpful for making informed choices on where to look in more detail, and where to find representative texts and study them with respect to the conceptual politics around the concept. Based on this analysis, I narrowed down the choice of the most relevant articles for further analysis, which then served as the foundation for chapters 5 to 9.

3.3.2 Wider debate In addition to the performance of soft power in academia, the concept also performs in the wider public debate. To collect material, I began by looking at newspaper articles. For English language articles, I relied on the Factiva database which returned more than 60,000 articles on soft power between 1990 and 2019.12 Factiva also allows complex search inquiries, such as for example through so-called proximity operators. I often made use of such inquiries while following up on a topic that arose in conversation or another text (snowballing). For instance, at some point I became interested in the role of the US State Department (State Department) in soft power in the 1990s, searched for “soft power NEAR10 state department” (i.e. both words occur within 10 words) and came across an article that detailed a dispute around soft power and the National Security Strategy (NSS) between the State Department and the US Department of Defense (DOD). For Japanese news articles, I have collected articles that touch upon soft power in the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun (accessed via Yomidasu Rekishikan and Asahi Shinbun Kikuzo II Visual respectively), amounting to a total of around 800 articles whose titles I have skimmed in their translations to see where it was necessary to further go into detail. Chinese newspaper articles were collected with the help of the CNKI. Since a search for soft power returns

12 While it is possible in principle to retrieve more information on these articles, such as the full text, Factiva restricts the number of articles that can be retrieved easily to a few hundred. For this reason, only broad patterns could be examined from a bird’s-eye view

78 more than 10.000 articles (without containing interesting meta data such as abstracts or keywords), I have not downloaded the entire dataset but restricted my focus to newspaper articles in the People’s Daily, China’s largest newspaper and the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s mouthpiece. For the period between 1990 and 2012, I relied on the newspaper’s own archive. In total, there were 2819 articles that raise the question of soft power, and based on whether the title suggested a more substantial treatment of soft power, I have engulfed on a closer reading. In addition, if a topic came up elsewhere, for the period after 2012, I could use complex queries to see whether and how the concept was approached in the news. Another facet of the wider public debate are the non-academic and non- journalistic texts. These are more difficult to get access to, since they are typically not found in databases. A key example are think tank reports. To collect such material, I first identified the key think tanks that work in the field of global politics in the US, Japan and China, which was a process that partially relied on secondary literature and discussions with experts. Examples of such think tanks are the Brookings Institute, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA), the Sasakwa Peace Foundation (SPF), the China Institute for International Studies (CIIS) and the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR).I then searched for the soft power concept on their website and systematically examined the results. Finally, an important part of collecting material on the wider public debate was to google specific terms, people or events related to soft power as it arose in my material. Such snowballing would often lead me to blog posts, video clips, tweets or other types of material available online. A proximity search to filter out irrelevant search results was particularly helpful in this context. For example, once I noticed that soft power in Japan was often discussed in the context of the US–Japanese security alliance, entering alliance AROUND(10) “soft power” in the address line of google chrome allowed me to collect more information on this topic. I often restricted the search to specific domains, such as websites in China and Japan that ended .cn or .jp, by using Google’s customis- able search engines. It was sometimes also necessary to access archived websites, which I did using the wayback machine (https://archive.org/web/)

3.3.3 Official material Another important type of material came from official governmental websites. I systematically searched for soft power in curated governmental databases in the US, for instance, to see how far soft power emerged in hearings, bills or congressional reports (available at https://www.govinfo.gov/). In Japan

79 I searched the minutes of the Diet (available at https://kokkai.ndl.go. jp/). The material was first skimmed and then analysed where it seemed useful to go into more detail. Given the lack of publicly available records in China, I had to rely on interviews or press releases to get a sense of the government’s discussion of soft power. Another important way to gather material was to search governmental websites that might not appear in the databases (such as MOFAJ, Ministry of For- eign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (MFAC) and the DOD) to see whether they refer to the soft power concept and, if so, in what way. Cus- tomisable search engines were again helpful for restricting a google search to governmental websites,13 and for retrieving archived websites where possible.

3.3.4 Interview material Another important source of material was the interviews. Over the past few years, I have conducted a little over 80 interviews with various concept entrepreneurs such as academics, journalists, think tank members, playwrights and government officials. I identified them as concept entrepreneurs if they had worked on or mentioned the concept, because their work fell into an area that is typically understood as soft power-related or because someone pointed me in their direction. The interviews were semi-structured, in that I had developed a broad set of questions but would take a back seat during the interview to give my interview partners a chance to speak freely. Some of the questions that I always asked were targeted at my interviewee’s understanding of soft power, where and how they had come across it first, and how they made sense of the concept’s evolution and use in politics or elsewhere. As my fieldwork advanced, I began to incorporate topics and questions that emerged in other conversations or from other material. The key example of this is when the Na- tional Endowment for Democracy (NED) published a report on “sharp power”, which was widely circulated and increasingly raised by the interviewees. From then on, I would ask for my interviewee’s take on this new concept. While it was clear that many of my interview partners had published on Japan, China and the US, and on the soft power concept or acquired substantial experience in work related to the topic, it was important to hear their unmedi- ated opinion of their understanding of the terms or the broader discourse around the soft power concept. I have often noticed that people tend to speak much more freely, and are much more affirmative than they would be in published pieces, so a central aspect of the analysis was to investigate any potential dis- crepancies between these two dimensions of conceptual politics.

13 For Japanese governmental websites see *.go.jp: Chinese: *gov.cn,: USA: *.gov.

80 In the vast majority of cases, the interviews were conducted anonymously. First and foremost, this was necessary because many of the interviews were conducted in sensitive environments. This was especially the case for interviews in China with Chinese scholars and officials, but also at times with experts who commented on China but preferred to do so anonymously so that there would be no repercussions in the future, such as restricted access to China following a regime-critical comment. Another important reason was to facilitate more open conversation and honest assessment of, for example, the activities of colleagues, which were sometimes made in fairly drastic terms. To safeguard anonymity, I usually refer to all the interviewees in the plural form. Around two-thirds of the interviews were recorded. Government officials (elected or unelected) were comfortable with this and often expected it. Experts were far less used to being recorded and often stared repeatedly at the machine, so I opted to use notes and review these straight after the interview. Most of the interviews were conducted in English but some were in Chinese. I have rough transcripts of all of the interviews, and went back for more detail when- ever there was a specific detail that I needed to emphasise. Not all of the 80+ interviews turned out to be equally useful or feature in the upcoming chapters. In some cases, the interviews were only helpful as background information or because they were able to point me in new directions or to new interviewees. A complete chronological list can be found in the appendix. It is important to emphasise that the purpose of the interviews was not to gather objective data, even if they sometimes raised useful points. Many of the interview partners were asked to reflect on a period several decades in the past, or on something that they had perhaps interpreted or rationalised several times since. In addition, as a researcher, one is necessarily involved in the interview process, which means that one co-produces meaning with the context or interviewee (Bueger and Bethke 2014). Thus, interviews are a form of performance and in many cases a site of conceptual politics, such as when concept entrepreneurs tried to persuade me of the epistemic rightness of their understanding of the soft power concept.

3.3.5 Participant observation A final source of material was participant observation. Specifically, I participated in two short journeys to Japan and China that can typically be understood as attempts at soft power. Seeing how state officials attempt to practice soft power—and whether they refer to it in such terms—gave me a crucial insight into the concept’s performance in the policy and diplomatic fields. During both trips and afterwards, I was able to conduct interviews with participants and organisers that proved essential to both cases, but especially in China where ac-

81 cess to officials had been extremely challenging. In the US, I spent half a year at Harvard University (where the term soft power was coined) and at George Washington University. This made it possible to observe and participate in the academic environment of Harvard, and especially to observe the dynamics of the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS), as well as the think tank world of Washington, DC. These experiences provided much helpful background information but it should be clear that, like the interviews, participant observation means that the researcher is embedded in the research process rather than reporting on it from the outside.

82 Part II

Empirical Analysis

4. Mapping the phenomenon of soft power

This chapter maps the journey of the soft power concept from a bird’s-eye perspective. The aim is to provide a broader sense of the global phenomenon of soft power (as it developed in English) before subsequent chapters delve in more detail into the conceptual politics around the concept in the US, Japan and China. This makes it possible to identify the most influential publications, authors, moments, places and themes, which the country-specific chapters then focus on in more detail.

4.1 Academic publications 4.1.1 English: WOS Database The soft power concept originated in the academic world, and any analysis of soft power’s academic travel must begin with English-language material. As discussed in chapter 2, the material for this analysis was gathered in the Web of Science (WOS) database and covers the period 1989–2019. The main information on soft power in the WOS dataset is shown in Table 4.1. In the time period under analysis, from the first publication in 1990 (Nye 1990a) to 2019, 1710 articles were published with the phrase soft power in the title, abstract or keywords by 2093 unique authors in 847 unique sources. Figure 4.1 shows how many articles on soft power have been published in each year since 1990.1 Although the first publications on soft power came out in the early 1990s, the concept was only picked up in the academic literature in the second half of the 2000s. Furthermore, certain years see a spike in interest on soft power, such as between 2007 and 2008/2009, and again between 2014 and 2015. The next step is to look further at the dissemination of the soft power concept across different fields. An analysis of the most productive sources in Table 4.2 shows that only two journals published more than 20 articles on soft power. Hence, the articles on soft power are relatively well spread across various jour-

1 The one article that can be seen in the graph is Nye’s 1990 article in Foreign Policy.

85 Table 4.1: Main information about Figure 4.1: Annual growth of soft soft power in WOS dataset (1990- power publications in WOS dataset 2019)

300 268

Description Results 250 215 Timespan 1990–2019 Total Documents 1710 200 Authors 2093 Sources 847 150 83 95 Keywords (DE) 3489 100 33 51

Note: The WOS data was created by search- Count of publications 50 ing for the term “soft power” in the topic field 1 20 7 in the WOS database, restricting the search re- 1 2 sults to the Social Science Citation Index, the 0 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 Arts and Humanities Citation Index and the Year Book Citation Index-Social Sciences and Hu- manities. These indexes are curated to only include high-quality and influential journals, which is a key difference from google scholar. The search returned 1919 documents. After removing observations that had nothing to do with soft power in IR (such as those from as- trophysics), 1710 observations remained. The sources may be journals or edited volumes. Note that the WOS is particularly strong on journal articles but its book index is still in its infancy. nals. When the published articles are analysed by field (Figure 4.2), it is clear that International Relations (IR) and Political Science (PS) journals published the most, at 484 and 461 respectively. However, soft power’s travel to other fields is also notable. None of the most productive sources in Table 4.2 are IR or PS journals. Instead, they are area studies, culture, sport or communication journals. This notion is reinforced when looking at publications in these fields in Figure 4.2, where there is a particular emphasis on area studies and communications. Hence, it seems clear that, academically, the soft power concept has travelled substantially beyond the confines of IR and PS.

It is also possible to identify the most central authors from the WOS dataset. The most productive author (Table 4.3) is Nye, followed by a Chinese author, Zhang, who edited a book on soft power and contributed many individual chapters. Ogunnubi works primarily on the question of the soft power of African

86 Table 4.2: Most productive sources in WOS dataset

Sources Articles International Journal of Cultural Policy 23 International Journal of The History Of Sport 20 International Journal of Communication 19 Research Outline for China’s Cultural Soft Power 16 Journal of Contemporary China 14 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 14 Australian Journal of International Affairs 13 Screening China’s Soft Power 13 Mgimo Review of International Relations 12 Public Diplomacy and Soft Power In East Asia 12 Public Relations Review 12 Asian Perspective 11 Politics 11

Figure 4.2: Publications per subject category in WOS dataset

International Relations 484 Political Science 461 Area Studies 231 Communication 168 History 124 Social Sciences,Interdisciplinary 76 Hospitality, Sport and Tourism 75 Cultural Studies 75 Education and educational research 74 Economics 62

0 100 200 300 400 500 Count of publications

87 states while James is an expert in public diplomacy (see e.g. Ogunnubi and Isike 2015; Pamment 2014; G. Zhang 2017). The most frequently cited author in the WOS dataset (Table 4.4) is again Nye, who is 10 times more dominant that the other concept entrepreneurs.2 Besides Nye, there are Kurlantzick and Shambaugh, both of whom have worked on China and soft power; Grix, Melissen and Gill, who work on sports diplomacy and public diplomacy; and Steve Lukes, who is known as a power theorist (see e.g. instance Gill and Y. Huang 2006; Grix 2013; Lukes 1974; Melissen 2005). An analysis of the cited references—that is, an analysis of the bibliography of one (reference) observation—is useful to see whose and what work is particularly influential within a given dataset. The result of this analysis is shown in Table 4.5. Nye’s publications are by far the most influential in the dataset. Besides Nye, with the exception of Bially Mattern (2005b), all the other publications are concerned with China’s soft power.

Table 4.3: Most productive author in Table 4.4: Most cited author in WOS WOS dataset dataset

Author Article Author Frequency Nye Js 14 Anonymous 3734 Zhang G 14 Nye J 2097 Ogunnubi O 12 Kurlantzick J 167 Pamment J 12 European Commission 144 Chong A 9 Shambaugh D 144 Keane M 9 Grix J 138 Tella O 9 Melissen J 122 Grix J 8 Ding S 118 Hartig F 8 Gill B 105 Li J 7 Lukes S 101

Using the bibliometrix package in R, it is possible to examine which states dominate soft power research (Table 4.6).3 To some degree, it is not particularly surprising that the US and its universities are in the lead. given that earlier studies have found IR/PS to be US/Anglo-centric (Kristensen 2012). Nonethe- less, it is important to note that soft power-related research seems to be no exception to this broader pattern. That said, a substantial number of publications on soft power come from non-Western sources, such as China, Russia, Turkey and South Korea. Finally, a look at the most common keywords provides a first thematic cut

2 Anonymous typically refers to primary material. 3 Based on the affiliation of the lead author.

88 Figure 4.3: Keywords network of WOS dataset

sustainable development smart power european neighbourhood policy singapore hard power international law

israel human rights influence international students news discourse international education strategy china-africa relations diplomacy compliance kazakhstan policy education policy ukraine turkey chinese foreign policy hegemony foreign direct investment

sport neoliberalism international relations globalisation central asia knowledge spain europe russia qatar gender education soft power national identity media governmentality united states confucius institutes trust power china australia propaganda korea finland olympics cold war cultural diplomacy politics european union development public relations south africa culture foreign aid governance migration public diplomacy africa accountability networks transnationalism chinese media nation branding soft balancing japan leadership constructivism state south korea indonesia soft law brazil latin america geopolitics brics legitimacy cultural policy global governance conflict values

89 multilateralism climate change

co-production VOSviewer Table 4.5: Most frequently cited manuscripts in soft power WOS dataset

Publication Times cited Nye (2004): Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics 507 Nye (1990): Bound to Lead 181 Nye (2008): Public Diplomacy and Soft Power 163 Nye (1990): Soft Power 158 Nye (2011): The Future of Power 125 Kurlantzick (2008): Charm Offensive 121 Gill and Y. Huang (2006): Sources and Limits of Chinese ‘Soft Power’ 78 Y. Wang (2008): Public Diplomacy and the Rise of Chinese Soft Power 66 Bially Mattern (2005): Why ‘Soft Power’ Isn’t So Soft 60 Paradise (2009): China and International Harmony 56

Note: See the bibliography for complete references.

Table 4.6: Most productive country in Table 4.7: Most common keywords WOS dataset in WOS dataset

Country Articles Keyword Total count USA 325 Soft Power 510 United Kingdom 212 China 150 China 154 Public Diplomacy 117 Russia 130 Power 84 Australia 103 Russia 65 Turkey 53 Foreign Policy 56 Korea 44 Cultural Diplomacy 51 Germany 43 Soft 40 Canada 42 Education 38 South Africa 40 Diplomacy 38 European Union 31 Japan 31 Globalization 30

of the soft power phenomenon. Unsurprisingly, the most common keyword is “soft power”. Next, there are keywords such as “China” and “public diplomacy”, followed by far less frequent keywords such as “Russia”, “foreign policy” and “cultural diplomacy”, “European Union” and “Japan”. Besides the overall frequency of single keywords associated with the soft power concept, another revealing pattern is the co-occurrence of keywords, that is, how many publications include any two keywords in their keyword list (van Eck and Walt- man 2014, p. 287). From this, it is possible to compute a network of keywords

90 where the proximity of two items and the thickness of a line between them indicates their relatedness. This provides a good grasp of the thematic cornerstones of the “soft power” research field.4 Figure 4.3 shows a network of keywords in the WOS database, with different colours to indicate which keywords belong to which cluster. The keyword “soft power” is by far the most important one with the most connections to other keywords, which makes sense considering the way the dataset was built. Two keywords (“hard” and “smart power”) are located in the same cluster but since they are not integrated much with other keywords, it is clear that they are not particularly central to this network. Of the keywords located in close proximity to soft power (some of which are not visible because of over-layering), “China”, “foreign policy”, “identity” and “terrorism” indicate that these topics are regularly discussed in the context of soft power. Among the most noteworthy clusters, the China cluster includes keywords such as “media”, “propaganda”, “Confucius Institutes” and “Africa”, which suggests that research typically discusses these topics together. Outside of the immediate cluster, the China keyword is also closely connected to keywords such as “public diplomacy”, “identity”, “Russia” and “soft balancing”, again suggesting a thematic connection. The turquoise cluster is centred on public diplomacy and culture, and includes states such as Japan and South Korea which means that these subjects are typically discussed in the same articles. Another interesting cluster lies in the northern part of the field where keywords such as “international law”, “human rights” and “normative power Europe” appear in proximity. In the south-west, we find topics such as “foreign aid”, “accountability”, “governance”, “soft law” and “European Union”, which is an indication of the thematic focus of soft power commentary on the EU. The north-west corner shows a cluster of words related to (international) education, while the south-east corner illustrates keywords related to “nation branding”, “national identity” and the “Olympics”. Finally, the blue cluster containing “Russia”, “Ukraine”, “human rights” and “globalisation” is particularly interesting as it suggests that the discussion of Russia in terms of soft power is probably related to the Ukraine crisis, which also makes sense given that the keyword “Russia” emerged only after 2014.

4.1.2 Japanese: the CiNii database In contrast to the comprehensive WOS, the most common database for accessing Japanese articles, the Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator (CiNii), does not allow a detailed analysis as it returns only the most basic in-

4 I relied on a combination of bibliometrics and VOSViewer.

91 formation on author, title and publication year. Hence, the information on this data set (Table 4.8) is quite sparse. Notwithstanding these limitations, the publication trend in the Japanese context offers a first grasp of the phenomenon and is depicted in Table 4.4. In total, there are just under 400 publications indexed in the CiNii, far fewer than the 1700 English publications but still a substantial number. The soft power concept appeared for the first time in 1992, when several articles were published in Chao5 as part of a special project on the “era of soft power” and “Japan’s soft power” (see e.g. Chao 1992). While the 1990s was relatively quiet, there were several spikes during the 2000s, typically when specific projects published their results. It is noteworthy that no single author claimed a monopoly on soft power commentary.6 In terms of content, the lack of keywords or abstracts means that it was not possible to analyse anything beyond publication titles. From the most frequent words in Table 4.9, in addition to the unsurprising dominance of “soft power”, varia- tions of “Japan”, “China” and “culture” also feature prominently as topics of Japanese soft power research.7

4.1.3 Chinese: the CNKI database To conduct a comparative analysis of academic publications in Chinese, I constructed a dataset search for the Chinese translations8 of soft power in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database. The main information is shown in Table 4.10. For the period 1990 to 2019, the query returned more than 18,000 results. In other words, since the first article was published in 1991 (S. Huang 1991), 1.7 scientific articles have been added every day to the body of Chinese soft power literature. The growth in the number of publications per year is depicted in Table 4.5. There were relatively few publications in the 1990s but interest picked up after 2004. The soft power database peaked in 2012 at 1882 publications, but then began to fall quickly to 811 publications by 2018 followed by a slight rise in 2019. Chinese academic soft power articles thus follow a different pattern to English or Japanese articles. In particular, Chinese interest was highest in 2012 but lowest in 2018, when both English

5 Ushio Publishing, which publishes Chao, is a publishing house affiliated with the Soka Gakkai religious group 6 The most articles are written by Aoki Tamotsu (6), a cultural anthropologist, followed by several articles that list Nye as their author (interviews and translations), Watanabe Hirotaka (4) a university professor and former ambassador, and various others with less than 3 articles. 7 After roughly translating the titles using google translate, I cleaned the most frequent words from non-content relevant words such as “special issue”. 8 I discuss these different translations in more detail in chapter 8.

92 Table 4.8: Main information about Table 4.9: Most common words in ti- soft power in CiNii dataset (1992– tle in CiNii dataset 2019)

Word Count Description Results power 337 Timespan 1992–2019 soft 308 Documents 394 japan 88 japanese 56 diplomacy 52 world 41 china 39 japan’s 36 cultural 36 international 36 culture 28 strategy 28 century 24 chinese 24

and Japanese publications showed a strong interest in the concept (Table 4.1, Table 4.4). In terms of the most productive sources, 18,158 articles have been published in 3119 different journals, meaning that journals boast an average of five publications on the topic. Table 4.11 shows that several journals published more than 60 individual soft power articles. Given the large quantity of articles, however, even the most productive sources make up only 1% of the total. The diversity of sources in terms of content is also interesting. There are journals primarily interested in theory development (People’s Forum, Theory research, Ability and Wisdom), two journals concerned with communication (Interna- tional Communications, Modern Communication), several journals interested in business and enterprise culture (Enterprise civilisation, Oriental Enterprise Culture, Economic Research Guide), an education journal (Forward Position) and, finally, an entire journal dedicated to soft power (Cultural Soft Power). Even more so than was the case in the WOS, soft power appears in a plethora of different fields, meaning that the concept has travelled widely to other fields. The most productive authors on China’s soft power are shown in Table 4.12. Most of these authors have worked as principal investigators on soft power projects, such as Deng Xianchao or Zhang Guozuo (who are also prolific in WOS dataset), and most of their efforts revolve around the topic of cultural soft power, although Deng Zhenghong, Zhang Honglei and Meng Jian focus on enterprise, medicine and communications respectively. Of the most cited publi-

93 Figure 4.4: Annual growth of soft power publications in CiNii dataset

32 34 30 26

18 10 10 Count of publications 6

0 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 Year Note: I assume that not all articles that were published in 2019 have yet been indexed.

cations on soft power in China (Table 4.13), (H. Wang 1993) constitutes a key publication, while several publications are concerned with assessing China’s soft power. Two more recent publications raise the question of cultural confidence. Finally, Figure 4.6 examines the most relevant keywords (translated) and how they relate to other keywords (their co-occurrence). As can be clearly seen, apart from “soft power”,9 “cultural soft power” constitutes the most central keyword. At the centre of the green cluster, cultural soft power often appears with keywords such as “traditional culture”, “socialist core values”, “cultural awareness”, “Xi Jinping” and “Chinese dream”. Another more separate cluster in yellow revolves around soft power as “enterprise soft power”, “company culture” and “innovation”. In purple, there are articles concerned with education, where keywords such as “colleges”, “college students” or “vocational colleges” typically occur together. The blue cluster contains keywords such as “national image”, “diplomacy”, “public diplomacy” and “communication”, while the red cluster contains keywords such as “hard power”, “national soft power”, “socialist core values system” and “influence.

9 Different translations mean that there are several soft power bubbles.

94 Table 4.10: Main information about Figure 4.5: Annual growth of soft soft power in CNKI dataset (1991– power publications in CNKI dataset 2019)

1882 1786 Description Results 1500 1422 Timespan 1991–2019 Total Documents 18158 1397

Authors 17323 1168 1000 811 Sources (journals) 3119 Keywords 30534 554

500 6 Count of publications 4 232 6 1 2

0 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 Year

Table 4.11: Most productive sources Table 4.12: Most productive authors in CNKI dataset in CNKI dataset

Journal Articles Author Articles People’s Forum 203 Deng Xianchao 30 Theory Research 132 Zhang Guozuo 30 Enterprise civilization 118 Hong Xiaonan 24 Oriental Enterprise Culture 111 Deng Zhenghong 23 Ability and Wisdom 87 Liu Jia 23 International Communications 83 Zhang Honglei 21 Cultural Soft Power 82 Meng Jian 19 Economic Research Guide 66 Hu Jian 18 Forward Position 63 Shen Zhuanghai 17 Modern Communication 61 Zhu Konglai 17

4.2 Newspapers The performance of soft power in the wider public debate can be approached by looking at the evolution of newspaper articles that mention the soft power concept. Starting in English, the soft power concept was occasionally discussed in the news throughout the 1990s, increasingly picked up after 2001 and again after 2006, and by 2017 was increasing by several hundred articles a year to a total of 62,099 articles (Figure 4.7).10

10 All the English news articles listed on Factiva between 1990 and 2019.

95 Table 4.13: Most frequently cited soft power publication in CNKI dataset

Publication Times cited H. Wang (1993): Culture as National Power: Soft Power 801 L. Liu (2016): The Concept, Essential Characteristics and Contem- 478 porary Value of Cultural Self-Confidence X. Zhang (2005): Analysis of Joseph Nye’s ‘Soft Power’ Thought 382 Men (2007): Assessment and Report of China’s Soft Power 284 Zheng and M. Li (2014): Promote the Modernization of China’s Na- 277 tional Governance System and Governance Capabilities Yan and J. Xu (2008): Comparison of Soft Power Between China and 256 the United States F. Zhao and D. Sun (2016): Analysis of Xi Jinping’s View of Cultural 237 Confidence D. Liu (2004): The Origin and Development of ‘Soft Power’ 227 Qiu (2012): On Some Issues That Need to Be Dealt With in Cultural 205 Consciousness and Cultural Self-Confidence Jing (2006): The Development of the Japanese Animation Industry 182 and Its Impact on the World

Note: Citation count is global citations, not only within soft power dataset. Full citation in bibliography.

96 a la eki 03wt oeta 0 rils fe hc h number the which after There articles, 300 concept. than significantly. after the more decreased with especially on articles 2013 and of touched in have 2006, peak clear articles since a of but was number 2004, increasing until an topic 2007, the in concept. interest power limited soft in the articles mention 86 that were There since. interest 2001. peak less after first been interest a has in was there there increase but 1990s, 2009 rapid the a in and published 2000 were in articles of number a After power. soft Figure 4.6: Keywords network of CNKI dataset The on articles distinct 800 around published newspapers two the Japanese, In

China epesDaily People’s iue4.8 Figure National Image Construction

Vocational colleges Public diplomacy Soft power (quanli) Culture

Development hw h nulgot ntenme fnw articles. news of number the in growth annual the shows nCiahspbihd21 itntnwpprarticles newspaper distinct 2819 published has China in

Countermeasure International communication Upgrade Chinese dream Soft power (shili)

Innovation

Globalization Culture Industry company culture Influence path iue4.9 Figure National soft power Cultural soft power Chinese culture Urban soft power Colleges Core competence

Traditional Culture hard power hw htteewsvery was there that shows , Ideology

Enterprise soft power National cultural soft power core value Socialist core values Construction of Enterprise Cul Cultural soft power constructi Scientific outlook on developm Xi Jinping

Cultural power College Students Socialist Core Value System

Cultural confidence

Cultural awareness

97 VOSviewer Figure 4.7: Annual growth of soft Figure 4.8: Annual growth of soft power news articles (English) power news articles (Japanese)

7375 86 75 6000

4919 37 46 50 4000 40

2373 3525 38 44

2000 25 Count of publications 12 361 914 2727 Count of publications 25

169 2 1016 12 0 0 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 Year Year

Figure 4.9: Annual growth of soft power news articles (Chinese)

300 313 317

253 200

118

100 58 Count of publications

4 2

19 0 2000 2005 2010 2015 Year

98 4.3 Conclusion This short chapter has provided a bird’s-eye view of the soft power concept. By discussing publication patterns, and the most influential and productive authors, places, moments and themes, the chapter has laid the foundations for the upcoming chapters. In addition to providing me with a broad grasp of soft power in action, this exercise informed me of what to read and analyse in more detail, who ideally to arrange interviews with and what broad patterns to focus on as I dive deeper into the empirical material.

99 100 5. A concept is “born”: Soft power in the US in the 1990s

This chapter addresses the emergence of the soft power concept in the context of the US, and focuses on the period between its emergence in the late 1980s and the late 1990s. I apply my analytical framework in order to open the black box of soft power’s early days, which allows me to draw out the conceptual politics around the birth of the concept. The chapter is organised in two sections: an analysis of concept entrepreneurs and the means of conceptual politics is followed by an examination of the role of feedback loops and the issue of reification. From where precisely did the concept of soft power originate? In what ways was it coined and in anticipation of what kind of performative effects? If we are to believe a recent recollection of the concept’s progress, the story of soft power began in the late 1980s as a jotting at Joseph Nye’s kitchen table in Mas- sachusetts (Nye 2017b). Attending several conferences and seminars had left Nye feeling a “lonely dissenter” for not believing in the inevitable decline of the US, and this led him to put pen to paper to voice his discontent with contemporary scholarship (p. 2). After trying various alternatives, he eventually settled on the term “soft power” to denote the type of power that is involved “when one country gets other countries to want what it wants” (Nye 1990c, p. 166). His argument was that there was such a thing as soft power, that soft power was becoming increasingly important in international affairs because the US had plenty of it and because its competitors had less, and thus, as the title of Nye’s (1990) book promised, the US was Bound to Lead. Although the concept reportedly had only “modest ambitions”, its journey from that kitchen table became an almost unparalleled success story. There is something decisively romantic about this origin story of soft power: underdog Nye’s palpable frustration with colleagues, his lonely but sustained dissent, his agitated scribbling at a kitchen table and the miraculous success of the concept all create the image of a heroic scholar who speaks truth to power and the fruits of whose labour justifiably pay off. In this depiction—which is best understood as a specific performance rehearsed countless times over

101 the years1—we can already see several key components that characterise the conceptual politics around the concept, such as the ways in which soft power is advanced as an intellectual intervention with political implications, the conceptual debates in which the concept participates, Nye’s centrality to the concept as an attempted spokesperson and the narrative devices that invite the audience to experience those crucial moments of soft power’s birth. All of these elements are addressed in more detail below, beginning with a discussion on concept entrepreneurs.

5.1 Concept entrepreneurs Regardless of whether we are to believe the almost mythological recollection of the birth of soft power, ever since its inception in the late 1980s, no other individual has been as closely associated with the concept as Joseph Nye. As became clear in chapter 4, he is an eminent figure in the soft power universe and appears in more than half of all the scientific articles on soft power. Tellingly, he is also sometimes referred to as the “father” of soft power (T. Hall 2010; Shambaugh 2015). Nye himself does not seem to mind such a characterisation as he likens concepts such as soft power to children: “you can love and discipline […] [them] when they are young, but as they grow they wander off and make new company, both good and bad” (Nye 2017b, p. 3). This makes him and his relation to the concept a natural place to begin the analysis. Before I address Nye’s position in detail, however, there are three things that it is important to bear in mind in this section and the remaining chapters. While Nye is undoubtedly a crucial figure, it would be misleading to reduce the phenomenon of soft power to his persona. For one, as suggested in chapter 2, concepts do not appear out of thin air, but have histories that precede the moment that their name is said aloud for the first time. It is therefore important to address the continuities of the concept rather than overly emphasise the precise moment of the concept’s birth. Second, it is also important to address the broader context in which the concept emerged and that cannot be solely attributed to Nye, although it certainly enabled him. Third, although Nye can be seen as soft power’s first concept entrepreneur, as is demonstrated below, a plethora of other concept entrepreneurs are as critical to the phenomenon, even if relatively few of them were active in the 1990s.

1 In his writing, during interviews or during conferences and seminars (Nye 2004c, p. XI; 2007, p. 162; HarvardCPL 2008; I#06; Nye 1998). Not all of these depictions are as flowery as the 2017 articles, but they carry a similar message.

102 5.1.1 Joseph Nye Starting with the broad contours of his career, Nye’s curriculum vitae reads as a typical example of the life of a highly decorated academic: born in New Jersey in the late 1930s, he studied at Princeton, Oxford and Harvard, where he graduated with a PhD in Political Science (PS) in 1964 (Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) 2017). Long before he worked on the soft power concept, Nye had made a name for himself as a scholar of corruption and nuclear non-proliferation, and was perhaps best known for his work on the issue of complex interdependence (see especially Keohane and Nye 1987). Alongside his academic interests, Nye is also one of the most obvious examples of the so-called revolving door culture in the US, moving in and out of government once in the late 1970s and twice in the 1990s. He was also tipped to become the US ambassador to Japan in the first Obama administration, although the post eventually went to someone else (Landler 2013). Nye’s wide-ranging experience indicates that he has accumulated different types of capital over the years that give him a competitive edge when engaging in conceptual politics. For one, Nye’s substantial education and prestigious degrees, as well as his ability to speak and carry himself in accordance with the environment in which he moves (he regularly talks about his ability to navigate the rules of these worlds, see e.g Nye 2009) are a testimony to his cultural capital. Importantly, Nye had already accumulated much of this capital before he coined the term soft power and could hence rely on it during the concept’s formation. Second, it is also clear that Nye has accumulated much social capital over the course of his long career, be it in terms of the students he has mentored or the politicians he has welcomed in private and public seminars or met with during his work in government. Of course, this has been strongly facilitated by his affiliation with Harvard University, and the HKS in particular. As an Ivy League university, Harvard is often associated with the “US foreign policy establishment”, a term that refers to a group of individuals from Ivy League universities, philanthropic foundations, financial and business institutions or media outlets who tend to favour internationalist foreign policy goals and who are highly influential in the making of US foreign policy (Parmar 2009). As such, Harvard constitutes a special environment that has for many decades attracted domestic and foreign students alike, and in so doing constitutes a crucial context in which conceptual politics can flourish. As a quick browse through the list of alumni or a stroll through the halls of Harvard, with its many commemorative plaques, makes clear, many former students take up important positions in government, business or academia, from Ban Ki Moon to Barack Obama or Ma Ying-jeou. Equally important are the short- term programmes that are explicitly created to train foreign elites, where Nye

103 has also been regularly involved through lectures (Fu 2016; W. Zhang 2016). Many former politicians also take up visiting fellowships, such as Kevin Rudd, Sigmar Gabriel, Gordon Brown or Mario Draghi, while others regularly speak at public seminars, such as Hillary Clinton, Warren Christopher or Abe Shinzo, all of which has allowed Nye to expand his social capital. Beyond his academic career, Nye’s work in government has undoubtedly contributed to his social capital. For example, his position in the US Depart- ment of Defense (DOD) as Assistant Secretary for international security affairs (which he took up in 1994) meant that he was responsible for US policy on East Asia, something which allowed him to work with Japanese colleagues such as Akiyama Masahiro, then Vice Minister of the Defense Agency (I#06; Pers.Corrs. with Akiyama). These students, politicians and officials constitute an important pool of potential concept entrepreneurs who become available in person as a consequence of Nye’s social capital. Indeed, as my analysis of other concept entrepreneurs illustrates, many have met with Joseph Nye at some point in their careers and perceive this encounter as an important moment for their involvement with the soft power concept. Third, Nye’s symbolic capital—or the recognition of his capital and authority—is also substantial. Nye is often ranked as a person whose academic work has had a considerable influence on both the discipline of International Relations (IR) and the practice of politics.2 Nye’s authority can also be seen in the number of citations of his publications. Although a crude measure, and citation does not mean endorsement, Nye has accumulated more than 90,000 citations to his name over the years, compared to Mearsheimer’s 30,000 or Wendt’s 36,000.3 Nye is clearly skilful at translating his social and cultural capital into symbolic capital in order to establish himself (and correspondingly the soft power concept) as authoritative. One aspect of this is the explicit staging of his social capital. For example, at our interview, the first thing I noticed in his office was a large photograph on the wall of Nye standing next to Hillary Clinton, a staging that invites his visitors to recognise his influence and authority. In addition, although we can never know how things would have been had Nye developed the concept elsewhere, it is commonplace to introduce the soft power concept both in scientific articles but also in newspapers and other outlets as developed by the Harvard Professor Nye (Glaser and Murphy

2 Such as a 2014 study that asked academics (n=2666) to “list four scholars whose work has had the greatest influence on the field of IR in the past 20 years”, where Nye was ranked 5th with nearly 18% (Maliniak et al. 2014). A survey of policymakers in the two Bush and Clinton administrations (n=234) lists Nye as IR’s most influential scholar (Avey and Desch 2014, p. 10). 3 These numbers are based on Google Scholar. I do not address here questions about how well Google Scholar’s algorithm works.

104 2009; Y. Huang and Ding 2006), a contextualisation that serves to emphasise Nye’s and hence the concept’s credentials. Nye’s different types of capital thus place him in an advantageous position for engaging in conceptual politics. However, this does not automatically make him the concept’s spokesperson. The fact that there is a large pool of potential concept entrepreneurs does not necessarily mean that they will be easily persuaded, and much depends on the respective means of conceptual politics on which Nye and others rely to enrol prospective members as new soft power concept entrepreneurs. Nor does it imply that Nye will be able to exert much control over the development of the concept and the way in which conceptual politics plays out around it. As is demonstrated throughout this dissertation, the more soft power travels, the more difficult it becomes to dominate the conceptual politics around the concept.

5.1.2 Other concept entrepreneurs Nye was not the only one to become involved with the soft power concept during its early phases. In the early 1990s, there were already vibrant debates in academia and current affairs in response to Nye’s work, in which the soft power concept featured (see e.g. Abrams 1990; Acharya 1991; Adams 1994; A. F. Cooper, Higgott, and Nossal 1991; Friedberg 1994; Layne 1993). Such debates did not focus exclusively on soft power—sometimes there was little more than a nod to it—but primarily on the question of the USA’s role in the world. Nonetheless, they illustrate the emergence of contestation around the soft power concept and its political implications. For this reason, such authors can be seen as concept entrepreneurs who engaged in conceptual politics, and many of them have remained committed to the concept in some form over the years (see e.g. Acharya 2018; A. F. Cooper 2016; Friedberg 2011; Higgott and Boers 2019; Layne 2010). There are other concept entrepreneurs from the early days of soft power. Strobe Talbott, Kurt Campbell and Michael Green, to name just a few, describe Nye as a mentor and friend. Over the years, all three have repeatedly and positively referred to the concept in writing, speeches or interviews.4 Their involvement with the soft power concept is particularly important because their careers followed similar patterns to Nye’s, that is, all three have held various governmental as well as academic/think tank positions and can hence be said to have accumulated considerable cultural, social and symbolic capital, which allows them to engage in conceptual politics from an advantageous position.

4 Such as e.g. K. M. Campbell and O’Hanlon 2006; Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) 2019; Green 2017; Talbott 1997; The Asia Group 2020.

105 Strobe Talbott served as Deputy Secretary of State between 1994 and 2001 before becoming the President of the Brookings Institution, a position he held until 2017. Although he did not coin the soft power concept, it became associated with him, at least with some senior defence officials, in the mid-1990s as reports of heated debates between the US DOD and the US State Department (State Department) over the Clinton administration’s 1994 National Security Strategy (NSS) indicate (Adams 1994; Lancaster and Gellman 1994). Kurt M. Campbell, who in the 1990s was a junior faculty member of Har- vard’s HKS who had been granted leave of absence to undertake a White House Fellowship, credits the beginnings of his political career in the early 1990s to a “call out of the blue” from Nye asking him to join him at the Pentagon, where he would serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Asia and the Pa- cific. In the Obama administration, Campbell later held the position of Assis- tant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs between 2009 and 2013, before taking up consultancy and think tanks positions (K. M. Camp- bell 2016, pp.xv–xxiii). Although not particularly associated with the “softer side” of power, the fact that he co-authored a book on hard power—a concept that would not exist were it not for Nye (see below)—to complement Nye’s soft power is indicative of an individual who embraces the notion in principle (K. M. Campbell and O’Hanlon 2006). Like Campbell, Michael Green was pulled into the Pentagon by Nye in the early 1990s, where he would work as an adviser on the US–Japanese alliance before working in the National Security Council in the 2000s and later at the CSIS 2019; 2020. Like the other concept entrepreneurs, Green regularly refers to the concept, particularly in the context of the US–Japanese alliance chapter 7). This section on concept entrepreneurs in the early phase of the soft power concept has focused in particular on the role of Joseph Nye before drawing attention to other concept entrepreneurs in the US who became involved with the concept in the early 1990s. I have deliberately chosen not to discuss the ways in which identities emerged through their engagement with the concept. Nor have I touched on the actual content of the soft power concept or the debates in which it participates. This is a stylistic choice and should not be mistaken for me putting concept entrepreneurs first. Content is discussed below.

5.2 Means of conceptual politics What are the means of conceptual politics and what is its purpose? How do concept entrepreneurs seek to enrol additional entrepreneurs? How do they aim to establish spokespersonship? In what ways do identities and interests

106 emerge through such processes? I argue in this section that narrative devices are key to these processes. As discussed in chapter 2, narratives are specific rhetorical devices intended to order complex reality in a framework that is familiar to the audience, something which concept entrepreneurs typically do by defining problems and why they matter to the target audience, the possible solutions and the necessary course of action. An analysis of soft power’s origins from this perspective would therefore need to approach the phenomenon with an eye to how the concept and the debates in which it is used aim to order reality, the sort of familiar notions or pre-existing familiarities this invokes and in what ways problems are framed and the concept presented as a solution that necessitates a certain course of action. As is demonstrated below, this complicates the moment of soft power’s “birth” and draws attention to the continuities of the “new” concept. It is by undertaking such an analysis that the dissertation is able finally to zoom in on the soft power concept and its content. The first issue to address in this context is the conceptual debates to which the soft power concept can be seen as a response. There are in principle two important debates: the US decline debate and the power debate. Although the question of the future of the US empire US hegemony has been an important topic for observers of the US for some time (Bacevich 2009b), the debate on the question of a possible US decline was brought to the fore by Paul Kennedy’s (1987) The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. The power debate, on the other hand, has had much longer standing in the disciplines of PS and IR. This is not surprising, given that the power concept is typically seen as a key concept of international politics and a prime example of an essentially contested concept (see e.g. Bachrach and Baratz 1963; Connolly 1974; Dahl 1957; Morgenthau 2014).

5.2.1 Contesting decline In accordance with Nye’s own recollection of the late 1980s, touched on above, the decline debate should be seen as Nye’s primary target at that point. Nye engaged in conceptual politics around the concept of decline in the hopes of revising the interpretation of decline that was prevalent among his contempo- raries. Nye has argued that this interpretation would have led to catastrophic policymaking outcomes: “Typically, periods of anxiety about the decline and rise of nations have been periods of tension and miscalculation. In a world with more than 50,000 nuclear weapons, such miscalculations could be fatal to more than just the United States” (Nye 1990a, p. xviii). Arguably, Nye’s work on power up to and including that moment assumed the function of an auxiliary tool that enabled him to contest the concept of decline.

107 Nye’s priorities are mirrored in the order of his publications: Bound to Lead (Nye 1990a) constitutes Nye’s primary contribution, while his Political Science Quarterly and Foreign Policy articles both note that they draw on that book (Nye 1990e, p. 177; 1990c, p. 153). That said, Nye serves both the decline debate and the power debate on their own terms. This can be seen by the titles and content of his early publications. While the book addresses the changing nature of US power and discusses the question of a US decline head-on in the first chapter, the article published in Political Science Quarterly addresses the changing nature of world power and refers only sporadically to US decline. Clearly, Nye (1990a) engages with questions specific to the US and its power, while Nye (1990e) directly engages with power theories and aspires to generalise wider insights into power. This allows Nye to portray US power (and its future) as a case of a universally valid and scientifically sanc- tioned concept. This dual-track approach is one that Nye maintains for many years, at times addressing the decline (and later rise) debate more explicitly, and at times tackling the power debate more explicitly, while one reinforced the other. In what follows, I argue that one of Nye’s major accomplishments lies in how he successfully integrated the power debate into the decline debate, that is, how Nye draws from the power literature to intervene in the decline debate. To investigate this further, it is first necessary to sketch out the decline debate. On the face of it, the US decline debate can be easily summarised. There are two camps: one that argues that the US is in decline and another that attempts to refute this argument. Things are more complicated, however, in that such conclusions are built on a plethora of different assumptions that can be attributed to various perspectives on IR, ranging from classical realism to constructivism. These assumptions are seldom made explicit and scholars rarely position their work clearly. These different perspectives compete with one another over the interpretation of global politics and what any changes in global politics might mean for the future of the US. Key to such debates are typical IR questions, such as what characterises, drives and (de-)stabilises the international system, and how institutions, leadership, regime types, state identities, the perceptions of intentions or self-fulfilling prophecies shape the international system.5 Although these are fierce interpretive contests in their own right, one common theme is the emphasis in the literature on “power” and its distribution

5 For some examples of the work on which these assumptions are based, see Barnett and Finnemore (1999), Doyle (2014), Gilpin (1975), Ikenberry (2014), Jervis (1999), Keo- hane and Nye (1987), Kindleberger (2013), Krasner (1976), Layne (2018), Lemke (2004), Martin and Simmons (2013), Mearsheimer (2001), Morgenthau (2014), Organski (1968), C. Pan (2012), Starr (2007), Stein (2009), Waltz (1979), and Webb and Krasner (1989).

108 as explanatory factors of world politics. For most scholars, power is conceptualised as an actor’s capability to get others to do something they otherwise would not do. Such capabilities can be measured, added up in balance sheets and compared with other states. It is these observations that shape how states interact with one another and the policies they pursue in order to survive in what is presumed to be an anarchic world. If state B concludes that state A has more power, it is unlikely that state B would attack state A. Thus, a state’s room for manoeuvre in international politics is taken to be shaped by the distribution of power.6 In this context, to suggest that state A is in decline refers to a shift in the balance of power that is unfavourable to that state. For example, state A’s relative power might decline because A has lost power by being overstretched due to having too many external commitments that cannot be supported by domestic means, which is effectively Kennedy’s (1987) argument; or because other states are catching it up, which some observers feared Japan might do in the late 1980s or fear China might do since 2000. Either way, as A declines it becomes less secure and less able to get others to do what A wants. Power shifts are often seen as dangerous phenomena in international relations (Allison 2017; S. Chan 2008). For one, a rising state might seek to replace the previous hegemon and refashion the international order to better suit its interests. For this reason, contentment with the existing international order is often seen as an important factor in determining whether the rising state will be a status quo or a revisionist power.7 Second, declining states might do everything they can to prevent their decline, including preventive wars to constrain the rise of the new power. Taken together, this means that unless power shifts are carefully managed, they are prone to lead to war. Nye’s efforts to challenge the concept of decline therefore also need to be seen as an attempt to prevent the US from dangerous policies based on a flawed understanding of decline. Notwithstanding the centrality of power to such debates, and notwithstanding that observers have long noted that analysts operate with a plethora of dif-

6 To be clear, this constitutes an oversimplification of a diverse field and should not be interpreted as me endorsing the notions of anarchy or power on which it rests. This is also not the point here as regardless of the correctness of such theories, the vast majority of researchers, policymakers and other political actors take something, such as the logic of power shifts, as fact, as something that has either already occurred or is occurring or is about to occur. Even observers who oppose the notion that there is an ongoing power shift from the West to the East understand that this social fact interacts with the world. It is precisely the propensity for such self-fulfilling prophecies to sing the world into existence that enrols them into the conceptual politics around the concept of power shifts (see e.g. Hagström and Jerdén 2014; C. Pan 2012). 7 For a critical discussion of these topics, see Johnson (1993).

109 ferent understandings of what “power” is and how it functions, such debates are strikingly absent from the US decline debate of the late 1980s, and “power” was typically taken to be self-evident rather than something that required careful conceptualisation. As such, scholars looked at different power indicators— the size of the army, territory, population or GDP growth—and deduced from these the prospects for the US and other states in the short and long term. That observers treat power as self-evident becomes particularly clear in Kennedy’s 700-page 1987 treatise on The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers which, despite its lengthy discussion of the relative distribution of power, never contemplates the meaning, contestation or application of power as an analytical concept, simply noting that “if a nation has ‘more ... of it,’ things are fine; if ‘less of it,’ there are problems” (Kennedy 1987, p. xxiii). In other words, although the concepts of decline and power are located in the same conceptual web and support each other, such connections are seldom made explicit. It is this divergence between the ubiquity and relevance of “power” in the decline debate, on the one hand, and the self-evident treatment of power, on the other, that provides a leverage point for Nye to enter the declinist debate. Nye is able to formulate the real problem for his audience: “[…] [M]isleading theories of American decline and inappropriate analogies between the United States and Great Britain in the late nineteenth century have diverted our attention away from the real issue—how power is changing in world politics” (Nye 1990c, p. 153). Based on this formulation of the problem—that observers such as Kennedy misunderstand power—Nye is able to suggest that these observers misunderstand the future of the US; that is, because the declinist debate rests on a flawed premise, it is void. By problematising the flawed understanding of the changing nature of power that undergirds the decline debate, Nye creates an intellectual vacuum that is largely unrecognised by the declinists and requires his intellectual intervention to be filled. In this framing of a problem that was not recognised as a problem before, there are clear elements of a skilful narrative and a first indication of how Nye seeks to establish “spokespersonship” in the decline debate, as it requires his intervention to find a solution to the problem. It is here that Nye can draw on the power debate to fill the vacuum and advance a more thorough conceptualisation of power, and insert this into the decline debate. What makes his intellectual intervention so potent and ultimately successful is that such debates on power are relatively novel in the context of the US decline debate. Nonetheless, since the participants in the decline debate are predominantly IR and history scholars, Nye can collect existing strands of the power debate with which such scholars are familiar and exploit such familiarity in the hopes that his audience will follow his thoughts on US decline. Put differently, Nye’s efforts to steer the declinist debate rests on his ability

110 to bring another debate into the game. Recalling the analytical framework, as much previous narrative research indicates, it is this appeal to existing debates/ commonplaces/commitments that constitutes a necessary step in persuading audiences of the rightfulness of an argument. Too outlandish, and his audience would not follow; too familiar and his audience would not see why his intervention was necessary in the first place.

5.2.2 Understanding power What precisely are these pre-existing strands of the power debate and how does Nye interact with them? In a nutshell, they are the notions of relationality and context, fungibility and the faces of power. I address these in more detail below. Starting with relationality and context, as Baldwin (2013, p. 274–275) notes, the notion of power as relational rather than a resource became increasingly popular in the latter half of the 20th century among scholars interested in power theories (see e.g. Bachrach and Baratz 1963; Dahl 1957; Oppenheim 1981). Power as a relational concept holds that power is not an absolute, cumulative concept (i.e. state A has x amount of power) but must be conceptualised as resting in a relationship between states. Hence, power analysis needs to draw out how actor A changes actor B’s behaviour/interests/beliefs/identity, that is, how far A has power over B to get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.8 In a classic example from Bachrach and Baratz (1963), if B walks up to an armed sentry A, who yells “Stop or I will shoot”: Why does B stop? A typical power-as-capability analysis would attribute power to the sentry and hold that B reacted to the threat of being shot. However, as Bachrach and Baratz (1963) points out, perhaps B was a trained soldier who obeys commands because of his training and his values as a soldier. If that is the case, then it would be misleading to suggest that A holds power. Instead, it is the training and the values that shape B’s behaviour. Despite discussing at length the changing importance of different power resources, Nye also advances a relational view of power, while not explicitly referring to it in such terms in the 1990s: “Proof of power lies not in resources but in the ability to change the behavior of states”. Moreover, because “power is a relationship, by definition it implies some context” (Nye 1990c, pp. 155; 160). For this reason, a key component of his argument lies in emphasising the importance of skilful leadership to translate such resources into actual power in concrete situations. The question of fungibility is closely related and refers to how well one

8 “A” and “B” are in power theories always taken as the sender and receiver of power. I simply follow this established usage.

111 power resource might be translated into another. While money for example is fungible—it is possible to buy flights, mercenaries or food—the fungibility argument highlights the difficulty of converting one power resource to another. Thus, power theorists suggest that translating military power resources such as a large standing army into the power necessary to succeed in, for example, international trade negotiations can be difficult, and hence one would be well advised not to “lump” power together into a single overarching indicator. At least since Dahl and Stinebrickner (1984), the question of power’s fungibility has been an important facet of contemporary power debates. For Nye, the fungibility of power is also a key concern. He not only highlights the general difficulties of converting power resources, but also suggests that power’s fungibility is becoming increasingly challenging as world politics becomes more fragmented and certain conversions that might have been relatively easy at one point, such as hiring mercenaries to conquer new territory, have become increasingly costly and difficult in a world of growing interdependence (Nye 1990c, p. 159). In essence, this argument constitutes a con- densation of his previous work on complex interdependence and the diffusion of power as a consequence (Keohane and Nye 2012; see also Baldwin 1980). Nonetheless, while Keohane and Nye (2012) advance a theorisation of power under conditions of independence, by the 1990s the fungibility problem, the relevance of non-military power resources and the diffusion of power were being presented as a given. As with the broader power debates with which declinists might be familiar, the notions of complex interdependence and power’s diffusion are also something with which Nye’s readers are probably familiar and tacitly agree, an aspect which increases the likelihood that Nye’s intervention in the decline debate might be successful. Finally, the faces of power debate is one that has also become popular among theorists of power, and which has become particularly associated with Lukes’s (2005) “radical” view of power. In principle, the three different faces of power are associated with three important publications on power. The first is Dahl’s (1957) The Concept of Power, which centres on power as observable through decision-making processes on key issues, observable behaviour and overt conflict. The second face of power (and where the terminology on “faces” comes from) was advanced by Bachrach and Baratz (1962) as an agenda-setting type of power that also incorporates non-decision-making, potential (rather than only actual) issues and covert conflict as important sites of power. To this, Lukes (1974) adds control over the political agenda (which goes beyond non-decisions), latent conflicts and a distinction between subjective and real interests in an effort to move the conceptualisation of power away from its behavioural core. Nye explicitly ties his discussions of power to this faces of power debate, particularly with reference to Bachrach and Baratz

112 (1962). Thus, Nye argues that states can achieve their preferred outcomes not only by directly inducing or threatening other countries, but also by setting the agenda and the structure of world politics (Nye 1990a, p. 31; 1990e, p. 181).9

5.2.3 Coining soft power In principle, it might have been sufficient for Nye to bring these strands of the power debate into the decline debate as they were. However, by condensing these different pre-existing strands into a single term, Nye effectively establishes himself as the central spokesperson at the same time as the new term evolves into a mental shortcut for accessing these debates. The precise term capable of fulfilling such a task then becomes crucial. Generally speaking, there are various ways to frame a term at such a moment. Many scholars opt to take a term that summarises the key sentiment, for example a term such as “narrative power” that simply refers to the power of storytelling to enable and constrain effects (Hagström and Gustafsson 2019). Others might choose a term that has a nice ring to it, an effect that can be established for instance with alliteration (“creeping crisis”). Nye, on the other hand, settles for a term that he supposes will be unexpected among his audience and create an element of surprise: “I tried a variety of terms to try to summarize these thoughts, and eventually settled on the term ‘soft power’. I hoped its slightly oxymoronic resonance in the traditional discourse of my field might make people think again about their assumptions when they spoke of power” (Nye 2017b, p. 2). At this moment, Nye has not simply coined the concept of soft power, he has also coined the concept of “hard power” as its twin, that is, before the publication of Bound to Lead, there was no such term to denote a specifically “hard” side of power. This is important because while Nye’s involvement in soft power is well-known in the field, the fact that the “hard power” concept is just as much of an intervention in world politics as soft power is far less recognised and less associated with Nye. As is demonstrated time and again below, while many observers of world politics might oppose the notion of soft power, hard power is far less controversial and has become fairly normalised, particularly among realist observers of world politics. Embracing the notion of hard power usually implies endorsement of the idea of soft power, even if one might think such a form of power less effective or useful. This constitutes a key reason for the entrenchment of the soft power concept. Finally, the very first definitions of soft and hard power are provided in Nye (1990a, p. 32): “The ability to establish preferences tends to be associated with intangible power resources such as culture, ideology, and institutions. This

9 As I discuss in chapter 6, Nye further positions soft power with respect to the power debate.

113 dimension can be thought of as soft power, in contrast to the hard command power usually associated with tangible resources like military and economic strength”. Importantly, as Nye argues, neither soft nor hard power are “new” concepts, that is, power has always been characterised by hard and soft dimensions. Indeed, Nye’s ability to forge the terms out of prior debates and concepts was key to soft and hard power. Underlying this is Nye’s endorsement of historical analyses such as Kennedy’s of the distribution of power and power shifts. In doing so, Nye offers the declinists an opportunity to embrace his notion of power, as Nye’s intervention does not change the interpretation of the historical record but contemporary interpretations of the future. What is new at the end of the 1980s is the respective importance of soft power and hard power. Due to the evolution of world politics, Nye holds that: “power is becoming less fungible, less coercive, and less tangible”. In other words, soft power is becoming increasingly important (Nye 1990a, p. 188).

5.2.4 Solving decline Based on the above, Nye can proceed to analyse the real distribution of power resources, an exercise which leads him to conclude that the US is “bound to lead” for the foreseeable future. Thus, Nye has provided a problematisation of the real issue—the poor understanding of power on which the decline debate rests—as well as a solution to this problem—a more substantial conceptualisation of power as soft/hard and as changing in world politics. For the participants in the decline debate, by following Nye and his line of argument, the US decline becomes a non-problem. At the same time, Nye also provides a solution to the problem of US competitors, as states such as the Soviet Union and Japan are presented as less powerful since they can deploy far fewer soft power resources. Despite Japan’s economic power, it was too insular and inward-looking to wield soft power (pp. 166-169; 188), and there was therefore no reason for concern. In addition to going through the steps of problematisation and solution—a typical component of narratives—Nye also provided a course of action that the US needed to follow. In chapter 7 of Bound to Lead Nye begins to discuss the domestic challenges that the US government needed to address if it wished to continue to lead. Chapter 8 addresses the wider strategic choices that the US needs to make to ensure that it does not succumb to decline. In structuring the book in this way (something which later books also do), Nye implements the tripartite structure of successful narratives: problem formulation, solution provision and a proposed course of action, or more specifically a policy prescription. Nye argues that it is crucial that the US restores the domestic sources of its economic strength, maintains the balance of military power, manages the

114 open international economy and further develops multilateral regimes and institutions to coordinate states’ reactions to transnational phenomena such as environmental problems or terrorism (pp. 238–262). In other words, Nye emphasises the need for the US to continue to lead. It is clear from this that Nye engages in an intellectual intervention that seeks to steer political thought and action. He can therefore be seen as a prime example of a concept entrepreneur that becomes involved in the conceptual politics around a different concept—the concept of decline. By contesting the way in which the concept of power is embedded in a conceptual web with the concept of decline, he effectively contests the notion of decline and the political implications that the common interpretations of decline lead to. While the policy prescription at the end of the book indicates that he wrote Bound to Lead with an eye to sound policymaking, Nye’s intervention is nonetheless first and foremost an analytical and intellectual one.

5.2.5 Evoking emotions The narratives that Nye advanced to contest the decline debate also underscore the role of emotions in producing a fit between narratives and audience. In the late 1980s, the most central aspect in this context was a phenomenon that can be called “decline anxiety”. As Nye (1990a, p. 11) himself notes, “The idea of decline touches a raw nerve in American politics. Some people react emotionally against discussions of decline because of national pride” but this is not all there is to decline anxiety. Based on the literature on the role of emotions in IR, decline anxiety arguably refers to the emotional response of an audience when exposed to narratives of decline, and can revolve around fears of losing identity, an unease about the future, shame about diminished capabilities, a feared loss of status and exceptionalism, nostalgia for the past, longing for better times or envy of competitor states.10 For Nye, decline anxiety is not simply premature and unwarranted, but also a highly problematic phenomenon that should not be “regarded as a register of mass psychology and popular fads”. This is all the more important since perceptions and misperceptions of decline as well as fears about shifting power might well precipitate war (pp. 16–17).

10 Thus far, the link between US decline narratives, emotions and ontological insecurity has not been made explicit, but there are several studies that point in this direction. As Chacko (2014) notes, ontological insecurity tends to be a by-product of power shifts. Homolar and Scholz (2019) also draws out the emotional resonance among Trump supporters when con- fronted with Trumps “declinist” speeches. Solomon (2015) engages in an in-depth analysis of the neoconservative discourse of the 1990s, which is tangential to the question of US decline. For more on US exceptionalism, see Holsti (2010) and Nymalm and Plagemann (2019).

115 It is for this reason that Nye’s intellectual intervention and specifically the development of the soft power concept can be seen as soothing declinist fears to create a sense of reassurance for his audience that US decline is neither looming nor inevitable. As long as we understand the true nature of power and as long as politicians make prudent policy choices, there is no need to worry about decline. In other words, Nye’s intellectual intervention in the decline debate and his power analysis provide a sense of security for his audience. It is, as a journalist at the time noted, “a cure for the US inferiority complex” (Gergen 1990). Importantly, the narrative that Nye provides emphasises that what has made the US a great power in the past—its exceptionalism and “exemplary role as a city on the hill”—is what needs to be maintained in the future, thereby further stressing the necessity of soft power. Thus, for any audience invested in a great power identity, Nye’s narratives on future and continuing US power become more readily acceptable, that is, Nye produces a good fit between his key concepts and his potential audiences (see also Leheny 2006).

5.2.6 Promoting soft power Two key features of the ability to develop and hone narratives around the soft power concept are intellectual exchange and time. Nye acknowledges the in- put of colleagues, research assistants, students and editors, the financial contributions of philanthropic foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation and the Hewlett Foundation and a writing retreat at Oxford University (Nye 1990a, p. xx), as important factors that allowed him to intervene in the declinist debate. Once the narrative took form, however, in what ways was it popularised and promoted? Nye’s publication strategy is particularly noteworthy. His publications can be found in a plethora of different sources, each of which engages with a different audience with different expectations, and reinforces the other. In 1990 alone, Nye (1990e) published in Political Science Quarterly to engage with an academic audience and in Foreign Policy (Nye 1990c) to reach out to the US public interested in foreign policy, and was published by Basic Books (Nye 1990a), a publisher of books that aim to shape the public debate in an accessible way (little academic jargon and few footnotes, collapsed into the background). Nye also regularly publishes op-eds in newspapers, such as Nye (1990d)) in the Christian Science Monitor. In this way, Nye is able to maximise his audience and potentially enrol as large a group of concept entrepreneurs as possible. A closely related and crucial aspect is the importance of persistence. Nye has remained involved with the soft power concept for over 30 years. Based on his CV, Nye has published 113 publications since 1990, at least 47 of which have dealt in one way or another with the soft power concept. Table 5.1 depicts

116 Nye’s publication record since 1990. There are distinct spikes of productivity, typically in the years in which Nye publishes a book (Table 5.1). Nye publishes particularly actively around the time his books hit the bookshelves to ensure that the potential audience is as dispersed as possible.

Figure 5.1: Nye’s publications 1990– Table 5.1: Nye’s books 2017

Year Book

14 Bound to Lead 1990 The Paradox of American Power 2002 10 Soft Power: The Means to Success 2004 10 8 in World Politics 9 The Powers to Lead 2008

7 The Future of Power 2011 Presidential Leadership and the 2013 5 5 Creation of the American Era Count of publications

1990 1995 1999 2002 2008 2011 2014 Year

To sum up, this chapter illustrates how the soft power concept emerged as a response to the US decline debate and how the concept was forged out of familiar but largely adjacent debates on the concept of power. This familiarity with the theories behind the soft power concept, its counterintuitive and hence catchy name, the emotional support it provides and the broader publication strategy are all key aspects of the soft power concept that a focus on conceptual politics brings to light.

5.3 Reification and Feedback loops The next important aspect to consider is the question of feedback loops in the early days of soft power. Here, it is possible to distinguish clearly between the levels of action and observation: The “true” position and prospects of the US are located at the level of action, while the declinists’ (first-order) observations are located at the first level of observation and revolve primarily around the concept of decline. Nye and other concept entrepreneurs observe such observations at the same time as they observe the world. In other words, Nye is located at the second level of observation from where he starts to contest the first-level observations around the decline concept. In this context, I who observe Nye

117 am located at a third level of observation. In other words, Nye is concerned with the promotion of feedback loops between first- and second-order interpretations by trying to alter first-order observations in what constitutes a key example of conceptual politics around the concepts of decline and power. This is not to say that he does not encourage macro-feedback loops, that is, the performative effects of embracing the concept of soft power such as in policymaking. After all, he regularly highlights the dangers of declinist pes- simism for the sustained ability of the US to lead internationally. Considering his targeted audiences, it is also clear that he anticipated performative effects on policymaking even if many years later he would hold that he developed the concept not for politicians, but for analysts and that only “once it had begun to be accepted […] [I would] help to try and promote it” (I#06). Two crucial questions therefore arise: In what ways did Nye’s conceptual intervention feed back into other observers’ levels of observation, or back into the world in the early days of soft power? What were the consequences of his intervention?

5.3.1 Soft power as a concept prone to reification On reification, this chapter has shown the high propensity for soft power to be conflated across its various dimensions. In these early days in particular, soft power was primarily presented and perceived as an analytical tool for ab- stracting from reality, that is something that helps observers make sense of their environment but that is neither tangible nor real. That said, it is already clear at this point why the concept is prone to being treated not as an analytical construct, but as if it were real. Much of this is linked to the problematic relationship between “power”, on the one hand, and “power resources”, on the other—or what Guzzini (1994, p. 42) refers to as the power-as-resource fallacy. In principle, the distinction is not difficult. Capabilities are resources that can be leveraged in a given situation, while power is the consequence of such resources, and is often used by analysts to find a causal explanation for why something has happened.11 Nonetheless, the resource fallacy is extremely common among observers of world politics interested in the distribution of power. Thus, more often than not, it matters little for the findings of a study whether the author refers to “state A’s

11 For example, state A might have two aircraft carriers which would be understood as a power resource that bolsters state A’s power. Of course, much ink has been spilled over the question of this translation (remember e.g. the fungibility question) of resources into actual power. Certainly, as Lukes (2005, p. 84) noted much later on, “counting power resources can be a clue to its distribution, but power is a capacity, and neither the exercise nor the vehicle of that capacity.”

118 power”, or “state A’s power resources”, as usually the study ends up counting tanks, population and GDP to calculate which has more power. Even if Nye and some other concept entrepreneurs are fairly adamant in referring to a country’s (soft) power resources as resources, it is in the counting that we see a major reason for soft power’s propensity for reification, as it leads observers and analysts to count whatever they can as a source of soft power and in the meantime overlook that the concept is a concept rather than something real and tangible. Although we only see detailed efforts to count different states’ soft power much later, it is in this light that we need to think about soft power rankings, such as those of (Portland, Facebook, and USC Center on Public Diplomacy 2018), and efforts to “measure” soft power. These lay the foundation for the conflation of the analytical tool of soft power, with which Nye wants to shape the interpretation of world politics, with the practice of “soft power”, as if it were a tool of foreign policy.

5.3.2 Micro-feedback loops: soft power shifts decline When it comes to reflexive loops between first and second order interpretation, given that Nye relies on a conceptual intervention in power debates to intervene in the decline debate, it is reasonable to break this question up into two components. First, how far did such conceptual politics challenge the concept of decline and first-order observations that the US was in decline? Second, in what ways have conceptual politics changed first-order interpretations of the potentially changing concept of power? Answering such questions is not easy as in the absence of a survey carried out before and after Bound to Lead was published, it is difficult to judge how far Nye was successful in contesting the concept of decline. That said, declinists took Nye’s arguments seriously enough to engage carefully with them. For example, Paul Kennedy—a key target, as noted above—describes Nye’s book as “judicious, reasonable, and thoughtful” (Kennedy 1990). Over the years, Kennedy and Nye would have ongoing conversations regarding the future of the US and the concept of power (Kennedy 2008a, 2008b; Nye and Kennedy 1990). While never fully persuaded, Kennedy noted in 2008 that “[…] soft power, perhaps by its very nature, is volatile”, thereby indicating that although he did not think that the concept does much for international politics compared to other types of power, it was real (Kennedy 2008b). Another aspect that makes it difficult to assess how far the concept of soft power reshaped the concept of decline as a largely unanticipated exogenous event was the demise of the Soviet Union and the concomitant end of the Cold War. While the late 1980s had been characterised by the decline debate, public debate in the 1990s shifted towards a debate on the future world order, with

119 much discussion on whether a unipolar, bipolar or multipolar order was emerging and how stable or dangerous such an order would be (see e.g. Layne 1993; Mearsheimer 1990). For many observers, the notion that the US came out of the Cold War as its winner and that the Cold War ended peacefully made any discussion of a US decline largely obsolete, and some traded decline anxiety for triumphalism, best represented perhaps by Fukuyama’s (2006) The End of History and the Last Man. In addition to the demise of the Soviet Union, the onset of Japan’s economic recession also meant that a key allied competitor would no longer be much of a challenge to the preponderance of US power. As Huntington (1989) succinctly observed: The theory of declinism has been displaced by the theory of endism. Its central element is that bad things are coming to an end […] Endism—the intellectual fad of 1989—contrasts rather dramatically with declinism—the intellectual fad of 1988. […] The message of declinism for Americans is ‘We’re losing’; the message of endism is ‘We’ve won”’. (p. 3–4) Given these wide-ranging changes, a closely related discussion evolved— one that continues to this day—regarding the appropriate role of the US in such a new world (see e.g. Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth 2013; Posen 2014). At the heart of this discussion is the question of whether the US should stay internationally committed through alliances and institutions, and in general uphold the international order, or whether it should retreat and focus in on itself. Al- though Nye had primarily targeted the question of US decline, he came out strongly in favour of the continued need for the US to lead—something which Nye effectively conceptualised as a source of US (soft) power. This meant that many of the arguments made in Nye (1990a) continued to be relevant throughout the 1990s. This can perhaps best be seen when it comes to the newly enrolled concept entrepreneurs discussed above. Not all of these concept entrepreneurs agreed with the notion of soft power, and nor would Nye himself agree with their interpretation of soft power. Nonetheless, for many observers of world politics, in trying to understand why the US had won the Cold War, soft power seemed to provide both an answer and a direction. Soft power won the war and this meant that the US had to remain committed to its leadership role and to garner its soft power—a sentiment discussed for example in Friedberg (1994). Interestingly enough, the question of whether the US should remain committed does not map easily on to the paradigms of realism, liberalism or constructivism, and there is considerable convergence between the more realist reasoning of Stephen Brooks, the liberal underpinnings of John Ikenberry or the neoconservative outlook of Elliott Abrams when they suggest at various

120 points in time that the US should not retreat. For these scholars, soft power became popular as it was yet another argument for why the US should stay committed, even if there were doubts when it came to the relevance of soft power compared to hard power. The more soft power was accepted as an epistemically right understanding of the world (i.e. as the world as it is and should be), the more it was reasonable to appeal to the relevance of soft power in order to argue for sustained US engagement in the world (Abrams 1990; Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth 2013). In terms of how first-order interpretations of the power concept were shaped by Nye’s conceptual intervention, it became increasingly common throughout the 1990s to refer to soft power alongside other forms of power, just as Nye had envisaged. For instance, Mastanduno (1997, p. 54) notes that only “the United States currently excels in military power and preparedness, economic and technological capacity, size of population and territory, resource endowment, political stability, and “soft power” attributes such as ideology”, while Huntington (1997, p. 44) held that “American power, in short, has become in Joseph S. Nye’s term, the “soft power” to attract rather than the hard power to compel”. Similarly, Joffe (1997, p. 24) notes: “Let’s make no mistake about it. Hard power—men and missiles, guns and ships—still counts. It is the ultimate, because existential, currency of power. But on the day-to-day level, “soft power”, a term introduced by the scholar Joseph S. Nye, is the more interesting coin”. Note also the slow but steady increase in newspaper articles referring to soft power throughout the 1990s (Figure 4.7). The increasing popularisation of soft power as a legitimate power dimension meant that the understanding of “decline” underwent a noteworthy shift. If decline was once tied to the demise of military and economic power, now, with the advent of soft power, decline became increasingly contingent on a decline in the realm of soft power too. In terms of the conceptual web discussed above, the connection between decline and soft power thus becomes increasingly close, even if the decline debate withered away in the US of the 1990s.

5.3.3 Macro-feedback loops: Public diplomacy and the engagement policy Finally, in what ways did soft power loop back into the world, that is, what sort of performative effects occurred as a consequence of the conceptual politics around the concept in its early days? One context in which the concept became gradually more important throughout the 1990s was public diplomacy, commonly defined as the activities of governments to inform and influence foreign audiences in support of the national interest, an activity that had a long history in the US throughout the Cold War to counter similar Soviet efforts (Cull 2012).

121 While the link between public diplomacy and soft power seems common sense in retrospect, Nye’s original discussions of soft power contain no reference to public diplomacy. Instead, such links were primarily forged by newly emerging concept entrepreneurs from the field of public diplomacy. To them, the soft power concept felt epistemically right as it provided an appraisal of the world view and the activities that public diplomacy—with its emphasis on cultural exchange and values—also stood for (a point made by several interviewees I#55; I#67; I#71). Soft power therefore allowed a gratifying re-evaluation of the importance of past public diplomacy activities. As Cull (2012, p. 186) observes in his analysis of the rise and fall of the United States Information Agency (USIA), “the term ‘soft power’ was in circulation at the USIA soon after its coinage, and senior personnel had copies of Joseph Nye’s Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power at hand”. The increasing entrenchment of soft power had another effect, as it became possible for public diplomacy adherents to appeal to the relevance of soft power when justifying the continued relevance of public diplomacy. In other words, new opportunities for conceptual politics arose because of the performance of soft power as an analytical tool. After the Cold War, public diplomacy was placed in a paradoxical position. It was widely understood that public diplomacy had played a key role in the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union but this meant that US public diplomacy had lost its main raison d’être. In this context, soft power’s arrival and popularity came at a good time. After all, if US soft power had won the war, if public diplomacy was a key mechanism of US soft power and if soft power continued to be important in the postmodern world of the 1990s, it followed that public diplomacy also had to be important. Consequently, soft power provided a justification for public diplomacy activities in budget discussions for years to come, albeit to little effect. For example, in a plea for public diplomacy, Laqueur (1994, p. 20) echoed Nye’s arguments on the diffusion of power by suggesting that “cultural diplomacy, in the widest sense, has increased in importance, whereas traditional diplomacy and military power (especially of the high-technology variety) are of limited use in coping with most of these dangers” (Hayden 2012, ch. 6; also I#13). Similarly, Manilow (1994), the chairman of the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD), emphasised that “the increased power of foreign publics and therefore the increased need for public diplomacy; the value of soft power and its importance in determining what we do; and the need to make coherent decisions about who will provide the expanded public diplomacy our country needs” were important matters for discussion. In its annual report, the ACPD also explicitly called for the administration and Congress to enhance their focus on public diplomacy rather than dismantle it, and noted that “soft power strengthens American diplomacy through attraction

122 rather than coercion”’ (ACPD 1996; see also S. Hrg. 106–599). To be able to make such arguments, it was important to present a new purpose that made the practice of public diplomacy as soft power necessary. A key argument in this context was that the US was witnessing a new era that had significantly changed the rules of international relations. Not only was the world no longer bipolar, but the advent of the information age (and increasingly the availability of internet) meant that power was more diffuse than ever, but also that populations in countries all over the world had far greater access to information, making meaningful engagement with foreign audiences more possible and necessary (Manilow 1994). This sentiment was picked up by Nye once he was back at Harvard University, and the newness of the information age was further discussed in Nye and Owens (1996, p. 20) as something that multiplied the force of US diplomacy and soft power. This article provided further ammunition for public diplomacy supporters, such as when the ACPD (1996) argued that: People are changing their governments and influencing what governments can do more than any time in history. The number of societies in democratic transition is unprecedented. Recent democratic elections in Russia, Taiwan, the Palestinian West Bank and elsewhere have profound consequences for diplomacy. In such arguments, public diplomacy was presented as a tool with which the Clinton administration could maximise its soft power to support its professed goal of democratisation. However, this would require appropriate funding. Despite such efforts, public diplomacy saw far-reaching budget cuts throughout the course of the 1990s, which culminated in the abolition of the USIA in 1999 (Cull 2012). Nonetheless, by that time soft power had arguably become a common thinking tool of public diplomacy practitioners, which meant that following the reinvigorated focus on public diplomacy in the aftermath of 9/11 (see chapter 6), people could fall back on the soft power concept and leverage it more concretely in policymaking as the window opened. Besides democratisation, the ACPD (1996) report also presented public diplomacy as part and parcel of another professed goal of the Clinton administration—engagement, a policy that warrants our attention.12 The 1994 NSS was called “a national security strategy of engagement and enlargement”. Specifically, it emphasised that the China question was one of the challenges of the current era: “China maintains a repressive regime even as that country assumes a more important economic and political role in global affairs”. Rather

12 The notion of engagement goes back to Nixon’s rapprochement with China against the common enemy of the Soviet Union.

123 than pushing against China by making economic cooperation dependent on adherence to human rights, the Clinton administration opted for a strategy of engagement as the best approach “to facilitate China’s development of a more open, market economy that accepts international trade practices” and of promoting “China’s participation in regional security mechanisms to reassure its neighbors and assuage its own security concerns”, so that China did not “become a security threat to the region”(The White House 1994, pp. 1; 24). While the 1994 NSS and specifically the engagement policy characterised the US approach to China for at least two decades, it is particularly important to note that the soft power concept had originally played a key role in the formulation of the NSS and hence the engagement policy. A first draft contained wording that stressed the importance of economic and cultural relations (Vul- liamy 1994a), but this was eventually scrapped as a conflict between the State Department and DOD emerged over precisely this concept. While the State Department, and especially Deputy Secretary of State Talbott, approved the document, the DOD found the NSS’s emphasis on soft power problematic. A newspaper article quoting a high-ranking official noted that: ‘We don’t like that term […] [ as the soft power approach is] sophomoric and naive” (Lan- caster and Gellman 1994; see also Adams 1994). The article notes that what might appear on the surface to be an academic dispute has important real-world consequences. It argued that: […] [P]articipants in the internal struggle said the argument has practical implications for the federal budget and the manner in which the armed services are employed. Defense officials argue that the instruments of national strength have not changed fundamentally with the disappearance of the Soviet Union as a global adversary. Traditional armed forces, ready to fight if need be and deployed in peacetime as a deterrent to potential foes, remain at the forefront of the Pentagon’s view of security. Moreover, some military officials see “soft power” as a State Department bid for budgetary resources. They fear a continuing trend to fund nontra- ditional programs such as civic and humanitarian assistance from Defense Department accounts. Other defense officials described previous drafts of the text as “fuzzy” about the use of force, saying they feared it could undermine their determination to fight only in strength and for clear objectives. While the final report contained no explicit reference to soft power, many of the priorities of the NSS are reminiscent of Nye’s key arguments, such as a strong domestic economy as a source of power, non-traditional security issues that require US leadership and, above all, the suggestion that the US had

124 “global interests and responsibilities” and therefore needed to stay “actively engaged in global affairs” (The White House 1994, p. ii). Indeed, news articles from the 1990s describe Clinton’s foreign policy strategy as one that emphasised soft power (Hoagland 1998; Vulliamy 1994b, 1997). Senior members of the Clinton administration, such as Secretary of State Albright or Deputy Sec- retary of State Talbott (Albright 2000; Talbott 1997), also emerged as concept entrepreneurs by regularly referring to the concept. While the soft power concept thus played an important role in the formulation of the NSS, a key figure in its implementation in his role as US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs was none other than Joseph Nye. Reflecting on his time in office from 1994 to 1995, Nye notes that: When you have a three-part balance of power, it’s better to be part of the two than the one, and therefore reaffirming the U.S.–Japan relationship so that China couldn’t play off the U.S. against Japan. Then from that position of strength, to jointly engage China and offer them a position as a responsible actor […] (Nye 1998). Chapter chapter 7 discusses Nye’s role in Japan in more detail. It is important to note here that this government position provided Nye with the means and access to promote the soft power concept in governmental circles. He acknowledges that at this time: “we talked about soft power. But most of the work that I did in the defence department was related to hard power” (I#06). Once back at Harvard, Nye co-authored a publication that directly emphasised the relevance of soft power in the new information age, at the same time as “the United States should continue selectively to engage those states, such as China, that show promise of joining the international community, while working to contain those regimes, like Iraq’s, that offer no such hope” (Nye and Owens 1996, p. 31). In other words, the pursuit of US soft power was increasingly seen as part and parcel of the engagement policy, in the hope that China might become a so-called status quo power rather than one that sought to overturned the international order.13 For example, a commentary from 1994 noted that in a postmodern world, “‘soft power’ is also the best way to lure former adversaries— especially Russia and China—into a collegial world order” (Newsweek 1994). Precisely this point was also reiterated by Manilow (1994) in his plea to take US public diplomacy seriously. Chapter chapter 8 discusses the question of China’s rise and the role of soft power in more detail, while chapter chapter 9 addresses the fate of the engagement policy.

13 On status quo and revisionism, see Johnston (2003).

125 Notwithstanding the emergence of soft power as a common thinking tool and a social fact, overall the concept assumed a relatively low profile. As we have seen in chapter 4, few academic or newspaper articles in English discussed the soft power concept, and aside from the examples around the mid-90s raised above, there are little immediate performative effects. Instead, the 1990s are best seen as the slowly and steady encroachment of the soft power concept in the US that built a necessary foundation for later years. Be it in terms of the understanding of decline and power, or in the context of public diplomacy and the engagement policy, soft power burned on a small but steady flame. Once the context changed—first in the 2000s with the war on terror (chapter 6) and later with the rise of China (chapter 8)—soft power concept entrepreneurs could fall back onto soft power for a new round of conceptual politics.

5.4 Conclusion This chapter has addressed the question of the conceptual politics around the concept of soft power in the late 1980s and the 1990s. In so doing, it has addressed the role of concept entrepreneurs (particularly Nye), the means of conceptual politics that gave rise to the soft power concept, the propensity of soft power to reify and, finally, the role of various feedback loops in the conceptual politics around soft power. The analytical framework has served to illustrate the efforts of a concept entrepreneur, Nye, to challenge the common observation that the US was in decline. A focus on the conceptual politics around this moment reveals the importance of the pre-existing familiarity of decline observers with power theories, which allowed Nye to forge a condensed shortcut with a catchy name as a conceptual intervention with political implications. Moreover, the chapter has emphasised the relevance of context when it comes to conceptual politics, in terms of the possibilities around Harvard or in policymaking, but also the end of the Cold War in shaping the trajectory of the soft power concept in profound ways. By looking at the interaction effects between the levels of observation and action, I have illustrated how central feedback loops are to conceptual politics, at the same time as such feedback effects shaped the concept of power and decline in fundamental ways. If decline was once contingent on a relative demise of military and economic power, the increasing normalisation of soft power now meant that decline could not be complete unless it also included a decline in soft power. The focus on feedback loops also brought to light how the overall normalisation of soft power as a way of thinking about the world and what matters in it became a common thinking tool and justification for supporters of public diplomacy, at the same time as soft power became increasingly

126 associated with engagement policy. In sum, soft power became a commonplace thinking tool in the 1990s, which as chapter chapter 6 shows allowed the emergence of new sites of conceptual politics

127 128 6. America, get smart: Soft power comes off age

Given the relatively latent role of soft power in the 1990s, as discussed in chapter 5, it might be imagined that the concept would have slowly become one of many that outlives its usefulness and slowly withers away. After all, decline had been averted, public diplomacy scaled back and the engagement policy put in place without much further talk about soft power. Things developed rather differently, however, and the 2000s mark a period of explosive growth in interest in and publications on the soft power concept (see chapter 4). This chapter therefore investigates the 2000s as the period when soft power came of age and began to travel widely across contexts, levels and regions. It will show that this travel in turn changed the dynamics of conceptual politics around the concept of soft power in profound ways. The analysis begins by looking at the central concept entrepreneurs of the 2000s. This is followed by an investigation of the means and locations of conceptual politics in the 2000s. The chapter also discusses the issue of reification and analyses the role of feedback loops and travelling.

6.1 Concept entrepreneurs This section discusses the changing role of soft power’s first concept entrepreneur and the emergence of increasingly diverse concept entrepreneurs.

6.1.1 Joseph Nye When Joseph Nye originally coined and promoted the concept of soft power he was in many ways a regular concept entrepreneur and not particularly different to other academics who develop concepts in the hope that they might gain some traction in the academic world. He may have been endowed with greater capital and he may have engaged in conceptual politics more strategically than others, but there is in principle little out of the ordinary in his efforts around Bound to Lead. Nye was one among many US intellectuals. Nye spent some time in government in the 1990s before returning to Harvard

129 in 1995 to resume his tenured position. Once back in academia, Nye occasionally returned to the soft power concept, but most of his work revolved around globalisation, technology, international institutions and trust (see e.g. Keohane and Nye 1998; Nye 1997). Hence, there were no sustained efforts to further enhance the performance of the soft power concept. With the publication of Nye (2004c) and in the lead-up to it (especially Nye 2002), however, there are the beginnings of a dedication to a concept that is practically unparalleled in International Relations (IR). This is particularly obvious from the quantity and content of the academic articles/books that Nye penned after 2002. Between 1990 and 2001, Nye produced eight academic publications dealing with soft power. In the years between 2002 and 2013, however, at least 37 of his publications refer to the concept. While this speaks of a highly productive author, the proportion of soft power publications compared to his other publications also increased. In the 1990s, more than half of Nye’s publications covered different topics, while between 2002 and 2013 three times the amount of articles dealt with soft power than with other topics (see Table 6.1).1 Of course, quantity does not imply quality, and nor does it means that all publications are equally influential. However, a look at Nye’s so-called H- index is revealing. The H-index is a crude measure of impact that counts how many papers (n) by an author or a group of authors have at least n citations (Hirsch 2005). A highly productive author might publish many papers but if no one reads or cites them, his H-index will be low. If an author writes a highly influential piece but has otherwise published little, his H-Index will also be low. Hence, the H-index rewards a combination of productivity and impact in a scholar or an institution. Nye’s H-index as of October 2020 was 105, meaning that 105 of his publications had been cited at least 105 times each, indicating that most of his publications are frequently referenced.2 One conclusion to be drawn from this is how Nye realigned his career from being someone working on many different topics to, by the mid-2000s, a sit-

1 Coding was done manually by browsing through the publications listed on Nye’s curriculum vitae (Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) 2017). In some cases, I was unable to find the full text of the article. In such cases I removed the publication from consideration. Most of these articles are from the early 1990s. I was unable to code 27 articles but gained access to 86. 2 For comparison, the H-factors of Alexander Wendt and John Mearsheimer are 30 and 55 respectively, with 38450 and 35468 total citations each compared to Nye’s total citations of 97992. I have chosen these two authors for comparison as they are among the most influential authors in IR, ranked higher than Joseph Nye according to a 2014 survey (Ma- liniak et al. 2014). They also have a verified google scholar account, which is needed for public access to these numbers to be possible.

130 Table 6.1: Composition of Nye’s publications

1 5 1 6 1

1 4 2 1 1 1 2 6 6 1 1 5 Amount of articles 2 4 4 4 4 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1990 1995 2000 2006 2010 2015 Year

Reference to soft power No Yes uation where nearly everything he published revolved around the soft power concept. The period around 2002 was thus a watershed moment for Nye and his role as a concept entrepreneur, and a clear indication of his dedication to the concept and efforts to re-establish and later defend “spokespersonship” over the concept. But for his continued involvement, arguments that there was something “normal” and “commonsensical” about soft power’s popularity and success might have been refuted, and this certainly underscores the role that constant conceptual politics plays in the success of a concept. The reason that this was such a watershed moment is addressed in the discussion on the means of conceptual politics.

6.1.2 Other concept entrepreneurs Beyond Nye, many new concept entrepreneurs emerged in the 2000s. If there were only seven authors working on soft power in the 1990s, by the 2000s there were at least 234 different authors involved with the concept.3 In addition to academic concept entrepreneurs, an increasing number of journalists and think tank personnel became involved with the soft power concept in the 2000s, as the spread of news articles on soft power indicates. Politicians and state officials, such as Robert Gates or Hillary Clinton, also became increasingly involved with soft power. Finally, another group of concept entrepreneurs began

3 This is based on the Web of Science (WOS) dataset. Recall that not every softpower article is registered, so there are several publications in the 1990s discussed in chapter 5 that do not appear in the dataset. Overall, however, they are far fewer.

131 to measure soft power and establish complex soft power indices. While many of these entrepreneurs have academic backgrounds, many were also involved in the think tank world or in consultancy firms. Examples include Jonathan McClory and his work on the consultancy firm, Portland’s, Soft Power 30 index. Their emergence was arguably both a vehicle for soft power’s journey— the concept travelled from one concept entrepreneur to another—and a consequence of soft power’s travel—as concept entrepreneurs were exposed to the concept due to its increasingly widespread travel. As is demonstrated below, this type of travel had profound effects on the dynamics of conceptual politics. For what reasons did such concept entrepreneurs become involved with soft power? Chapter 4 shows that most publications emerged after 2004, and that Nye (2004c) was the most referenced publication. This suggests that much of the activity occurred in response to this publication. Many observers were successfully enrolled as concept entrepreneurs as they followed Nye and saw soft power as an epistemically correct representation of reality that required and deserved greater appreciation in politics. For others, a key reason to become involved was the potential performative effects that engaging with soft power entailed. These could, for instance, be potential career rewards, such as being the first to publish in a specific context or country. Another important aspect was the ability to justify policy preferences or budget allocations, which was particularly important in the context of public diplomacy. In general, such efforts were made possible by the increasing entrenchment and normalisation of the soft power concept, as observers could now point to the concept and argue either that it required greater attention (such as careful conceptualisation) or that it applied to new situations that they as newly emerging concept entrepreneurs could supply (Gill and Y. Huang 2006; Hagström 2015b; Hill 2006; Leheny 2006; Rothman 2011). For soft power concept entrepreneurs in consultancy firms, a key reason was certainly also the ability to earn revenue by being able to advise governments on their soft power strategies. The 2000s also witnessed the emergence of anti-concept entrepreneurs and increasingly complex critiques that soft power was too vague, amorphous, banal, difficult to measure, state-centric, soft, hard or difficult to use (for some examples, see T. U. Berger 2018; Bially Mattern 2005b; Ferguson 2003; Gold- smith and Horiuchi 2012; T. Hall 2010; Layne 2010; Manor 2019; Thussu 2014). While some rejected soft power outright and aimed to convince others to follow, many critiques led to a supposedly more thorough conceptualisation of the concept. Here, some observers of the soft power phenomenon might suggest that such profound contestation is a testimony to the weakness of a concept that can mean anything to anyone. However, I argue that such contestation needs to be understood as part and parcel of the overall phenomenon of

132 conceptual politics around the concept of soft power, as concept entrepreneurs fight over, hone, revisit and tweak the concept in anticipation of diverse performative effects, and hence as a site of politics rather than something that reasoned debate can settle in the future. This section has brought to light Nye’s resumption of his role as a soft power concept entrepreneur as well as the profound reorientation of his career in the 2000s. Moreover, it has discussed how a plethora of new concept entrepreneurs emerged, which changed the dynamics of conceptual politics by giving rise to new locations and translations of conceptual politics.

6.2 Means of conceptual politics Why and how did Nye resume his role as a concept entrepreneur with such persistence in the early 2000s? This section shows that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11) proved to be a seismic event for the US that shaped conceptual politics in profound ways. Three aspects are particularly important to bear in mind. First, 9/11 was a painful reminder that the US was not immune to attacks on its own territory, even if no other state had replaced the Soviet Union as the greatest threat. Second, the terrorist attacks frightened and bewil- dered Americans and their very identity. How had the US arrived at a point where others could hate it enough to resort to suicide attacks, rather than benefit from the public goods that the “reluctant superpower” with its “benevolent empire” provided “by invitation” (Bacevich 2009a; for such an understanding of the U.S. empire, consider Kagan 1998). Third, shortly after the attacks, US President George W. Bush’s declaration of a “war on terror” marked the beginnings of a new era that saw extensive global counterterrorism campaigns and had far-reaching consequences for international and domestic politics, world governance, international law, human rights and security that are still being felt today (R. Jackson 2007). Whereas the intellectual debate of the 1980s had revolved around decline and that of the 1990s revolved around the question of the US role in the world, the central question in the early 2000s was thus how 9/11 could have happened, and what could and should be done to prevent a similar event (see e.g. The 9/11 Commission Report 2011). The context in which Nye resumed his role as a central concept entrepreneur is thus a decisively different one, and his efforts to engage in conceptual politics also changed in shape In a nutshell, his efforts were primarily concerned with intervening in the debate on the causes and consequences of 9/11 and the larger problems of which the attacks were a symptom. Just as Nye’s intervention in the decline debate had relied on narratives, con-

133 ceptual politics in the 2000s also advanced clear narrative arcs around problem formulation, the provision of solutions and the course of action indicated.

6.2.1 Solving America’s problems To begin with problem formulation, while Nye has never directly blamed the US for the events of 9/11, he saw as key underlying problems that many Amer- icans had become arrogant about US power, indifferent to US foreign policy and uncertain about the kind of foreign policy needed to navigate the preponderance of US power. Prior to the terrorist attacks, Nye was already working on a book with the working title Soft power: the illusion of American empire, precisely to warn of the dangers of US arrogance (Ricks 2001). The timing of 9/11 made such an argument particularly forceful and it enabled Nye to argue that the terrorist attacks were a “wake-up call for Americans” that “sounded far more effectively than any pen could accomplish”. In essence, this made it possible to regard The Paradox of American Power (Nye 2002), as the book was now called, as an intellectual exposition of the underlying causes of 9/11. As Nye told it, what had gone wrong in particular before the terrorist attacks was that there had been a lack of attention paid to the soft power concept. In other words, Nye resumed his entrepreneurship because of his observation of the poor performance of soft power, in terms of its role as an analytical tool at the level of observation, and a practice in politics at the level of action. In a book-length treatise on soft power published two years later, Nye notes that: At the same time [as soft power became more popular], however, some have misunderstood it, misused and trivialized it as merely the influence of Coca-Cola, Hollywood, blue jeans, and money. Even more frustrating has been to watch some policy makers ignore the importance of our soft power and make us all pay the price by unnecessarily squandering it. (Nye 2004c, p. xi) Consequently, had the US been more attentive to its soft power in the Middle East prior to 9/11, terrorism would not have been seen by the attackers as a necessary response. By that point, the US had also embarked on the controversial war on terror and especially the Iraq war, which prompted Nye to caution against further ignoring soft power. For one, the Iraq war had been unsuccessful at establishing its intended policy goals—“The four-week war in Iraq in the spring of 2003 was a dazzling display of America’s hard military power that removed a tyrant, but it did not resolve our vulnerability to terrorism” (p. xi). What is more, it might even have done more harm than good in the long term by further enhancing the attraction of terrorism (p. 60). For this reason, Nye pleaded for soft power to be taken more seriously, as the

134 primary solution to the US “terrorism problem”. As the blurb of Nye (2004c) promised its readers, “it is soft power that will help prevent terrorists from re- cruiting supporters from among the moderate majority”. Soft power was thus presented as both the problem and its solution. While there was currently too little attention paid to soft power, this could be fixed through a better understanding of the concept and by drawing the right policy lessons. Nye’s recommended course of action was thus to ensure that soft power was understood and valued in US foreign policy. Establishing himself as the central spokesperson for presenting and solving the problem, Nye (2002, 2004c) embarked on a discussion of what soft power truly was and its relevance to politics. At the same time as Nye’s problematisation/solution/course of action revolved around the question of anti-Americanism and terrorism, he also highlighted other systemic problems that plagued the US, from the ongoing diffusion of power and the rise of non-state actors other than terrorists, to the challenges of technological change in other states such as Japan, India and China. In each of these cases, Nye spelled out the problem while at the same time advancing the solution—that if the US were to protect its soft power closely this would avert most of the problems in world politics.4 Hence, Nye explicitly highlighted all the problems to which soft power provided a solution, as long as his audience followed his interpretation of the world and his recommended course of action. By providing such a narrative, Nye also provided an emotional solution. As noted above, the events of 9/11 placed an important emotional toll on Amer- icans who were left wondering why anyone hated the US so much that they would attack it on its own territory—and specifically New York, the epitome of everything the US ostensibly stood for. For many, it was not simply an attack on the US body, it was an attack on America’s soul. Here, Nye’s interpretation of events provided a reasonable explanation coupled with a dose of hope. Granted, the US might have become arrogant, but it was not the US itself that terrorists hated so much, but primarily poor policy choices and a lack of understanding of US benignity—two problems that skilful leaders could in principle manage. During such a frightening time, Nye’s conceptual intervention thus restored a sense of agency and control to Americans—as long as soft power was understood and heeded.

4 Nye (2002) was a plea for multilateralism and a prudent foreign policy that is attentive to gaining the support and respect of other states. Nye warns that “any retreat to a traditional policy focus on unipolarity, hegemony, sovereignty, and unilateralism will fail to produce the right outcomes, and its accompanying arrogance will erode the soft power that is often part of the solution” (p. xvi).

135 6.2.2 Reinvigorating soft power For Nye to be able to rely on an intervention that presented soft power as both a problem and a solution, two elements were central. First, soft power had to be widely recognised among observers as an epistemically right understanding of the world; and, second, soft power had to be adequately valued in politics. As argued in chapter 5, soft power had assumed a tacit commonsense status in the 1990s but, at the same time, there was a relatively vague understanding of what soft power was and in what ways it might be relevant. This meant that soft power had to be refined, strengthened and reinvigorated so that it could start to perform more profoundly as an analytical tool that adequately represented the world. It would then be possible to address soft power’s poor performance in politics. How did Nye strengthen and reinvigorate the soft power concept?

Enrolling new and old audiences To begin with, Nye aimed to enrol new groups of potential concept entrepreneurs at the same time as he sought to strengthen the pre-existing commitment to soft power among soft power’s earlier concept entrepreneurs. Such efforts took place through two publications Nye (2002, 2004c), but also by making the epistemically right understanding of soft power as widely available as possible. Just as had been the case in the early 1990s, Nye’s books were accompanied by other scientific and popular publications (Nye 2004a, 2004b, 2004d). Moreover, Nye made regular appearances in interviews, spoke at conferences and public events and even gave a TedTalk (National Public Radio 2004; Nye 2008b, 2010a), all of which served to increase the world’s exposure to soft power. In terms of attracting different audiences, by addressing the events of 9/11 Nye sought to engage with audiences shocked by those events and searching for an answer and a course of action. Similarly, by addressing issues such as technological change and the rise of other states, Nye sought to enrol potential entrepreneurs who shared such concerns. Another important group of potential concept entrepreneurs was those who found the Iraq war, and particularly its aftermath, problematic and who might already have agreed with or been convinced by Nye’s call for multilateralism, institutions and a prudent foreign policy. Particularly noteworthy here is the fact that Nye never spoke out explicitly against the Iraq war itself, but instead highlighted several problems before, during and afterwards that could be resolved using soft power. In so doing, Nye illustrated a way in which observers could be critical of the war and work towards mitigating its negative effects, but did not have to openly oppose it. This was especially important among public diplomacy adherents active in the Bush administration who could not openly challenge the war but in many re-

136 spects were expected to tidy up in its aftermath. Of course, Nye (2004c) portrayed public diplomacy as the chief governmental tool for wielding soft power (chapter 5), and efficiently validated and legitimised their previous work as important, albeit underfunded, and their understanding of soft power in large part as reasonable and something that needed to be implemented more coherently in politics. A final important group that Nye sought to enrol were hard power observers of the world, or those who valued military and economic coercion most and who had traditionally been sceptical about the soft power concept.5 To do so, Nye (2004c) substantially engaged with hard power observers of world politics, such as by continuously emphasising the relevance of hard power (“hard power remains crucial in a world of states trying to guard their independence and of non-state groups willing to turn to violence” (blurb)). He also demonstrated his “hard power capital” by emphasising his experience with the US Department of Defense (DOD): “As a former assistant secretary of defense, I would be the last person to deny the importance of maintaining our military strength” (pp. xi–xii). In doing so, he established himself as experienced and trustworthy—an insider who knew the importance of hard power. Moreover, by appealing to hard power, Nye validated hard power as a legitimate and necessary tool of government. At the same time, by arguing that hard power was insufficient, he could hope to exploit the strong attachment to hard power and rely on this to try to mould it into an acceptance of soft power as hard power’s necessary complement.

Refining soft power While the publication strategy was similar to the 1990s, the means of enrolling a new audience and strengthening ties with existing soft power concept entrepreneurs were strikingly different. When Nye engaged in conceptual politics around the concept of decline in the early 1990s, he coined the concept of soft power in anticipation of its ability to shape the decline debate. The situation in the 2000s looked different because soft power had already become a common thinking tool, albeit one with a relatively low profile. While there had been relative freedom in the 1990s to develop and promote a “new” concept, the means of conceptual politics in the 2000s necessarily had to take a different form. Indeed, while Nye’s approach in the 1990s had been to develop a new concept to insert into the old debate on decline, it was now about inserting an old concept into a newly unfolding debate and political landscape revolving around anti-Americanism, terrorism and the war on terror. Put differently,

5 Of course, one thing to note here is that this group of people are also a mental construct in that it was Nye himself who coined the hard power concept.

137 since soft power had been around for a decade, there was no need for Nye to introduce a new concept from scratch. Instead, the starting point was to identify the concept as an established, trustworthy and authoritative representation of reality that required some further enunciation by him as observers did not yet completely understand what soft power was truly about and why it was so important. Like the public diplomacy advocates discussed in chapter 5, Nye could thus rely on the common sense status of the concept and the vague assumption that soft power mattered to enable the US to insert a sharpened concept into new debates on the war on terror, in the hope that his audience would follow such a revisiting of the soft power concept and hence his line of argumentation. While the publication strategy is thus similar, compared to the 1990s, the means to enrol new audience and strengthen the ties with existing soft power concept entrepreneurs were strikingly different. As such, when Nye engaged in conceptual politics around the concept of decline in the early 1990s, he coined the soft power concept in anticipation of its ability to shape the decline debate. In contrast to this, the situation in the 2000s looked different, for soft power had already become a common thinking tool, albeit one with a relative low profile. While there was thus relative freedom in the 1990s to develop and promote a “new” concept, the means of conceptual politics in the 2000s necessarily had to take another form. And indeed, while Nye’s approach in the 1990s was to develop a new concept to insert it into the old debate on decline, now, it was about inserting an old concept into a newly unfolding debate and political landscape revolving around anti-Americanism, terrorism and the war on terror. Put differently, since soft power had been around for a decade, there was no need for Nye to introduce a new concept from scratch. Instead, the starting point was to identify the concept as an established, trustworthy and authoritative representation of reality that required some further enunciation by him as observers did not yet completely understand what soft power was truly about and why it was so important. Like the public diplomacy advocates discussed in chapter 5, Nye could thus rely on the common sense status of the concept and the vague assumption that soft power mattered to enable the US to insert a sharpened concept into new debates on the war on terror, in the hope that his audience would follow such a revisiting of the soft power concept and hence his line of argumentation. At the same time, however, Nye’s options were also more restrained. Many of the parameters of the soft power concept were already in circulation, and it would have been unwise to tweak the concept in such a fashion that observers would experience a mismatch between their prior commitment to soft power and Nye’s reinvigorated efforts. Thus, Nye could not simply declare anything to be a matter of soft power (or non-soft power), since his arguments had to meet previously agreed criteria on to what the term should apply. For

138 example, had he spoken out against the link between soft power and public diplomacy, and insisted that only private citizens or corporations contribute to soft power, he would probably have alienated public diplomacy advocates and made them less inclined to follow his line of argument. This must be seen as a consequence of soft power’s travel, albeit tentative, throughout the 1990s and public diplomacy’s translation of soft power into a tool of public diplomacy. Effectively, Nye and the other concept entrepreneurs were locked in and had lost some leeway over the course that soft power should take, as they had to observe the established conventions of the concept. Either way, to strengthen the soft power concept’s acceptance as an epistemically right representation of the world, it was crucial to get criticism of the concept out of the way. At that time, criticism primarily revolved around its lack of depth and the futility of applying soft power to politics. The need to address such criticism was clear and others were calling for it. Nye argued that “friends and critics urged that if I wanted the term to be properly understood and used in foreign policy, I needed to explore and develop it more fully” (Nye 2004c, p. xii). Indeed, if Nye had only spent a few paragraphs on soft power in 1990 (Nye 1990a), he dedicated an entire book to it in 2004 (Nye 2004c), with each chapter addressing a different dimension of the concept, all the while providing countless examples from history, contemporary politics and even his own life experience. Besides dedicating more space to soft power, just as important was clarifying its theoretical foundations and ironing out any potential ambiguities in the concept, in the hope that observers would find the concept more convincing. As an academic concept, the epistemic rightness of soft power needed to be embraced by academic observers of world politics in addition to politicians and the wider public. The revisiting of soft power therefore had to appeal to rules and conventions in academia and specifically in the field of IR. For general IR scholars, for instance, it was important to understand whether soft power mattered, and if so how much. Hence, Nye had to establish that soft power had tangible effects and was not simply of no use, as for example Ferguson (2003) had insinuated. To do so, Nye (2004c) provides countless examples, such as how Chinese students expressed their Tiananmen protests by building a replica of the Statue of Liberty or how the Bill of Rights was desired by newly free Afghans in 2001 (p. x), and engages in direct criticism, such as when he argued that Ferguson’s (2003) understanding of soft power was flawed since he only thought of popular culture and neglected the crucial factor of context (p. 12). In general, it is notable how Nye regularly engaged with his critics over the years to rebut their claims and hence strengthen and defend the soft power concept (see in particular Nye 2004b, 2007, 2010b). Another group that needed to be convinced of soft power’s value as an an-

139 alytical tool were scholars with an interest in the concept of power. Closely related as an IR concept, soft power had to comply with the conventions of concept formation briefly discussed in chapter 2, such as scientificity, parsi- mony, well-demarcated boundaries and transparency (see e.g. Gerring 2012). To do so, Nye significantly expanded his theoretical and methodological discussions of soft power. If Nye (1990a) only has limited theoretical discussions tucked away in the endnotes, Nye (2004c) addresses theoretically important discussions more head-on and thereby brings far more complexity and transparency to the formation of the concept. Nye (2004c) focuses in particular on the establishment of clear boundaries with adjacent concepts, such as between hard and soft power (pp. 8; 25) or between military, economic and soft power (p. 31). Nye also elaborated on the issue of relational power by directly picking up Bachrach and Baratz’s (1963) well-known discussion (p. 2). Finally, Nye further strengthened his arguments on the ever changing nature of power (ch. 1). Importantly, none of these discussions was alien to Nye (1990a), but each received comparatively more in-depth treatment and space in Nye (2004c) so that academic concept entrepreneurs might be more inclined to follow Nye and his argumentation.

Steering soft power’s performance in academia and politics In addition to revising soft power to enable it to enrol new and old academic audiences, since Nye (2004c), Nye has also focused to a far greater extent on making the soft power concept a valued fact in politics. While he later noted that “once it [soft power] had begun to be accepted I did help to try and promote it” (I#06), a clear indication that Nye aimed to steer the concept’s performance in politics is the substantially enlarged focus on policy implications and prescriptions found in Nye (2004c). Although Nye (1990a) included recommendations for the US, Nye (2004c) is far more explicit about the role of soft power in politics. Chapter 4 is entirely dedicated to the question of how to wield soft power, while chapter 5 homed in even more concretely on how the US would have to rely on soft power (and hard power) in foreign policy. To achieve this, the discussion in Nye (2004c) accomplishes a striking reorientation of the concept. Despite establishing that soft power was an analytical concept first, soft power was increasingly portrayed as something that can be accumulated, owned and successfully used. The book repeatedly referred to “our” soft power that needs to be “nurtured”, “enhanced”, “wielded” and “applied” but that had also been “damaged”, “undercut” or “ignored” by short-sighted politicians (blurb; pp. x; xii; 58; 68; 98; 128). Considering how careful Nye had previously been to point out that power was not the same as resources, and that it required context and skill to translate resources into actual power (also noted in Nye (2004c, p. 3), it is at first sight surprising to see

140 him refer to the concept as if states had a silo somewhere where they could nurture and store their soft power, ready for use. In addition, by emphasising the difference between power and power resources while at the same time not remaining consistent throughout the text, Nye introduced a heavily criticised inconsistency (Baldwin 2013) into the text that seems at first to be unnecessary, given that Nye appears in principle to understand the power-as-resource fallacy reasonably well. Why was soft power treated as if it was real and tangible, that is, as a reified concept? The key to understanding this seeming disparity lies in the realisation that Nye was seeking to serve different audiences simultaneously. There were the academic observers with their various requirements of concepts as discussed above, on the one hand, and practitioners who needed to be able to quickly grasp the key takeaways and draw the correct conclusions for policymaking without having to deal with the complexity surrounding power theories, on the other. By having it both ways, academic observers of politics and practitioners could focus on different aspects of the soft power concept—and ideally ignore the other contradictory components. For the former, the concept thus provided enough complexity and appeared to be scientific; for the latter it was simple and practical. While the former could engage further with the concept by strengthening its usefulness as an analytical tool—note here the sheer quantity of studies that set out to clarify the concept and increase its utility— the latter could rely on it as a mental shortcut and a checkpoint for any policy or behaviour (“does policy “x” increase our soft power? If yes, feasible, if not, the policy needs to be amended or dropped”). In other words, both observers and practitioners of politics were able to share the same term and insert it into their own contexts. Contra Ish-Shalom (2013) who argues that Nye’s great accomplishment is simplifying complex power discussions, we can see here that Nye’s accomplishment—besides perseverance—lies in keeping the different layers of complexity built into the soft power concept so that it fit into different contexts simultaneously. To sum up, I have discussed the means by which Nye intervened in the debate surrounding 9/11 and more broadly on the US role in the world. By focusing on the narratives advanced in Nye (2002, 2004c) and their promotion, I have shown how Nye presented soft power as both the problem and the solution to a US predicament that required Nye’s intervention. Nye took a dual-pronged approach to engaging in conceptual politics in order to enrol new audiences for such narratives. First, he revisited the concept in an effort to steer its performance as an analytical tool, which provided the basis for steering soft power’s (non-) performance in politics. Hence, the goal was to ensure that the concept was properly understood by academics, intellectuals, journalists and practitioners, and that the right lessons from and policy implications of soft power for

141 politics were learned so that the concept could finally perform well in politics.

6.2.3 Beyond Nye: new sites of conceptual politics At the same time as Nye was busy revisiting and promoting the soft power concept, a plethora of other concept entrepreneurs emerged who also embraced soft power and engaged in conceptual politics. Given how important the events around 9/11 were for Nye (2002, 2004c), it might be assumed that the new concept entrepreneurs were equally concerned with the relation between terrorism and soft power. However, with the exception of a few publications (see e.g. Blinken 2003; Kay 2004), most academic authors addressed different topics related to soft power but only dealt to a limited degree with the question of terrorism. Instead, the 2000s saw a great diversification of sites of conceptual politics as concept entrepreneurs translated the soft power concept into new frameworks and contexts. As chapter 4 showed, soft power was translated into a plethora of new contexts, such as area studies, communication studies, hospitality studies and economics, as well as countless analyses of states, such as China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, and thematic contexts, such as nation branding, education and soft law Chapters 7,8 and 9 home in more detail on the translations specific to Japan and China, and how such translations interact with the original site of conceptual politics. In principle, however, many concept entrepreneurs engaged in conceptual politics by contesting the meaning of soft power, broadening or narrowing down the cases that fall into the category of soft power or evaluating the practice of soft power by states. Picking up on Nye’s efforts to revisit soft power, concept entrepreneurs sought to sharpen and delineate the concept to enhance its performance as an analytical tool. There are countless examples of scholars who noted that soft power was not well developed theoretically, had significant measurement problems, needed to be more carefully delineated vis-à-vis other concepts, overlooked important cases or miscategorised certain cases. Typically, such efforts resulted in a more thorough theorisation or discussion that required the individual concept entrepreneur’s efforts (see e.g. Y. Fan 2008; Gallarotti 2011; Jhee and N.-z. Lee 2011; Rothman 2011; J. Sun 2012; Vuving 2009). Others relied on the popularity of the concept to stretch and translate it into (relatively) novel contexts in the hope that the audience would move along because of their prior commitment to or acceptance of the concept. A fairly consequential example of this is the work of Bially Mattern. While her 2004 book on identity and representational force makes no reference to soft power, her 2005 article conceptualises soft power as a form of representational force (Bially Mattern 2005a, 2005b). Later, her article became particularly

142 influential among scholars who favoured a conceptualisation of power as attentive to the constitutive effects of identity construction (see e.g. Hagström 2015b; Hagström and Gustafsson 2019; Y. W. Lee 2011; Roselle, Miskimmon, and O’Loughlin 2014; Solomon 2014). Another important example of this is the role of soft power in public diplomacy. Of course, as chapter 5 showed, proponents of public diplomacy formed a loose attachment to soft power early on and perceived the concept as something that justified and validated past (public diplomacy) efforts and thereby also provided an argument for maintaining or increasing public diplomacy efforts in the future. Nonetheless, as noted above, public diplomacy had been in constant decline since the end of the Cold War. All this changed with the events of 9/11, as the terrorist attacks shed light on the problem of anti-Americanism. For proponents of public diplomacy, the case was relatively clear. If their insights and experience were taken more seriously, if the US explained itself better to the outside world and listened better to others’ concerns, there would be far less reason to hate the US and support for terrorist organizations. Ac- cordingly, public diplomacy had to be enhanced and expanded. In this context, soft power became an important ally. For one, it was already a common thinking tool among public diplomacy proponents and was thus readily available when the situation seemed ripe. Second, the concept itself had become increasingly common sense among politicians and the general public in the wake of Nye (2004c). For these reasons, both public diplomacy and soft power could rely on the popularity and familiarity of the other to strengthen their respective arguments and justify policy preferences. Thus, soft power provided the answer to why such policy preferences were necessary, while public diplomacy provided the how. To be successful, this required a substantial sharpening of the connection between soft power and public diplomacy. Nye therefore dedicated significant space to public diplomacy, thereby strengthening the connection between public diplomacy and soft power just as he validated public diplomacy’s prior efforts (Nye 2004b, 2008a). At the other end of the equation, public diplomacy scholars such as Gilboa (2008) and Melissen (2005) similarly inserted the notion of soft power into their frameworks for public diplomacy in an effort to strengthen their arguments. Another aspect that profoundly changed the means of conceptual politics in the 2000s was the increasingly widespread availability of the internet, which led to the emergence of an increasing number of arenas and more concrete options for engaging in conceptual politics. These were also competitive in terms of vying for the attention of the audience. At this time, countless US think tanks and research institutes, such as Cossa et al. (2009), Council on Foreign Relations (2008), Dale (2005), Gill and Y. Huang (2006), Glaser and Murphy (2009), Gordon (2001), Gray (2011), Holmes (2009), E. Pan (2006),

143 and Welsh and Dalpino (2002), strengthened their platforms for engaging in the conceptual politics around soft power. To conclude this section, an increasing number of sites of conceptual politics emerged in which new and old concept entrepreneurs embraced the soft power concept to engage in conceptual politics. Often seeking to build on soft power, in many cases concept entrepreneurs relied on a weak attachment to soft power to apply it to contexts that they cared about.

6.3 Reification and feedback loops While soft power in the 1990s was primarily presented and perceived as an analytical tool meant to abstract from reality, throughout the course of the 2000s, the concept increasingly became something that was regarded as real, effectively giving rise to a performance of the concept as both an analytical tool and a social fact. This reification was not accidental. As discussed at some length in this chapter, Nye and other concept entrepreneurs actively encouraged the dual performance of the soft power concept as an epistemically right concept on which observers should rely to make sense of their world, and as a policy goal for which politicians should strive. This can be seen in the changing language of soft power, from the previous emphasis on soft power resources to soft power as something to wield or that could be damaged. As a consequence, we also see increasing reference to state x’s soft power, as if it was a possession to be carefully managed rather than a thinking tool. Just as popular was to describe individual states such as the UK, Qatar, Japan or the EU as “soft powers” (Antwi-Boateng 2013; Michalski 2005; Watanabe and McConnell 2008), as an indication that soft power was the essence of their identity. In short, soft power became increasingly tangible, something that could be invested in and that there was an empirically correct answer to what its essential characteristics were—rather than a man-made mental construct developed at a kitchen table in Massachusetts all those years ago. This reification of soft power has several consequences. First, there are methodological concerns, as such a language contributes to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, where observers mistake an analytical concept for an empirical object. As long as the concept remained firmly anchored at the level of observation and was primarily used by academic observers, as was the case in the 1990s, the problem was perhaps less pronounced. However, once the concept travels to the level of action, once it becomes a thinking tool among practitioners of politics—which we have demonstrated soft power did in the 2000s—or contributes more concretely to policy strategies, it becomes methodologically unsound to rely on the same terms to understand and classify such

144 phenomenona. Observers and practitioners of politics often share the same terms of discourse, Connolly (1974) points out so eloquently, but analysts of this phenomenon need to stay clear of this as much as possible. There are many examples of authors succumbing to the methodological issue of reification in the soft power literature. Such publications typically follow the same format: the article begins with a definition of soft power, often accompanied by a discussion of the methodological challenges of imprecision that warrant a better conceptualisation. This is then typically followed by an analysis that is intended to make sense of a state’s soft power or governmental soft power strategies. In the context of the US, for example, a plethora of scholars rely on the soft power concept to make sense of the US attempts at soft power (Hallams 2011; Kroenig, McAdam, and Weber 2010; Parmar and M. Cox 2010; Rugh 2006; E. J. Wilson 2008). The problem with this is that a state’s approach to soft power—be it in terms of concrete policies, or even just as a thinking tool that informs the background knowledge of officials, would not have occurred had it not been for the soft power concept in the first place. Hence, we should not use the analytical concept of soft power to make sense of it.6 While one might therefore charge much of the soft power literature with methodological sloppiness, there is more to it than that. This chapter and chapter 5 demonstrate that the journey of soft power in the US in the 2000s was a consequence of complex social, economic and political processes and struggles among diverse sets of concept entrepreneurs and beyond who coined, fought over and revisited the concept in anticipation of real-world effects. However, this dimension is largely overlooked as the soft power concept reifies, and consequently appears normal, common sense and real or, in other words, as apolitical. This, in turn, has the potential for performative effects that can profoundly shape politics—an aspect I return to in chapter chapter 9. Another consequence of reification that become obvious here is how it further fuels conceptual politics. Once the soft power concept becomes a thing in politics, more and more observers begin to respond, engage in conceptual politics and hence shape the performance of the concept in politics. With respect to feedback loops, it is again reasonable to distinguish between the micro-feedback loops that play out between the levels of observation and macro-feedback loops between the level of observation and the level of action. Starting with the former, when Nye reinvigorated his efforts around the soft power concept, there was significant contestation around the US position in

6 One very important exception to this is the work of Craig Hayden who for precisely this reason (even if not made as explicit there) focuses on the rhetoric of soft power itself (Hay- den 2012).

145 the world, its attitude to power and a little later also the reasons terrorists might have to attack the US on its own territory. Seen from this perspective, there was a discrepancy between first order interpretations of the world and his own interpretation of what had gone wrong in the US (i.e. arrogance, complacency, disregard of soft power) that meant that he would again become involved in conceptual politics. Here, there is a parallel with the late 1980s where the discrepancy between first and (Nye’s) second order interpretations revolved around the question of US decline. In both cases, the soft power concept featured as an analytical tool for providing the epistemically right interpretation of the world, that is, how Nye felt that the world was and should be understood. What was different in the 2000s, however, is that contestation also began to revolve around the epistemically right interpretation of soft power itself. Whereas earlier, soft power was a tool for intervening in the decline debate, and whereas Nye was in the initial phase able to coin and tweak it with considerable ease, soft power now itself required interpretation over which contestation emerged. In other words, soft power itself began to loop between different levels of observations. A’s interpretation of the world and of soft power as an analytical tool began to interact with B’s interpretation, which in turn fed back into A’s interpretation but might also interact with C’s interpretation instead. Consider here for example Nye’s (2004) interaction with Bially Mattern’s (2005), back to Nye (2010b) but also to Y. W. Lee (2011). The concept underwent micro feedback loops as it travelled from observer to observer. In terms of macro-feedback loops, the situation in the 2000s also presents itself differently. While Nye was primarily concerned with the performance of soft power as an analytical tool in the late 1980s, by the 2000s he was far more concerned with the (non-)performance of the concept in politics. Much of what has been discussed in this chapter is thus directed at making the soft power concept a “thing” that is taken seriously and implemented in politics. All of this once again begs the question: how successful were Nye’s conceptual politics in the 2000s and what have been the consequences?

6.3.1 Micro-reflexive loops When it comes to micro loops between the levels of observation, given the increase in the number of newspaper articles and think tank events that refer to soft power, it is fair to say that the concept has become highly successful as a thinking tool. Indeed, by the end of the 2000s, you would have been hard- pressed to find someone with a slight interest in international politics who was unaware of the term. Familiarity with soft power is of course not the same as reliance on the concept to conceptualise the world, which is by nature a

146 more difficult thing to assess. Nonetheless, the frequent references to the term indicate the ease with which observers embraced the concept as normal and common sense. Alongside the general popularisation of the concept, there were two other important consequences of soft power’s travel to the level of observation. First, the alliance with public diplomacy allowed public diplomacy to be portrayed as a form of power. This made public diplomacy far more acceptable among proponents of military might, such as for example those in the DOD. Coupled with Nye’s efforts to enrol “hard power”, discussed above, it is not surprising from this perspective to see the concept become a popular thinking tool among military observers of the world, as Nye himself notes (see also e.g. Gates 2008; I#06). Concept entrepreneurs often left the concept largely intact but used the familiarity of their audience with it to convince them of the rightfulness of their argument. An important example of this was Secretary of De- fense Gates’s (2008) emphasis on the need to integrate hard and soft power tools in his discussion of the unequal distribution of funding between the DOD and the US State Department (State Department). The next important aspect lies in the effect that the travel of soft power to the level of observation had on the common understanding of what types of power are most important. As noted in chapter 5, in the 1990s it became increasingly normal to refer to soft and hard power as two sides of the same coin. Now, with Nye’s more concrete focus on soft power in politics, there was also an increasing popularisation of a “power triad” consisting of military, economic and soft power that served as a mental shortcut for many (often policy-oriented) observers to make sense of policies and politics. Although soft power was not necessarily beloved by all power theorists, the concept was taken increasingly seriously as a legitimate understanding of power that at least warranted more thorough engagement. Power theorists such as Baldwin (2013) and Lukes (2005) engaged in substantial detail with the soft power concept and the Journal of Political Power contains countless critical articles that take the soft power concept seriously (such as Gallarotti 2011; Kearn 2011; Rothman 2011). The third, and perhaps most important, consequence of soft power’s looping and travelling at the level of observation is that there have been an increasing number of distinct approaches to the concept of soft power. This is discussed below in section 6.4.

147 6.3.2 Macro reflexive loops Finally, in what ways did soft power loop back into the world? What sort of performative effects occurred as a consequence of the conceptual politics around the concept in the 2000s and in what ways did this interact with the levels of observation? Apart from the fact that the concept became a common thinking tool for many politicians, how far did the soft power concept loop into the real world of the US in the 2000s?

Soft power and public diplomacy Perhaps the clearest effects of soft power’s performance in the world of politics can be seen in the increasing number of references to soft power in the public and political space (see also Hayden 2012). There are numerous examples of House or Senate hearings in which politicians or experts justify budgets, or policy interpretations or directions by pointing to soft power and Joseph Nye’s writing. For instance, Christopher Midura, a senior State Department official argued at a Senate hearing that: Along with the “hard power” exercised by the military, the “soft power” of public diplomacy, as practiced by State, USAID, and strategic communications professionals at the Department of De- fense, is an essential support in advancing U.S. interests abroad. The other implication is that, to be effective, the “soft power” of diplomacy must be carefully and intelligently applied to meet our foreign policy needs. (S. Hrg. 110–890) This concern with US soft power however was not limited to politicians. As Senator Feingold argued: More than ever before, I am hearing from my constituents about international affairs. The people of Wisconsin are concerned about our national security, as am I. They are committed, as am I, to our first national security priority, the fight against terrorism. They are concerned, as am I, about the situation in which we find ourselves in Iraq. And the people of Wisconsin are concerned about what some have called our soft power—our nation’s stature and our power to persuade and inspire—which is a source of tremendous pride for many Americans. It is a part of our identity. And when they believe that this element of our national power is diminished, my constituents are dismayed, as am I. (S. Hrg. 108-427) These hearings—other examples are S. Hrg. 108-90, S. Hrg. 106–599, and House Hearing 107–47—can be seen as a direct consequence of soft power’s increasingly close ties with public diplomacy that began in the 1990s and were much strengthened in the course of the 2000s as a consequence of conceptual

148 politics. At the same time, while there was appreciation in the State Department of the acknowledgement of the importance of diplomacy, this also gave rise to significant unease among traditional public diplomacy adherents who observed how public diplomacy was being increasingly leveraged in the war on terror and utilised by the DOD, in what Snow (2017) calls a “militarization of public diplomacy”. In that respect, the alliance between public diplomacy and soft power was a double-edged sword: on the one hand making public diplomacy more relevant and accentuating its tools, while on the other hand allowing it to be hijacked as a form of power that needed to be wielded in the war on terror and beyond. At the same time, many of these statements presented soft power not as an objective, but as a given, meaning that soft power itself required no specific strategy. Instead, it was seen as important to communicate US soft power and ensure that foreign audiences understood what it was about the US that was attractive (see also Hayden 2012). In that respect, while soft power was increasingly mentioned in the early 2000s, the concept was not yet performing as well as Nye and other soft power concept entrepreneurs had hoped.

Smart power In the ultimate example of a feedback loop, Nye addresses soft power’s limited performance in politics by providing the far more strategic and (supposedly) politically more useful concept of smart power, which combines soft and hard power. Compared to soft power, the fate of smart power in US politics was very different. To begin with, Nye defined smart power as the goal of “learn[ing] better how to combine our hard and soft power” (Nye 2004c, p. 32). What was the driving force behind “smart power”? Why did Nye develop an offshoot of the soft power concept that was so strikingly simple in its formulation— neither hard nor soft but a skilful combination of both—that some observers wondered about its added value? How can we understand terminology that lends itself so easily to mockery? Observers have, for instance questioned the existence of “dumb” power (Bromund 2009; Feffer 2012). Two reasons for the emergence of smart power are decisive: first, it marks Nye’s conscious turn towards influencing policy; and, second, smart power was crucial to keeping soft power as analytically as “pure” as possible. Starting with the first point, while Nye (2004c) contained Nye’s first reference to smart power, it is in the report of the bipartisan Commission on Smart Power that the explicit policy orientation of the smart power concept became clear.7 This working group, commissioned by Center for Strategic & Inter-

7 Since it is only mentioned three times in Nye (2004c), I discuss smart power as a feedback effect.

149 national Studies (CSIS)—an important think tank based in Washington, DC— began its work in late 2006 and would meet three times before its efforts culminated in the report CSIS commission on smart power: A smarter, more secure America. The aims of the commission were to develop the “principles [that] should guide US foreign policy in the next administration” (Armitage and Nye 2007a, p. 5). The report makes several recommendations on the areas on which the US should focus in order to “become a smarter power”: (a) alliances, partnerships and institutions; (b) global development; (3) public diplomacy; (4) economic integration; and (5) technology and innovation (p. 5). While Nye may have supplied the terminology of smart power, he was not the only integral figure on the commission, which he co-chaired with Richard L. Armitage. Nye and Armitage had known each other for many years, for example through cooperating on the first “Armitage report” on the US-Japanese Alliance Armitage et al. (2000), and would go on to co-chair several other commissions on the alliance (Armitage and Nye 2007b, 2012, 2018), which are discussed in more detail in chapter 7. The duo of Armitage and Nye is a particularly noteworthy combination, as they represent opposite poles in important ways. While Nye represents Demo- crat ideals, Armitage is a staunch Republican. While Nye is typically perceived as an academic first and a government official second, Armitage had earned his stripes primarily in the army during the Vietnam War and later as Deputy Sec- retary of State in the administration of George W. Bush, until his resignation in 2005. Finally, while Nye was sceptical about an assertive foreign policy and cautioned against the idea of a US empire even prior to 9/11 (Ricks 2001), Ar- mitage had been a signatory to a letter from the New American Century—an neoconservative think tank established in the 1990s, many members of which would make up much of the Bush administration—that had urged President Bill Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Armitage remained a supporter of the idea of regime change in Iraq after his time in the State De- partment (Armitage 2006; Letter to President Clinton on Iraq 1998). In other words, Nye and Armitage complemented each other: Armitage was the hard power to Nye’s soft power. The concept of smart power was thus able to bring many observers of world politics together whose political affiliations and outlooks might have differed, but who could agree that US military power should be supplemented by a more prudent and benevolent foreign policy. In providing a new term, Nye also addressed a concern among politicians who felt that a foreign policy centred on soft power would be difficult to accept for domestic voters. Nye likes to recall an anecdote about a Congresswoman who told him that she was on board with the idea of soft power in principle, but that her constituency required a

150 “tougher” foreign policy.8 From this perspective, it made much sense to supply a new term to emphasise that foreign policy should not just be soft and lenient. From this perspective, it made a lot of sense to supply a new term to emphasise that foreign policy should not just be soft and lenient. The second reason for the emergence of the smart power concept lies in how the development of smart power provided Nye with a way to safeguard the analytical purity of the soft power concept. Indeed, as Nye notes, smart power was “more of a politically oriented concept. I mean, soft power was designed for analysis, smart power was designed to be able to present this politically” (I#06). Smart power in that respect was a prime example of how good scholarship should look according to Nye, that is, based on a scientific analysis of world politics that is carefully translated into an effective foreign policy tool (Nye 2009). At the same time, this is a clear case of boundary work, whereby Nye assigns soft power to the scientific realm and smart power to the political realm and thus clearly establishes both domains as distinct. This effectively made both soft power and smart power seem legitimate in their own worlds. For this boundary work to function, it was key to preserve the scientific credibility of the soft power concept. Indeed, Nye has reiterated over the years that soft power is an analytical concept, unlike the “evaluative”, “descriptive” and “normative” concept of smart power (Nye 2010b, p. 219; 2011a, p. 20). In the years after Armitage and Nye (2007a), Nye returned to the smart power concept several times (Nye 2008a, 2008c, 2011a, 2011b) in order to further sharpen the concept’s boundaries and enhance its performance in politics. In that respect, smart power was part and parcel of a round of conceptual politics that directly targeted politics and was based on Nye’s earlier work. The smart power concept became a popular analytical tool for other observers of world politics besides Nye (Gallarotti 2015; E. J. Wilson 2008). In the world of politics, the (solicited) promotion of the smart power concept in turn profoundly influenced the State Department once Barack Obama became President and nominated his former rival, Hillary Clinton, to be Sec- retary of State. During her confirmation hearing, Clinton argued that her term would be characterised by a focus on smart power: “We must use what has been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal—diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural—picking the right tool or combination of tools for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy” (The Washington Post 2009).

8 “You know, she agreed entirely with the concept, but as a politician she couldn’t talk about soft power, because the people that were voting for her wanted to have more of a hard notion of power (I#06).

151 During her time as Secretary of State and beyond, Clinton regularly explained her policies in terms of smart power, or was described as executing a smart power strategy (Calabresi 2011; Clinton 2009, 2012; State Department 2009, 2010). Later, in 2015, when her presidential bid was well under way, she also suggested that a chief accomplishment as Secretary of State was how she “brought smart power to US leadership” (Clinton 2015). It is therefore safe to suggest that smart power was indeed incorporated as a strategic principle into US foreign policy. This raises the question of precisely how the concept travelled there. While it is always difficult to retroactively trace precise routes of travel, there is a good starting point in the form of Hillary Clinton’s memoirs, published shortly after her time as Secretary of State, which can shed some light on how she came to embrace the term (Clinton 2014). Four aspects related to smart power stand out. First, the book dedicates an entire chapter (“Foggy Bottom: Smart power”) to the concept, where she talks about her overarching ideas of what US diplomacy needs to achieve and her experience of her first few days in office, thereby once again emphasising the term’s importance to her time in office. Second, Clinton’s reflection on the problems of hard and soft power are particularly intriguing, and her plea to integrate “outdated paradigms” clearly acknowledges her general acceptance of these forms of power: For decades foreign policy tools had been categorized as either the “hard power” of military force or the “soft power” of diplomatic, economic, humanitarian, and cultural influence. I wanted to break the hold of this outdated paradigm and think broadly about where and how we could use all the elements of American foreign policy in combination. (pp. 30–31) Third, the integration of hard and soft power in the form of smart power is mirrored in the discussion of her relations with Robert Gates, Secretary of De- fence between 2006 and 2011. She notes that she and Gates became “allies from the start” who “avoided the traditional infighting between State and Defence that in many previous administrations had come to resemble the Sharks and Jets from West Side Story” (p. 23). What she alludes to here are the traditional quarrels between the DOD and the State Department, with the former typically emphasising the importance of military might and the latter emphasising the importance of diplomacy. Here, the DOD represents hard power and the State Department soft power. Just like Armitage provided the necessary hard power to Nye’s soft power, by referring to Gates and Clinton’s “romance” against all the odds, Clinton pleaded for an integration of Gate’s hard power with her soft power that should take the form of an integrated smart power strategy: “We became allies from the start, tag-teaming Congress for a smarter national se-

152 curity budget and finding ourselves on the same side of many administration policy debates” (p. 23). Gates himself is an interesting figure because of his military background and his embrace of the soft power concept (as mentioned briefly above). As such, he gave a speech where he made “the case for strengthening our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating it with hard power” (Gates 2008, p. 30), a point he would later reiterate in his memoir where he notes his “strong support of‘soft power’, of diplomacy and development” (Gates 2014, p. 550). Besides being a high-ranking concept entrepreneur, he is also particularly interesting as Joseph Nye (and other concept entrepreneurs) like to cite him as someone who understands the importance of soft power (Nye 2011b, p. ix; Eriksson and Norman 2011, p. 434). Of course, such an official embrace of the concept also further legitimises it. Either way, Gates’s memoir also reflects a deep respect for Clinton as his ally (Gates 2014, p. 290), thereby corroborating her account. Returning to Clinton’s (2014) memoir, a final noteworthy aspects lies in how closely her discussion mirrors the academic debate on soft, hard and smart power. For one, Clinton reiterates the points made by those who proposed and propagated the term smart power. Although she notes that she has a slightly different understanding of the term, there is in practice no difference between her plea to integrate hard and soft power and the arguments made in Armitage and Nye (2007a). Perhaps even more strikingly, she engages just a few pages before for several paragraphs with the question of the US in decline: Shortly before President Obama’s inauguration, the Yale histo- rian Paul Kennedy wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal under the headline “American Power Is on the Wane”. Articu- lating a critique heard frequently in 2008 and 2009, Professor Kennedy blamed declining U.S. power on mounting debt, the severe economic impact of the Great Recession, and the “imperial overstretch” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. […] Nonethe- less, I remained fundamentally optimistic about America’s future. My confidence was rooted in a lifetime of studying and experi- encing the ups and downs of American history and a clear-eyed assessment of our comparative advantages relative to the rest of the world. (Clinton 2014, p. 25) If this sound familiar, it is because Clinton echoes Nye’s conceptual intervention in the decline debate from the late 1980s, effectively assuming his position vis-à-vis Paul Kennedy. While the lack of referencing in her memoir does not allow me to clearly attribute the origins of Clinton’s thinking to Nye, the similarity is striking enough to suggest as much.

All in all, as discussed above, the most profound performative effects of soft

153 power can be seen through its implementation as a smart power strategy during Clinton’s term as Secretary of State.

Soft power rankings Finally, indices and rankings are a particularly important feedback loop that relies on the presumption that soft power is something real that can be measured if it is broken down into as many different variables as necessary and/or possible. Countless studies have set out to develop measurements of soft power, investigate the effects of soft power on politics and thus provide concrete rankings of the soft power of states. For example, indices such as the Portland 30 break the soft power concept down into various objective and subjective sub- indices (based on polling) that are then weighted against each another, to make it possible to provide a comprehensive overview (see figures 6.1 to 6.3.)

Figure 6.1: Soft power 30: Objective Figure 6.2: Soft power 30: Weighting sub-indices of subjective sub-indices

Figure 6.3: Soft power 30: Ranking

What is particularly noteworthy is that such indices are often advanced by consultancy firms such as Ernst & Young and Portland, or think tanks such as RAND or the Institute for Government. Government agencies often directly commission such studies (British Council), seek out evaluations (such as during

154 panel discussions at academic conferences) or even directly request the services of consultancy firms to improve their soft power (Ernst & Young and Skolovo Moscow School of Management 2012; Hansun Foundation 2020; I#61; I#83; McClory 2010, 2015; Singh and MacDonald 2017; Treverton and Jones 2005; Working Group: Public Diplomacy 2011; Wu 2020). In this way, soft power indices straightforwardly represent a number of dynamics around conceptual politics. First, they are a key example of feedback loops in so far as an index responds to the observation of soft power’s performance in the world by breaking the phenomenon down into various sub-components, which are then recompiled in a comprehensive report that is wildly promoted. The effects of such rankings are profound, as governments are typically aware of such rankings or assessments, and therefore aim to improve their soft power and score higher by addressing various of the sub- indices. In other words, interpretation of the world interacts with the world and again with its interpretation—a dynamic that is further strengthened since many measurements are repeated annually. Second, in this way indices become a key strategy to rely on to promote conceptual politics as a way of steering the performance of soft power as a tool in politics, but also to underscore the epistemic rightness of the concept. Finally, indices are also a clear case of a dynamic that further advances soft power’s reification, as breaking the concept down into many sub-indices obfuscates the fact that soft power is not something that states amass, accumulate or lose from year to year, but a mental construct.

6.4 Travelling 6.4.1 Types of travel Thus far, this chapter has addressed the conceptual politics around the soft power concept in the US, primarily in the 2000s. Although not always explicitly discussed in such terms, much of the chapter has revolved around the travel of soft power. The concept’s travel was a consequence of conceptual politics, but also fuelled conceptual politics and thereby further shaped the dynamics of conceptual politics; that is, travelling set conceptual politics in motion that further shaped travelling. First, there is the matter of soft power’s travel across time. The concept travelled from the late 1980s to the 2000s, where the context around it was changed so profoundly that soft power was forced to adapt or risk withering away. In many ways, the change of period has made the concept seem more relevant. Events such as the terrorist attacks and the damage they wreaked made the argument that the nature of power was changing and that power was

155 more diffuse than ever before highly attractive. Hence, as the concept travelled over time, it matured and came of age. Second, the concept has also travelled across diverse contexts. This includes the concept’s travel between different scholars, such as from Nye (2004c) to Bially Mattern (2005b) to Y. W. Lee (2011) to Hagström (2015b), to this very project. Such travel is not simply one-directional. Rather, different authors interact with one another, be it through reading each other’s work, attending conferences, collaborating with each other or citing each other. Fur- thermore, the concept travelled across academic disciplines, that is, from IR and Political Science (PS) to other disciplines. In the case of soft power, as is shown in chapter 5, the disciplines to which soft power travelled are primarily area studies, communication and history. The success of soft power in the field of public diplomacy is particularly noteworthy in this context. Besides travelling across disciplines, soft power in the 2000s also travelled across different vocations, in particular from academia to public policy and the field of diplomacy. Third, in terms of travelling across levels, this form of travel was addressed in detail in the discussion on feedback loops, where it was shown how the concept travelled between various levels of observation and the levels of observation and action. Finally, when it comes to travelling across space, it is important to note here that soft power has indeed travelled much across space, but since this type of travelling is analysed in chapters 7 to 9, there is no need to address it here. What are the effects of such travelling on the concept of soft power? Per- haps the most important effect lies in the emergence of an increasing number of distinct translations of the concept. This refers to the translations of soft power as an analytical tool that can help observers understand the reality of public diplomacy, foreign policy, the strategic cultures of other countries or constitutive forms of power. Concept entrepreneurs effectively agreed on little more than that the concept was important, but had different interpretations of the content, scope of application and consequences of the concept. As this chapter has shown, such translation processes can be fairly complex—it is not the case that the concept can be taken out of one context and inserted into another while maintaining its original meaning. Instead, as the concept was translated, different sets of rules and conventions needed to be accounted for. For example, this might mean anticipating and managing the expectations of scholars who value sound methodology or policymakers who rely on mental shortcuts that tell them what to look for. In turn, functioning as an analytical tool for the assessment of public diplomacy strategies required a translation that allowed a greater role for governments and government actors in producing and wielding soft power (see e.g. Nye 2008a; van Ham 2005).

156 With respect to specific country translations, this is perhaps the most important consequence. This is an aspect I discuss in more detail in the next chapters. Importantly, while many translations engaged with Nye’s original formulation, not all of them are necessarily targeted at improving or understanding the “original” exemplar of soft power. More often, they are oriented towards their own target context. For example, proponents of hard power, such as Richard Gates, might have had far less of an interest in enhancing the concept and performance of soft power, but instead relied on the popularity of soft power to argue for their own policy preferences, such as a greater role for diplomacy— particularly in the aftermath of war. This does not mean that the emergence of soft power played no role in the shaping of such preferences, but they are best seen as co-constitutive. Hence, rather than wanting to fix Nye’s original notion of soft power, such entrepreneurs might have had their own performative effects in mind. Beyond the various translations of soft power as an analytical tool, we have also implicitly seen in this chapter how the soft power concept was translated in diverse fields, chief among them as a tool of foreign policy in the form of smart power. The next chapters look in more detail at other forms of translation, be they in states, or even as a musical. It is important to bear in mind that such translations are typically a creative process of a “sending” concept entrepreneur and a “receiving” context that can and—as is shown in the chapters—does release a plethora of effects. In either case, these various translations have profound effects on conceptual politics, to which this chapter now turns.

6.4.2 Dynamics of conceptual politics Soft power’s prodigious travel has changed the dynamics of the conceptual politics around the concept in profound ways. Concept entrepreneurs are a key component of conceptual politics and there were both a diversification and a multiplication of concept entrepreneurs as the soft power concept travelled. From just a handful of concept entrepreneurs, now more than 200 were thinking about, or writing and publishing on soft power in academic outlets, let alone the numerous concept entrepreneurs who are not captured in the WoS dataset, such as politicians, journalists or officials. This had a number of consequences for the dynamics of conceptual politics. First, the increasing number of “players” involved in conceptual politics makes it more difficult to keep all the concept entrepreneurs in sight. While soft power in the 1990s primarily attracted entrepreneurs around Nye himself, there were now many more entrepreneurs who had no such personal connection and were thus freer to challenge and amend the concept. Effectively, the diversity of concept entrepreneurs from various contexts (and spaces as we shall see

157 from subsequent chapter) made it increasingly challenging to maintain consistency with regard to the concept. Discerning some sort of coherence was naturally easier when only a handful of people were debating the epistemically right interpretation of reality and soft power’s role in it than now that over 200 different concept entrepreneurs were involved. Seen from this perspective, it is also not surprising that an increasing amount of conceptual contestation emerged, in that the 2000s were characterized by a fair amount of criticism of and deliberation on what soft power “truly” is. Is it something that governments should build up and wield through public diplomacy, as per van Ham (2005) suggested? Does the concept explain why 9/11 happened and how similar events might be prevented, as per Nye (2004c)? Or is soft power simply a diversion of attention and resources, and too soft to count as power (Ferguson 2003; Layne 2010)? Is the concept far less benign, as portrayed by Bially Mattern (2005b)? Is it nothing more than a bundle term for liberal internationalist policy preferences (Layne 2010)? As the concept “wandered off” into new contexts, earlier concept entrepreneurs enjoyed far less symbolic capital and hence capacity to successfully tweak it. Particularly for Joseph Nye, soft power’s travelling brought both advantages and disadvantages. Travelling contributed to the concept’s common sense status, as it became increasingly normal to refer to the concept even if there were disagreements over its content. This was positive in so far as Nye and others were able to appeal to the concept’s popularity to justify their policy preferences. This however also meant that unless Nye gave up on consistency, his role would change under the influence of soft power’s travelling from that of first-mover, promoter and architect of the soft power concept, to someone who needed to work hard to stay on top of the concept and strive for consistency. In other words, his role becomes one of carefully managing and “herding” the soft power concept. While Nye stayed involved with the concept and aimed to maintain concept spokespersonship, this became increasingly difficult as new actors emerged. With the passage of time, this dual opportunity/challenge also began to apply to other concept entrepreneurs who might originally have benefited from early-mover advantage to translate the concept into a new context, but then might also have seen the concept wandering away from their control as it travelled to new sites of conceptual politics. In terms of the means of conceptual politics, perhaps the most profound effect was the need to establish control over the various soft power translations in an effort ensure that the epistemically right interpretation of soft power and its right implementation in politics were successful. As discussed above, Nye and other concept entrepreneurs had much less leeway than before to engage in conceptual politics as they could not revisit it too much without risking no-one following along. In addition, the plethora of translations also made conceptual

158 politics more complex. This suggests that the concept entrepreneurs were no longer interested in doing “pure” academic work and that pure academic work might have been fine if the concept was changing in response to a changing world. How did concept entrepreneurs seek to establish control over the soft power concept and its many translations? Perhaps the most straightforward way lay in careful engagement with the concept to justify their theoretical and methodological choices. In the work of many concept entrepreneurs, this typically took the form of something between a literature review and a theoretical treatise on the soft power concept. One crucial aspect in this regard was perseverance, and a few concept entrepreneurs kept returning to the concept in an effort to clarify it or apply it in a better way.9 That said, in this context, it was again Nye who assumed a central role, and his re-engagement with the concept is unparalleled. As discussed above, there are many examples of publications where Nye reflects on the performance of the concept as either an analytical tool or a social fact and sets out to clarify and “defend” the soft power concept. Nye did not engage with every translation or critique of the soft power concept, but instead carefully chose which translations to engage with and which to ignore. Thus, Nye’s response to the use of soft power in public diplomacy can be seen as an endorsement while his engagement with Bially Mattern (2005b) comes as a friendly defence. How- ever, neoconservatives—who as D. Cooper (2011, p. 33) points out take US soft power for granted (“There was no need to doubt that other nations would be be- dazzled by the American example”)— would receive a stern rebuttal from Nye (2004b). One charge against which Nye regularly had to defend soft power is the claim that soft power is little more than a bundle term for liberal internationalism, a point most clearly made in Layne (2010). There is some merit in such an argument, in that the conceptualisation of common sources of soft power typically favours a world view that underscores principles of democracy, civil society and international institutions. Other authors have alleged that the concept has a liberal bias (Keating and Kaczmarska 2019; van Ham 2005; G. Zhang 2017). In response to such charges, Nye has gone to great lengths to refute the argument (Nye 2010). He has argued that soft power is a concept rather than a theory, and as such fits with all kinds of theories from realism to liberalism or constructivism. This constitutes a clear case of boundary work, in that Nye

9 This is particularly typical in 2010, see e.g. Gallarotti (2011, 2015), Gallarotti and Al-Filali (2012), Grix, Brannagan, and Houlihan (2015), Grix and Houlihan (2014), and Grix and Kramareva (2017).

159 emphasises the distinction between concepts that represent the world as it is and theories that need to be falsifiable and testable. This enables a smoother journey for the soft power concept as, according to Nye, it can also travel from one theory to another. Either way, Nye becomes increasingly busy managing the concept’s diverse journeys and putting out fires as they develop. Another aspect in which soft power’s travelling shapes the dynamics of conceptual politics is how concept entrepreneurs and their means of politics increasingly come to resemble regular politics, becoming focused on the performance of the concept as a social fact, as can be seen from the many congressional hearings. Finally, soft power’s travelling has also influenced the dynamics of feedback loops. While early on such loops primarily played out at the level of observation, the travelling of soft power into politics as smart power saw far greater efforts to understand the role of soft power in politics, rather than how soft power helps us to understand politics. In sum, this section has considered how the travelling of soft power has shaped the dynamics of conceptual politics and emphasised how concept entrepreneurs, the means of conceptual politics and the form of feedback loops changed as soft power travelled.

6.5 Conclusion This chapter has addressed the conceptual politics around the soft power concept in the US in the 2000s and shed light on how the concept’s travel shaped the dynamics of conceptual politics. A focus on the role of concept entrepreneurs and their means of conceptual politics revealed how Nye resumed his role as a concept entrepreneur, and revised and promoted the soft power concept— and later the smart power concept—in order to intervene in the debate on US problems in the 2000s, especially around the events of 9/11. The analysis of reification and feedback loops brought to light how soft power started to perform as both an analytical and a social effect in politics, and how these roles began to interact, which was often encouraged by concept entrepreneurs such as consultants or others involved in soft power indices. In addition, a focus on feedback loops made possible a detailed analysis of the performance of smart power. An analysis of the travel of soft power and how it shaped conceptual politics has shown how conceptual politics became increasingly complex as concept entrepreneurs diversified and the means of conceptual politics had to change. In terms of the helpfulness of the thinking tools developed to examine conceptual practice, the focus on narratives, feedback effects and reification pro-

160 vided particularly useful insights. Travelling, on the other hand, was in many ways so baked into the various phases of conceptual politics that it was difficult to keep it analytically distinct. In addition, since this chapter revolved around soft power’s maturation, analytically distinguishing between the means of conceptual politics and feedback effects proved a challenge in the writing of this chapter, as in practice the dynamics of feedback loops triggered new ways of conceptual politics. chapter 7 now turns to spatial travel to analyse how the soft power concept travelled to Japan and how conceptual politics in Japan unfolded.

161 162 7. Japan, be cool: between allied responsibility and soft decline

In the summer of 2016, I participated in a short-term exchange programme called Mirai. Just like its sister programmes for non-European regions, Mirai takes around 150 European and Central Asian university students per year to Japan to show them the country in eight days. Fully funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (MOFAJ), the aims of such programmes are to allow university students to learn more about Japan, to foster mutual trust and understanding and thereby to strengthen interregional relations. Among the expectations placed on the participants, one particular requirement stood out. By signing a letter of understanding prior to the trip, applicants had to agree that they would “commit to sharing and disseminating their experiences and the attraction of Japan after returning to Europe” (MOFAJ 2016). In other words, participation in an all-inclusive trip to Japan was contingent on our willingness to share our favourable impressions of Japan. Our “proactive dissemination actions”—as the participant handbook called them—were not left to chance. We were encouraged to use social media throughout the trip, and also asked at various times to brainstorm ways to enhance and communicate Japan’s attractiveness. Towards the end of our stay, Mirai held a workshop where we had to come up with “voluntary action plans” to be presented to the MOFAJ. After we returned home, we were asked to write short reflections on our stay to be posted on the embassy website. Moreover, we received several surveys asking us to detail the concrete dissemination actions we had undertaken to share Japan’s attractiveness. This episode is noteworthy for two reasons. First and foremost, the frank- ness with which Japan enlisted foreign visitors to bolster its attractiveness is striking. Intuitively, it seems certain that if a country such as China were to openly offer a free trip to China in exchange for positive dissemination activities, it would receive huge criticism. However, Mirai participants seemed per- fectly at ease using twitter, Instagram or other means to share their impressions of Japan (I#02; I#03; I#04; I#05). The other noteworthy aspect was directly related to the soft power concept. Arguably, if it wasn’t for soft power and the concept’s travel, Mirai would not have happened in this way. Indeed, in an interview with the organisers,

163 they explicitly noted that the programme is intended to bolster Japan’s soft power (I#19). Of course, exchange programmes meant to foster mutual understanding are nothing new. Public diplomacy in Japan—like that of the US— also predates the concept of soft power, such as for instance the long-standing Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET) Programme. Nonetheless, what is striking is that Japan asks its guests outright to enhance its attractiveness, a term that is intimately linked to the idea of soft power. In so doing, it goes far beyond the typical language of improving mutual understanding. Beyond Mirai, there are many other ways in which soft power has become ubiquitous in Japan. As seen in chapter 4, the concept is regularly mentioned in academic and newspaper articles from or on Japan. Furthermore, political parties include soft power in their manifestos (Constitutional Democratic Party 2018; Komeito 2006; Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) 2017), parliamentarians discuss the concept in Japan’s Diet (Stm. of Endo 1991; Stm. of Takano 1999; Stm. of Shindo 2009) and virtually all ministries refer to the concept in major policy documents (see e.g. Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan (METIJ) 2009; Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communi- cations of Japan (MIACJ) 2018; Ministry of Defense of Japan (MODJ) 2014; MOFAJ 2012). Besides the high profile case of Abe’s Olympics Super Mario outfit, discussed in the introduction to this dissertation, there are other examples of politicians and officials dressing up as anime characters to promote Japan’s cool image.1 In short, Japan is one of the earliest and most eager adopters of the soft power concept. To most observers of Japan, the ubiquity of the concept is not particularly surprising. For them, Japan’s constitutional constraints on the use of force, its economic decline and the challenge of the rise of China make its embrace of the concept reasonable and commonsensical (T. U. Berger 2018, pp. 114–115; Fukushima 2011, pp. 76–79; Leheny 2006, p. 232; White 2011, esp. pp. 8–10). Nye himself has suggested that Japanese politicians picked up on soft power because they found it “useful” (I#06). In the words of one scholar and policy adviser, soft power is such a “benign animal” that one should really not be sur- prised by Japan’s embrace of the concept (I#21). Not only does it make sense for Japan to embrace the concept, it is also very good at it, that is, it is a Soft Power Superpowers, as the title of an influential book suggests (Watanabe and McConnell 2008). The purpose of this chapter is to analyse how this seemingly natural fit between Japan and soft power has been possible and the consequences of soft power’s ubiquity for Japan. Central to the analysis are to draw out the politics

1 Such as Inada Tomomi (before her short stint as Minister of Defense), Omura Hideaki (governor of Aichi Prefecture) or Koike Yuriko (governor of Tokyo) .

164 of soft power’s travel from the USA to Japan and to address the conceptual politics around soft power in Japan. The success of soft power in Japan was neither predetermined nor accidental—it was carefully nurtured. Section 1 addresses how soft power travelled to Japan and section 2 focuses on the conceptual politics around soft power there. Section 3 unpacks how the concept’s travel to other states—notably South Korea and China—has shaped the dynamics of conceptual politics around soft power in Japan.2

7.1 Soft power travels to Japan Shortly after “Bound to lead” was published in English in 1990, the book was translated into Japanese by the book division of Japan’s leading media conglomerate, the Yomiuri shinbunsha, and published under the Immortal Power America (Nye 1990b). Just like in the US, this was no academic publisher and the book was in principle intended for a wide audience.3 In Japanese, soft power has since been known as sofuto pawa or ソフトパワー. This first translation constitutes the first important pathway for soft power to Japan. “Bound to lead” was of course primarily a book about the USA and its future and, apart from a short section on Japan as an allied competitor, had little to say about other states. Nonetheless, the book was seen as providing a useful stimulus for Japanese policymakers, academics and the general public to explore the future of the country (Yomiuri Shimbun 1990). The future direction of Japan was a heavily discussed topic in the early 1990s (see e.g. Mochizuki 1990; Ozawa 1994). As was the case in many states, there were central questions about the kind of world order that would emerge now that the Cold War was over. There was also a debate about the future of the US–Japanese alliance, the (admittedly controversial) central pillar of Japanese foreign policy since the end of World War 2. What role should Japan play in any new order? What role would it be able to assume, given that Article 9 of

2 A preliminary analysis of the soft power phenomenon in Japan appears in Winkler (2019). 3 The book was translated by Kubo Shintaro, which is interesting as Kubo was not a profes- sional translator but had been working as a journalist for the newspaper Yomiuri shimbun for several years. “Bound to lead” was his only translation as he would soon rise through the ranks of Nippon Television, which was also part of the same conglomerate. I have been in contact with the translator via an intermediary. Kubo eventually declined an interview as his position as an adviser to Yomiuiri meant that he felt unable to comment on security issues. He did however note that he had met Nye only once, and that some politicians he knew were knowledgeable about soft power but had primarily read the book in English rather than his translation. Later translations of Nye’s other books were usually done by an experienced translator, Yoichi Yamaoka, and would typically appear in the imprints of media conglomerates.

165 its Constitution prohibited the use or threat of use of force? It is in this climate of the early 1990s that the soft power concept provided a useful stimulus for thinking about Japan’s future. Soft power’s travelling to Japan was further facilitated by several events organised to broadly address the question of Japan’s future. Such “soul- searching” events typically involved observers from Japan and the US. For example, in 1991, Sofia University invited Joseph Nye to travel to Japan to give a public lecture on the new world order. In this context, Nye would also raise the question of soft power, which was then reported in the news (Yomiuri Shimbun 1991). Other examples of workshops took place in 1994 and 1995, bringing leading Japanese and US scholars and students together to investigate the changing global order and Japan’s role in it.4 Such efforts eventually culminated in an influential edited volume, Network Power (Katzenstein and T. Shiraishi 1997). It is in this book that one of the earliest and most substantial academic treatments of soft power in a context other than the US can be found. Written by an anthropologist, the chapter addresses Japan’s soft power by looking at the popularity of Japanese popular culture (especially manga and anime) in Asia (S. Shiraishi 1997).5 Nye also became more directly involved in the question of Japan’s future once he assumed the position of Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, where Nye was responsible for US policy on East Asia. This meant that he became far more preoccupied with Japan (and China) than in the past, but also that he had the time, means and access to discuss the issue of soft power with his colleagues. Whether soft power would have travelled to Japan if it had not been for these workshops, lectures or Nye’s involvement in East Asian politics is difficult to judge in hindsight. What becomes clear from this section, however, is how helpful it is for scholars and policymakers from the US and Japan to meet in person. Importantly, such encounters occurred in a concrete material and infrastructural context; that is, they were facilitated by the support of elite universities such as Cornell or Sofia. Of course, it is also necessary to have sufficient funding to make such encounters possible, and to find the right people to collaborate with and to accrue the necessary funding. Hence, both cultural and social capital are very important.6

4 Another example is a lecture given by Ikeda Daisaku at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) in 1991 (Ikeda 1991). 5 Note here that soft power is immediately treated as a tangible thing that states possess, i.e. one of the first serious efforts to discuss soft power treats it as if it were real rather than an analytical category. 6 For example, the Daiwa Bank Foundation, the Toyota Foundation, the Suntory Foundation and Cornell University are all listed as providing the necessary funding that enabled S.

166 This section underscores how the soft power concept travelled to Japan through the direct channel of its translation. At the same time, we also see the importance of the literal travel of scholars who met and discussed Japan’s future with the concept in tow. Once soft power had arrived in Japan, what happened next? The following sections show how the arrival of soft power served as a catalyst in Japan, unleashing a dynamic of transformation and change as conceptual politics emerged around the concept and its performance in Japan and later internationally. Like chapter 5 and 6, I analyse conceptual politics in Japan by honing in on the various concept entrepreneurs, means of conceptual politics and feedback loops coupled with reification.

7.2 Concept entrepreneurs 7.2.1 Nye in Japan Like chapters 5 and 6, it makes sense to start with the figure of Joseph Nye. A “life-long Japan fan” (I#21; I#65), Nye played an important role as a soft power concept entrepreneur in Japan. While Nye might be one among many public figures and intellectuals in the USA, albeit an influential one, he can be described as one of the most authoritative US nationals in Japan. For one, this is a consequence of his significant Japan-specific social capital. Many Japanese politicians and officials met Nye during his time as Assistant Secretary of De- fence in the early 1990s. One example is Akiyama Masahiro, who was Vice Minister of the Defense Agency at the time, and who recollects discussing the notion of soft power as a public good of the US-Japanese alliance (Pers.Corrs. with Akiyama). Nye carefully nurtured this capital over the years. In addition to regularly hosting, introducing or participating in Japan-specific events in the USA,7 Nye has according to his own estimates travelled to Japan some 50 times to participate in workshops, lectures and meetings with policymakers, scholars and students.8 Besides social capital, it is also clear that Nye epitomises much symbolic capital. For one, during my interviews with Japanese officials and politicians, many would speak of Nye with respect and admiration. As an academic observer of Japan noted, Nye might be “one of the most, maybe the most respected intellectual in Japan” (I#22; see also I#12; I#10). A particularly intriguing pic-

Shiraishi’s (1997) chapter. 7 Such as for example in 2006 in New York (Japan Foundation (JF) 2005), or during a visit by Abe to Harvard in 2015 (HKS 2015). 8 I#06; see e.g. Fulbright/CULCON (2009), Iwamoto (2017), Nye (2016), and Yomiuri Shim- bun (1991).

167 ture of Nye’s symbolic capital in Japan and its public staging can also be found in the descriptions of anthropologist Daniel White (2011, p. 45). Reflecting on a public seminar on US and Japanese soft power in 2009,9 he writes: After the customary opening aisatsu (greeting) the lights are dimmed and our attention is drawn to a ten-meter-tall screen upon which is projected a gigantic image of Joseph Nye’s head. Seated in front of the screen are a number of Japanese national administrators, cultural and otherwise, and me among them, craning our necks to give Joseph Nye’s giant visage and its elocution of soft power through a video recorded earlier our undivided attention. The image is commanding, overbearing even, but the voice more compassionate, a softer and gentler uncle to Orwell’s Big Brother. As the lights come back on I look around, startled. The electricity and energy quickly dissipate and the conference proceeds with a palpable discordance between the intensity of the opening and the formality of the proceedings that follow. Nye has also received official accolades, such as the second highest rank of the Gold and Silver Star of the Order of the Rising Sun, for his work on Japanese-US relations (Harvard Gazette 2014). Beyond this, Nye is also regularly asked to provide comments and feedback on or forewords for research projects or study groups, such as Watanabe and McConnell (2008). Finally, together with Richard Armitage, Nye has published several reports on the US– Japanese alliance that have been highly influential in Japan (Armitage and Nye 2007b, 2012, 2018). For example, when the 2012 report questioned whether Japan would become a “tier-two country”, Abe personally responded during a speech at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), noting that: “Japan is not, and will never be, a Tier two country. That is the core message I am here to make. And I reiterate this by saying, I am back, and so shall Japan be” (Abe 2013).10 The level of reverence for Nye in Japan is therefore substantial. Although much of this has to do with his own efforts, it is crucial to understand that it is also testimony to a structural imbalance between Japan and the US when it comes to the discipline of International Relations. Many Japanese scholars— and many of those working on soft power in particular—have at some point in their careers spent time at US universities as graduate students or visiting faculty members. This is not to say that Japanese authors merely copy US au-

9 This refers to Fulbright/CULCON (2009). 10 It should be noted however that Abe was directly addressing Armitage in this statement. Armitage holds the highest rank of the Order of the Rising Sun, an indication that his position in Japan is even more authoritative that Nye’s.

168 thors or US-style International Relations (IR). As we shall see, the journey of soft power to Japan facilitates creative processes of translation and appropriation, and in many ways Nye and other concept entrepreneurs are also explicitly solicited or enrolled in such efforts precisely because of the symbolic capital they bring to the table. I#21 for instance emphasised their continuous contact with Nye to solicit feedback on issues such as nuclear armament or constitutional reform. How far-ranging such exchanges are is difficult to judge, but this clearly demonstrates how I#21 sought to display their social capital to tap into Nye’s authority and symbolic capital in an effort to persuade me of the rightfulness of the arguments they were advancing. Hence, while Nye’s specific symbolic capital and this hierarchy of knowledge elevate his overall position and are therefore key to soft power’s progress in Japan, it is important not to portray Japan as a passive recipient of Western knowledge.

7.2.2 Beyond Nye: The ubiquity of Japan’s concept entrepreneurs When it comes to other concept entrepreneurs who have become involved with the conceptual politics around soft power in Japan, the first thing to note is their ubiquity, but also their importance in Japan’s politics. Many concept entrepreneurs with academic affiliations from Japan and beyond have repeatedly examined Japan and soft power over the years (such as Akaha 2005; Arase and Akaha 2011; Fukushima 2011; Heng 2014; Iwabuchi 2015; Watanabe and McConnell 2008; Vyas 2013). Concept entrepreneurs can also be found among journalists, and in this context Douglas McGray’s Japan’s Gross National Cool from 2002 has been particularly influential in Japan and beyond (McGray 2002; emphasised also by I#13). There are also various prominent politicians and officials who have taken a sustained interest in the soft power concept, such as Aso Taro,11 Kondo Sei-

11 Aso, widely known as an Anime fan, is currently Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, and was Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2005–2007. For indications of his interest in soft power, see (Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet (Kantei) 2009) (Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet (Kantei) 2009).

169 ichi12, Ogata Sadako13 or Ogoura Kazuo.14 Furthermore, soft power is regularly discussed by concept entrepreneurs in parliament (Stm. of Endo 1991; Stm. of Takano 1999; Stm. of Ono 2005; Stm. of Shindo 2009). Finally, there are also numerous officials in Japan’s ministries and government agencies who typically are not named on policy proposals but nonetheless provide a seemingly endless supply of policy documents that centre on soft power, or whose daily work involves the implementation of soft power as a policy. What can be seen here is the diversity of soft power concept entrepreneurs who span most of Japan’s political life. There are broadly speaking three, in practice intertwining, reasons for concept entrepreneurs to become involved with the soft power concept. The first relates to the perceived epistemic rightness of both the soft and the hard power concepts, that is, their ability to capture how the world is, how it should be and what behaviour or norms should be valued in this world. To understand this, a short detour to Japan’s tradition and self-understanding as a pacifist state is necessary. During Japan’s reconstruction after World War II, a number of laws, policies and guidelines were adopted that have become known as “pacifist”. Chief among them is the war- renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution (Gustafsson, Hagström, and Hanssen 2019). Over the years, Japan has loosened or reinterpreted some of these principles, such as with the establishment of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in the 1950s. Nonetheless, the country has correctly been described as exhibiting a deep-running pacifist identity “based on which it was natural and normal to take pride in military restrictions and far-reaching moderation in security matters” (Gustafsson, Hagström, and Hanssen 2019, p. 505; see also Katzenstein 1996).15

12 Kondo was among many other things the first Director-General of the MOFAJ Department of Public Diplomacy in 2004 and according to several interviewees an important driving force of Japan’s public diplomacy and soft power efforts (I#13; I#84). In addition, see also C. George (2016) and Yomiuri Shimbun (2004). 13 Ogata was a veteran diplomat and the head of the office of the United Nations High Com- missioner for Refugees in 1991–2000, as well as President of the Japan International Coop- eration Agency (JICA). Although known especially for her advocacy of the human security concept, several interviewees also note that her embrace of soft power was important for the planning and implementation of Japan’s development aid (I#15; I#16). See also JICA (2009). 14 Ogoura is a veteran diplomat who served in various positions in MOFAJ (such as Director- General of the Cultural Affairs Department) and as an ambassador before becoming the president of the JF (JF), Japan’s key organisation for comprehensive international cultural exchange programmes. Ogoura’s embrace of soft power is reportedly more reluctant, making him in some ways more of an anti-concept entrepreneur (I#84; I#12). See also Ogoura (2006). 15 Japan’s pacifist identity and its security legislation have undergone significant changes since the 1990s, which are discussed below.

170 For those who took pride in Japan’s pacifism, soft power felt epistemically right as the concept appreciates foreign policymaking based on restraint, international cooperation and a values-based foreign policy, that is, the very same features that characterise Japan’s pacifism. Especially now that the Cold War had ended, Japan was seen as being on the right side of history and well- equipped in an era of globalisation and soft power (Stm. of Endo 1991; Ikeda 1991; Yomiuri Shimbun 1998). Hard power also seemed epistemically right, chiefly because Japan’s constitutional constraints on military power could be understood and portrayed as a lack of hard power. As argued in previous chapters, hard power, just like soft power, was a mental abstraction from the world developed by Nye. With respect to Japan, the concept turned out to be a particularly useful analytical tool since it helped to boil down the complex topic of Japan’s constitutional restrictions into a single statement: “Japan has no hard power”. The popularity of this argument is striking, given that Japan’s economic weight was threatening enough for the US in the 1980s and early 1990s to worry about the dawn of a Japanese century (for a detailed analysis, see D. Campbell 1994) to such a degree that Nye felt compelled to intervene in the decline debate. Note also how readily hard power is seen as something that states possess or lack, as if it is a tangible object and not an analytical tool. Nonetheless, the notion that Japan lacks hard power runs like a golden threat through the literature and interviews (T. U. Berger 2018; Fukushima 2011; I#84; I#21; I#22; I#06). In short, if soft power felt somewhat epistemically right, hard power captured even better everything that Japan did not have or was not allowed to have. Even more importantly, since observers readily relied on hard power to make sense of Japan, it became easy and reasonable to embrace soft power as hard power’s twin—as something that makes analytical sense and is supposedly the only viable policy option for Japan. Thus, the concept of hard power has done much to help soft power resonate in Japan. Second, another factor that facilitated the embrace of the soft power concept is the career opportunities that the concept offered in Japan. S. Shiraishi (1997) for example was in a good position to write one of the first English publications on soft power and Japan since she already had material on the Japanese mass media in Asia. In many cases, concept entrepreneurs emerge as they are asked directly to contribute to a research project or an edited volume, and henceforth remain involved as they see a continuing demand for soft power research (as noted by I#84). This may also take the form of commissioned work, such as when MOFAJ asks the JF to organise soft power workshops or to prepare policy notes (I#17). Third, the soft power concept allows those who embrace it to deal with the idea of Japan in decline. There are two dimensions to this. First, begin-

171 ning around 1991, Japan experienced a severe economic downturn that would last for almost a decade. If observers had once worried that Japan’s economic miracle meant that Japan would soon replace the US as the world’s hegemon, many international and domestic observers were now increasingly concerned that Japan might wither away in importance, and hence be unable to contribute much to the international community. The arrival of soft power in Japan coincided with the overall economic downturn in the Japanese economy, while at the same time Japanese cultural products were becoming increasingly popular in Asia and beyond. The promotion of cultural products, and especially pop culture such as manga (comics) and anime (cartoons), seemed to provide a meaningful economic opportunity to contribute to Japan’s growth. Even better, according to soft power, observers now believed that supporting such industries would enhance Japan’s soft power and alleviate its economic problems and the fear of decline. Thus, various governmental actors became interested in capi- talising on the popularity of Japanese culture to reinvigorate the economy and amass soft power. For example, protracted debates emerged in the pages of the Gaiko Forum on how best to utilise and manage this popularity.16 The other decline-related reason for becoming involved with soft power lay in how the concept helped observers to cope emotionally with the question of Japan’s decline. At a time when Japan was growing increasingly concerned that its economic prosperity and international status might wither away, soft power provided a way to reassure observers that Japan would still matter and would still count as an important international actor—but only if it embraced soft power. Here, we can see an important parallel between US and Japanese concept entrepreneurs, as in both contexts the ability of soft power to provide an emotional coping mechanism and policy solutions (i.e., providing an intellectual and practical solution to the problem thus defined) was important to the concept’s initial popularity. Thus, it is reasonable to suggest that much of Nye’s efforts and strategies in the US context also bore fruit in Japan because of the important similarities in both countries. On this topic, some scholars suggested that soft power provides a “ray of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape” (Leheny 2006, p. 216), “hope amidst the increasing despair” (White 2011, p. 55) or even “hope over experience” (T. U. Berger 2018). It is certainly accurate to see soft power as something that provides hope and optimism, but one must be careful not to be too dismissive of the concept or those who embrace it. For one, emotions such as hope do not arise accidentally but need to be evoked and made explicit, for example through narratives. Thus, if it had not been for Nye’s efforts to challenge the notion of US

16 For examples, see Gaiko Forum (1994), Gaiko Forum (2003), and Honda (1994). See also Iwabuchi (2015), Leheny (2006), and I#11.

172 decline and advance soft power, a similar emotional resonance in Japan would have been unlikely. In addition, although the situations in the US and Japan were similar, it still required a translation of soft power in Japan to make the fit explicit.17 The final reason for soft power’s embrace among Japan’s concept entrepreneurs was linked to the increasing normalisation of the soft power concept, which allowed concept entrepreneurs to engage in conceptual politics by further specifying the concept and applying it to new situations while relying on its existing popularity, an issue I address below in the discussion on feedback loops.

7.3 Means of conceptual politics: Establish Japan’s soft power potential Given the diversity of concept entrepreneurs, conceptual politics in Japan is unsurprisingly characterised by a plethora of different understandings of and approaches to the soft power concept. As argued above, some observers might find the vagueness of the concept problematic, and therefore advocate or provide a more precise definition of the concept (see e.g. introduction in Watan- abe and McConnell 2008). Overall, however, the further the concept travels, the less important it becomes to adhere to its original meaning. Instead, as is demonstrated below, soft power fuelled the various creative processes of concept entrepreneurs who made the concept their own, and henceforth aimed to convince others that their interpretation of the world and soft power should be followed. The conceptual politics around Japan and soft power followed a different pattern to the US. While conceptual politics in the US, especially early on, in many ways revolved around the epistemic rightness of the soft power concept—whether it adequately captures reality—in Japan, soft power’s overall epistemic rightness was embraced early on. Instead, the question of which cases can be subsumed under the category of soft power was key to the conceptual politics around soft power in Japan. For the US, this was far less of a question as the US overall was seen as a clear case of soft power due to its attractive values and principles. Japan, however, in Nye’s (1990) assertion, was too insular and inward-looking to be attractive to others (Nye 1990a, pp. 166-169; 188). For this reason, especially in the early years, conceptual

17 There is also an additional problem if soft power is reduced to wishful thinking. As I will address in the last chapter of this dissertation, how declining or rising states perceive the concepts of decline and rise—in other words the question of global power shifts—can be seen as a central factor for the prosperity, peace and order of international relations.

173 politics revolved around establishing that Japan was in fact a clear case of a country with soft power. This played out primarily in the field of cultural diplomacy. To some degree, such efforts were also driven by the offence taken at Nye’s assertion that Japan lacked soft power. Indeed, if Japan had neither hard nor soft power, what was Japan left with? In addition, Nye’s comments also seemed to be misplaced, as the popularity of Japanese cultural products in Asia and beyond suggested that Japan’s culture was attractive. With this in mind, it is clear why for example S. Shiraishi (1997, p. 234) refuted Nye’s assessment in relatively harsh words: “Nye’s negative answer to this question [of whether Japan has soft power] is based on bold assertions and summary judgments, not argumentation and evidence”. Thus, since the early 1990s, countless publications in English and Japanese have dealt with the question of Japan’s soft power in terms of culture, be they academic discussions (Iwabuchi 2015; Lam 2007; S. Shiraishi 1997), newspaper articles (Talbot 2002; Yomiuri Shimbun 1998) or in policy-related arguments (Gaiko Forum 1994; Honda 1994; International Ex- change Study Group 2003; The Japan Forum on International Relations (JFIR) 2004). One particularly influential discussion on Japan’s international appeal as a form of soft power was McGray (2002) “Japan’s gross national cool” is a clear example of a publication that relies on a narrative structure to convey its point. McGray (2002) begins by establishing common ground with his readers and notes the ubiquity of Japanese cultural products in the world, with which anyone reading the article would be likely to be familiar (e.g. Pokemon). Mov- ing on, he succinctly presents the problem of Japan’s international and domestic situation: While Japan was an economic “superpower” in the 1980s, the country had suffered from political and especially economic misfortunes since the 1990s that had reduced its gross domestic capital. To this problem, McGray (2002) was able to provide a (partial) solution: “Japan’s global cultural influence had only grown […] [in industries from] from pop music to consumer electronics, architecture to fashion, and food to art”, it has developed “gross national cool”. This form of soft power however brings a new problem: “while Japan sits on that formidable reserve of soft power, it has few means to tap it”. The country seemed increasingly insecure with regard to its fundamental values. However, McGray had a solution to that too: Japan must properly tap into its soft power resource, which would help it to overcome its problems. Beyond the clear narrative structure of problematisation, solution and course of action, what stands out is how closely economic decline is tied to the question soft power: If Japan wants to avert decline, proper use of soft power is the answer. In so doing, McGray also provides concrete hope for Japan: “With the cultural reach of a superpower already in place, it’s hard to imagine that

174 Japan will be content to remain so much medium and so little message.” Such a sentiment also echoes Nye’s own discussion of Japan in 2000 that in principle follows the same narrative outline, and notes that if “Japan succeeds in adapting to this new round of globalisation, its example may well confer it significant soft power in the information age. If history is any guide to the future, my bet would be that Japan will succeed once again” (Nye 2000, p. 124). In general, narratives provide a simple solution to two problems at the same time: the economic and the emotional problems of decline. Such solutions are however contingent on following McGray’s and Nye’s interpretations of the world and the problems Japan faces, and embracing both their solutions and their courses of action. In other words, one needs to go through the spokespersons of the concept to be able to fix the problem. What also becomes clear from this episode is that the shape of conceptual politics has again shifted in a relatively short period of time. If Japanese authors such as S. Shiraishi (1997) had to contest soft power to argue that Japan did in fact have soft power resources, now conceptual politics revolved around steering the use of soft power in politics, that is, how soft power should be used. From a country once considered too insular to have soft power, just five years later it seems that Japan was sitting on a huge reservoir of soft power that it only had to use properly. Although McGray’s (2002) article was one of several to discuss this sentiment, it is hard to overstate the importance of the article. It was quickly translated into Japanese and not only spread among policymakers and bureaucrats (White 2011, p. 2), but was also reported on across the world (Faiola 2003; Talbot 2002; Yamazaki 2002). Consequently, the article did much to popularise the notion of a “cool” soft power Japan. While McGray’s (2002) article might be the most visible when it comes to promoting the notion of Japan as a cultural soft power, there are many other ways in which concept entrepreneurs sought to advance understanding and knowledge of Japan’s cultural soft power. An important aspect in this context are the numerous workshops, seminars and working groups that were organised (Bukh 2014, p. 471–474). As I#17 and I#84 note, such efforts were often directly commissioned by MOFAJ. In other cases, organisations such as the JF, the Sasakwa Peace Foundation (SPF) or Japan society were key to providing the necessary funding to organise soft power events (see e.g. JF 2005, 2017; JFIR 2004; METIJ 2012; Nomura 2005; SPF 2005). In one way or another, most of the people working on Japan’s cultural soft power have been funded by such institutions. McGray’s (2002) work for example was enabled by the Japan Society’s US–Japanese Foundation Media Fellows Programme, and Watanabe and McConnell’s (2008) by the Abe foundation, while the JF also funded several projects on soft power that led to important soft power-specific publica-

175 tions centred on Japan as a cultural soft power.18 Beyond direct monetary support, another important aspect was the provision of institutional support, be it that offered by internal research seminars where work could be discussed and feedback solicited, by mediating interview requests or by providing access to interesting sites of research. A huge appeal of White (2011), for example, is his insights into various aspects of Japan’s cultural diplomacy that would not have been possible had he not been able to conduct participant observation at the JF.19 My own project has also hugely benefited from the fact that my research on soft power in Japan meant that many officials developed an interest in my work and were particularly helpful. More than once, I was asked to share my observations on Japan’s soft power towards the end of an interview (I#12; I#10). In situations like this, one assumes several roles simultaneously: inter- viewer, interviewee, a seeker of soft power knowledge and a source of soft power knowledge. Crucially, one is also a target of soft power, for those involved in the interviews are typically well aware that such situations provide a chance to illustrate Japan’s soft power to me. For example, most of my interviewees pointed me to what they felt were instances of Japan’s soft power, such as the “Japan House” initiative (akin to a museum/community centre) (I#10), Japan’s friendship ties programmes (I#19), the “Wa Project” to expand people-to-people exchanges in Asian states (I#12), Japan’s broadcasting efforts (I#17), Cherry Blossom Festivals (I#22) or an exhibition called “Peace is...” at the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations (I#77). Soft power also lies in the very conversations we had, as the openness and hospitality of a conversation was typically understood by my interviewees as generating soft power in its own right. What is more, as interviewees enter such an occasion with the knowledge that I will be writing about Japan’s soft power later on, I am also seen as a potential recruit to Japan’s soft power that will ideally spread the notion of Japan as a soft power superpower still further. Clearly, such occasions allow concept entrepreneurs to enrol new concept entrepreneurs such as this PhD candidate from Sweden. Ultimately, we also see here a testimony to the ingenuity of soft power—even as I am tracing it critically across time and space, the concept has me firmly in its grip. Even if people mostly pick up on my critical stance on the concept, I nonetheless

18 Such as “Geopolitics and Soft Power: Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy in Southeast Asia”, “Japan’s Soft Power Diplomacy Following the Great Kanto Earthquake”, “Theorizing Soft Power: the Case of Japan”, “The Soft Power of Hardware: The Bullet Train in Postwar Japan’s Foreign Policy” or “Japan’s soft power study” (JF 2019). 19 As such he notes that his “deepest gratitude goes to those members of the JF who with no obligation took a special interest in my project and unknowingly shepherded it along the way” (White 2011, p. vii).

176 function as a concept entrepreneur whether I want to or not.20 Returning again to the question of cultural soft power, despite the popularity of thinking about Japan in such terms, not everyone appreciated such a conceptualisation and there was soon conceptual politics around the notion of Japan as a cultural soft power. This took three distinct forms. First, many people working in or with the cultural sphere eyed the role of culture in soft power with some suspicion. To them, the use of culture for strategic purposes raised uncomfortable memories of Japan’s wartime propaganda, and especially efforts to create a Japanese cultural sphere in Asia. This sentiment is perhaps best represented in the figure of the JF’s Ogoura Kazuo, whose unease with the notion led him to pen a sceptical article detailing the limits of soft power in the Wochi Kochi (Ogoura 2006; see also Hayden 2012, ch. 3; I#84; I#17). However, in the light of budget cuts across all areas of Japan’s diplomacy, it became increasingly necessary to provide a rationale for the existence of organisations involved in cultural diplomacy, such as the JF, or the exchange programmes sponsored by MOFAJ. In such a context, even if reluctant to see culture as something to use for strategic purposes, the argument that Japan’s culture could be used to amass power became a useful tool for fending off budget cuts (I#19; I#84)—just as had been the case in the US. Ogoura would later regularly discuss the relation between the national interest and cultural diplomacy as he was worried that Japan would be misunderstood or even overlooked (White 2011, p. 87). It therefore follows that the strategic use of culture in the name of soft power became more common in Japan. A second closely related type of conceptual politics around the notion of cultural soft power is the question of who precisely is in charge of soft power, that is, whether soft power is promoted by the cultural industries, or the government can promote cultural soft power. As Hayden (2012, ch. 3) chronicles, there is a widespread sentiment that once governments begin meddling in the cultural industries, this restricts rather than enhances Japan’s soft power. Here, the problem is not a moral one of whether it is acceptable for states to make use of culture, but a question of whether this is an effective and efficient use of resources. A final contestation around cultural soft power in Japan revolves around the narrowness of such an understanding of soft power. Observers lamented the fact that all the attention paid to cultural soft power was undermining the potential of the soft power concept in terms of the conceptualisation of power, and also in terms of the potential resources that Japan could use as soft power (Hagström 2015b; Heng 2015; Söderberg 2011).

20 For a highly insightful discussion of his own positionality vis-à-vis soft power, see White (2011, pp 241–242).

177 As this section has illustrated, early conceptual politics in Japan revolved around the notion of Japan as a state with soft power. Concept entrepreneurs set out to illustrate Japan’s soft power primarily in the cultural sphere. In so doing, concept entrepreneurs presented both the understanding and the practice of soft power as a solution to Japan’s economic and emotional problems, relying on narratives that required the audience to go through the central spokespersons of the soft power concept.

7.4 Reification The next aspect to consider is the question of reification. The first important issue to note is that reification of the soft power concept set in relatively early on in Japan. S. Shiraishi (1997) for example writes her chapter on “Japan’s soft power” as if soft power were something real and tangible that the country (contra Nye’s claim) possesses. While it would be misleading to suggest that there were no observers of Japan who at least in principle distinguished between Japan’s soft power and soft power assets, such as for example Watanabe and McConnell (2008), it was extremely common to discuss soft power as an asset in Japan’s possession (see e.g. Akaha 2005; Bukh 2014; JFIR 2004; Sugawa 2000). The reification of soft power in Japan is problematic not simply because it indicates that observers make little distinction between the soft power concept and the real world phenomenon it is meant to describe, but also because it glosses over the human agency that was so integral to the process of soft power’s travel. As the following section shows, it also allows observers to refer to soft power as a social fact for which certain courses of understanding and action become necessary.

7.5 Feedback loops 7.5.1 Japan as a cool and benign soft power It is possible to distinguish between micro and macro reflexive loops. Efforts to establish that Japan possessed soft power can be seen as an intervention in Nye’s first-order observation that Japan had little soft power potential. In other words, this form of conceptual politics sought to reshape how Japan and its nature was commonly made sense of. How far were concept entrepreneurs able to shape the world’s assessment of Japan as a state with significant soft power potential? Such micro-loops played out relatively swiftly. Already by 2000, Nye was assessing Japan’s likelihood of attaining soft power in a far

178 Table 7.1: References to soft power in Japanese ministries

Ministry # Reference as of August 2020 Ministry of Defense of Japan 739 Ministry of Finance 105 Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communi- 2090 cations of Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 817 Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry 2550 of Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, 2660 Science and Technology of Japan more positive light, noting that if “Japan succeeds in adapting to this new round of globalisation, its example may well confer it significant soft power in the information age. If history is any guide to the future, my bet would be that Japan will succeed once again” (Nye 2000, p. 124). By 2004, Nye had revisited the issue and given his full approval to Japan’s cultural attractiveness, noting that the country “has more potential soft power resources than any other Asian country” (Nye 2004c, p. 85). Thus, relatively soon, Japan came to be seen as a soft power superpower and Asia’s foremost soft power nation. While there are many examples of soft power assets to which concept entrepreneurs typically point in order to illustrate Japan’s soft power—such as anime, manga or computer games—it is crucial to understand that from early on, these assets were not independent of the soft power concept, but carefully nurtured because of the soft power concept. In other words, the soft power concept influenced how the phenomenon it was supposedly objectively describing unfolded in what is a clear case of a macro-reflexive loop. There are countless examples of this. As Table 7.1 indicates, a search for the soft power concept on government websites retrieves an astonishing number of returns. A concrete case in point are the efforts of various ministries and state- affiliated organisations to promote cultural goods in order to increase revenue and soft power. Although not reducible to soft power alone, these efforts are in many ways driven by the importance attached to the soft power concept. Here, it is possible to recall the “Cool Japan” strategy that emerged in response to the soft power concept, McGray’s (2002) “Japan’s gross national cool” and the coinciding debates on nation branding (Anholt 2007; van Ham 2008). Under this slogan, various ministries in Japan (chiefly METIJ) began to promote ostensibly cool Japanese products abroad and even established a “Cool Japan Fund” that “financially supports efforts to adapt original creative content for international audiences to promote successful cultural exports to overseas

179 markets. METIJ is constantly engaged in developing new policy ideas aimed at enhancing Japan’s global ‘soft power”’ (METIJ 2015, p. 10). Many efforts by MOFAJ have been driven by the desire to nurture, enhance and illustrate soft power. For example, the public diplomacy department in MOFAJ was established to “create a system in which Japan’s soft power is maximized” (Kondo 2008; cited in Bukh 2014, p. 462); cultural exchange programmes such as Mirai are administered with the explicit purpose of enhancing Japan’s soft power (I#19) and Abe’s impersonation of Super Mario is incon- ceivable in the absence of the soft power concept. That is not to say that soft power was the number one priority on everyone’s mind or that there were no other reasons for pursuing such policies. Nonetheless, at the very least, new re- cruits to for example MOFAJ or JICA must learn about soft power to be able to do their jobs (I#22; I#15). In addition, administrators in institutions such as the JF are well aware of the importance their organisations attach to the soft power concept, even if they have little to do with the concept on a daily basis (I#17).21 As I#12, a chief diplomat at MOFAJ, noted, “in terms of the concept, soft power diplomacy was something that was jointly nurtured by diplomats and scholars over the past 20 years”. These examples are important because they illustrate the macro-reflexive loop of the soft power concept, that is, how the concept has travelled from being an analytical lens meant to make sense of the world to something used in concrete policymaking processes. That is not to say that the concept no longer functions as an analytical lens. Instead, soft power in Japan assumes two roles: as an analytical concept and as a social fact, or as something that performs at both the level of observation and the level of action. It is crucial for anyone wanting to understand the fate of soft power in Japan to distinguish between these two roles and to realise that much of what is portrayed as Japan’s soft power is contingent on the soft power concept, and that it is therefore unwise to rely on the soft power concept to understand this phenomenon. For this reason, distinguishing between different levels of observation is key. As a scholar, I rely on analytical concepts such as concept entrepreneurs, reification and feedback loops to understand how the soft power concept loops between the first-order level of observation and action, or, put differently, how the analytical performance interacts with its empirical manifestation. Indeed, such interaction effects of the soft power concept are very pronounced in Japan. In response to Nye’s feedback on the state of Japan’s soft power, Kondo for example argues that “we were very encouraged that what we had been doing was appreciated positively by this professor from Harvard. Since then, we have engaged in public diplomacy with ‘soft power’ more con-

21 See also the JF official cited in White (2011, p. 163).

180 sciously” (C. George 2016, p. 71). This pattern can also be seen when it comes to soft power rankings, which are taken very seriously in Japan. Among these are the soft power 30 and the monocle reports, which are widely reported in the news media (Funabashi 2020; The Japan Times 2015) and taken seriously by those involved in implementing Japan’s soft power. A recent report by the Cabinet Office, for example, carefully examines Japan’s scores in various soft power-related rankings and devises concrete policy proposals based on them (Cabint Office of Japan 2020). An executive vice president of the Japan House in Los Angeles has explicitly argued that “the Japan House global initiative will only push Japan’s ranking higher” (McDowell 2018, p. 66). One of the interviewees from MOFAJ sent me a copy of a soft power ranking favourable to Japan after our interview to underscore the point that such reports are noticed and used inside the ministry (I#10). On another occasion, an interviewee went over detailed studies on the effectiveness of specific social media tools at increasing Japan’s soft power (I#76). It is also important to bear in mind in this context that while such feedback comes occasionally from within Japan, much of it is provided by international observers of Japan such as Nye, McGray or (to a much less important degree) myself, once the interviews shifted to inquiring about my own assessment of Japan’s soft power. This concern with outside opinion often frustrates both domestic and international observers of Japan who highlight the over-reliance on US approval and/or the influence of US culture on Japan’s cultural diplomacy (T. U. Berger 2018; Bukh 2014; Leheny 2006; Matsui 2014). Such feedback loops, however, illustrate two essential dynamics of the soft power concept. First, they underscore the importance of outside recognition of Japan’s soft power. Regardless of how much revenue Cool Japan might garner, or how many tourists stream to Japan to visit Akibahara, such phenomena only constitute soft power if they are recognised as such. In this context, it is useful to recall from chapter 6 that an important consequence of conceptual politics in the US (and IR more broadly) is that soft power has joined the ranks of military and economic power to become part and parcel of a power “triad” characteristic of great powers. As can now be seen in the case of Japan, a great power identity—and especially that of a soft great power—is to a large degree dependent on outside recognition. This clarifies that the soft power concept performs not only as an analytical tool or a social fact, but also as a status marker of a great power. What is more, such a dynamic is particularly relevant to Japan precisely because so many observers see Japan’s economic power as declining and its military power as non-existent or constrained. The second dynamic that such feedback loops underscore is closely related. Since states such as Japan desire to achieve soft power and to have it recognised

181 as such, the soft power concept assumes an incentivisation role as it indicates clearly what needs to be done or abstained from in order to achieve soft power. In that sense, the soft power concept assumes its own soft power. The logic of this dynamic has by no means gone unnoticed by concept entrepreneurs, and there are ample examples of policies or courses of action that are presented as either enhancing or diminishing Japan’s soft power, all the while aware that such arguments are likely to be taken serious precisely because the longing for soft power and its recognition is so widespread. Consider for example how Nye (2000) argues that Japan needs to become more creative and to deregulate in order to adapt to globalisation and achieve soft power, or how McGray (2002) suggests pathways to tapping into Japan’s soft power potential. In such an incentivisation role, the soft power concept also shapes Japan’s approach to its own decline. Recall here the discussion on power shifts in chapter 5, that states in decline are often seen as a dangerous phenomenon in international politics in so far as they might adopt aggressive policies to prevent or at least slow their decline. This in turn increases international tensions and might even lead to war. As soft power becomes tied to great power status, and as it becomes a key goal for states to strive towards, this incentivises states such as Japan to abstain from policies that are detrimental to their soft power—such as preventive war—and instead focus on soft power as an equally important measure of importance in international politics. Following such a logic, the soft power concept has the potential to make Japan’s decline “softer” and therefore less dangerous for international politics, a dynamic which I refer to as a “soft decline”. Ultimately, while Japan’s embrace of soft power is not without criticism, there is an important consequence of the reification of the soft power concept in Japan and its performance as an analytical tool, an incentivisation tool and a social fact. It has served to normalise the notion that Japan and soft power are a match made in heaven, and not just any match but one tied to cultural attraction. This is a consequence of the dominant focus on cultural assets as sources of soft power, which means that it is primarily manga, tea ceremonies or cherry blossom that come to the minds of many observers when they think of Japan’s soft power. Effectively, this makes Japan’s soft power appear largely innocent and cool, and at times even “cute”.22 Certainly, some efforts might be at times too government-reliant or clumsy but, in principle, soft power in Japan is predominantly seen and presented as benign, apolitical and legitimate.

22 This is partly linked to the fact that many of the cultural icons presented as agents of Japan’s soft power are also part of Japan’s “culture of cuteness” (kawaii) (Cheok 2010), but also that the government has nominated “anime ambassadors” and “cute ambassadors” in an effort to promote soft power (The Japan Times 2008).

182 As a consequence, Japan’s embrace of soft power appears innocuous, normal and apolitical. All of this enables a new type of conceptual politics that can rely on the familiarity and perceived benignity of the soft power concept to suggest that any policy or course of action in the name of soft power is necessary, legitimate, normal and benevolent. The travel of the soft power concept also shapes the form of such conceptual politics, as if conceptual politics was before concerned with ensuring that Japan was seen as a soft power or as having soft power, efforts now revolve around broadening the soft power concept so that it can be used in other concrete policy debates. This plays out primarily in two arenas: the US–Japanese alliance and Japan’s proactive contribution to peace.

7.5.2 Japan as an allied soft power To understand how conceptual politics seeks to broaden the soft power concept to enable it to intervene in debates on Japan’s relation with the USA, some background information is required. To begin with, a US–Japanese security alliance has been a pillar of Japan’s foreign policy since the end of World War 2, as part of the “Yoshida doctrine” (after Prime minister Yoshida Shigeru) which meant that Japan was able to focus on economic development and rely on the US for its security. In turn, the US was able to maintain and expand its presence in the Asia-Pacific (Green 2003, ch. 1). Right from the formal beginning of the alliance in 1960, following the Treaty of Mutual Security between Japan and the United States, the alliance was controversial both in the US and in Japan. For one, it was perceived as asymmetric and thus unfair since Japan enjoyed safety under US protection without being obliged to act militarily if the US was ever under attack. This asymmetry also played into fears of abandonment in Japan, where observers worried about what would happen if the US were to retreat from the alliance. Another fear was that of entrapment, as Japan was worried about getting caught up in Cold War politics, while the US worried that it would be dragged into a war in the Asia-Pacific that it had little interest in fighting.23 In Japan, the alliance was also controversial, among other things, because it meant a continued US presence in Japan (Dian 2014; Shinoda 2011). Nonetheless, despite such controversy, the alliance held together throughout the Cold War even as economic frictions reached a height in the 1980s. Much of this can be attributed to a shared concern about the communist threat emanating especially from the Soviet Union. Careful management of the alliance and its critics was also important, as “alliance managers” (Jerdén 2017)—officials, politicians and think tankers on both sides of the Pacific—repeatedly high-

23 On the notions of abandonment/entrapment, see Mandelbaum (1981).

183 lighted the benefits of the US-Japanese alliance.24 However, after the end of the Cold War the future of the alliance was up for debate once again. Fol- lowing the break-up of the Soviet Union, an important reason for the alliance disappeared. Alliance managers grew increasingly concerned in the 1990s that the US might disregard Japan’s security concerns or even abandon the alliance altogether (White 2011, p. 55). This is the context in which soft power first travelled to Japan, and where it encountered a period of sustained soul-searching that, once the soft power concept had been established as a social fact, also included conceptual politics around soft power to be able to depict the security alliance as a matter of soft power. If cultural soft power had to make the case that Japan possessed soft power resources, “alliance soft power” had to make a case that the alliance was something that would maintain or even enhance Japan’s soft power. This would require a broadening of the soft power concept and of the kind of sources or behaviour that should be seen as part and parcel of soft power. Such conceptual politics in turn would play an important role overall in reaffirming and strengthening the alliance. There had been efforts to strengthen the alliance in the early 1990s that had little to do with soft power, and it would be misleading to suggest that if it had not been for the concept the alliance would have disappeared. That said, it is crucial to note that Joseph Nye is a renowned alliance manager, and in his capacity as Assistant Secretary of Defence was crucial to strengthening the US-Japanese alliance. Specifically, Nye was the driving force behind the 1995 United States Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region, so much so that the report is even typically referred to as the “Nye report” and the broader policy context as the “Nye initiative” (Christensen 1999, p. 59; Dian 2014, p. 120; Funabashi 1999, ch. 12). Published by the US Department of Defense (DOD), the report put an end to years of uncertainty regarding the alliance by noting, first, that there was “no more important bilateral relationship” than between the US and Japan; second, that the security alliance was “fundamental to both our Pacific security policy and our global strategic objectives”; third, that it constituted the “linchpin of United States security policy in Asia” and, finally, that this alliance was a “major factor for securing stability in Asia” (DOD 1995). Nye’s dual position as a friend of the alliance and the spokesperson for the soft power concept had an important effect: it facilitated a discursive and institutional link between the security alliance and soft power. Who was first to make such a link explicit is difficult to judge, although it is reasonable to assume that it was a joint effort by Japanese and US officials. For example,

24 Such as for example Japan’s prosperity, US power projection or regional stability.

184 former vice director of the Defence Agency, Akiyama Masahiro, recalls: We [Nye and Akiyama] happened to join an international seminar organised by the Yomiuri News Paper at the end of 1996 to discuss the renewed Japan–US alliance and its role. I advocated in the meeting that the Japan–US alliance provided ‘international public’ goods to the Asia Pacific area so that it could enjoy peace and stability with strong economic growth […] Joe Nye admired the use of ‘public goods’ for the alliance […] As you know, provision of international public goods is not brought by a hard power but by a ‘soft power’. I believe that the ‘soft power’ concept led me to use ‘public goods’ for the renewed Japan–US alliance (Pers.Corrs. with Akiyama). Over the years, the notion of a natural link between soft power and the alliance would be pursued and expanded in numerous reports, books and statements in parliament by like-minded alliance managers. Watanabe and McConnell (2008) for example examines the role that soft power has played in bringing the US and Japan together in an unlikely marriage. Wakabayashi (2008, p. 6) suggests that the general public needs to be more aware of how cooperation on soft power activities constitutes an important dimension of the alliance. Kamiya and Przystup (2018, p. 23) concludes that the “[…] two governments should work to enhance the ‘soft power’ appeal of the alliance, shared commitments to democracy, openness, and a rules-based order” (CSIS 2015). There were thus two underlying ways in which soft power was tied to the alliance: first, US and Japanese soft power was important to maintaining the alliance; and, second, the alliance provided public goods such as regional stability. In other words, the alliance itself could now be understood and portrayed as a matter of soft power. That such arguments were seen as reasonable and persuasive was in no small part due to the widespread familiarity with the notion of Japan as a cool and benign soft power discussed above. Once Japan observers had got used to thinking of Japan in terms of soft power, it was not much of a leap to think about the alliance in terms of soft power. This form of conceptual politics does not therefore target the definition of soft power per se, as was the case in the US, but instead starts from the underlying assumption that soft power is real and important, to argue from there that the sources of the concept should be broadened to cover the alliance. Soft power as a reified social fact was so widespread that alliance managers could rely on it to apply the concept to a new context—the alliance. To them, soft power also played an important role in a soothing reassurance narrative that Japan would continue to matter internationally and that the alliance would remain a cornerstone of US and Japanese security policy. This however made it

185 necessary for both Japan and the US to take soft power seriously. The infrastructure that enabled the discussion and dissemination of such arguments also proved to be important. The notion of cultural soft power had largely benefited from existing institutions and channels to advance the idea of a culturally attractive Japan but when it came to alliance management, the institutional infrastructure was even more pronounced. Specifically, there were multiple institutes and outlets with many years of experience of advocating on behalf of the alliance. In such venues—especially at the CSIS—soft power was regularly presented as yet another reason why the alliance was necessary (e.g. in meetings leading to these publications CSIS 2015; JFIR 2012; JFIR and In- stitute for National Strategic Studies, US National Defense University (INSS) 2015; Kamiya and Przystup 2018). The notion of the alliance as a form of soft power was further strengthened by the emergence and further popularisation of the smart power concept. Here, it is particularly striking that the same authors—Armitage and Nye—who had for many years advocated a stronger US–Japanese alliance (Armitage and Nye 2007b, 2012, 2018; Armitage et al. 2000) were the same authors of the CSIS Commission on “Smart power”. They were therefore able to speak with authority on both issues. Looking through the Armitage-Nye reports, what becomes obvious is an underlying logic of a division of labour. While the US provides hard power (through a security guarantee), Japan excels at bringing soft power to the alliance: “We noted Japan’s ability to bring soft power to the problems of the region and beyond. We recognise the need to improve our ability to bring both hard power and soft power to the table” (Armitage and Nye 2007b, p. 21). Here, this brings to mind once again the dream team that Gates-Clinton discussed in chapter 6, where one partner would bring hard power to the “smart” relation and the other partner would contribute soft power. Just as was the case then, an intriguing gender dimension is notable, where the more masculine, military hard side of power—epitomised by the US—is supplied with the more fem- inine, long-term, gentle, soft side of power that Japan represents. The asymmetry of the alliance only exacerbates this impression, certainly in the light of a sentence a little later in the report that suggests that “strategically setting its soft power—such as development assistance—to counter growing extremism and provide alternatives is a worthy global mission for Japan” (p. 25). Like a dutiful wife, Japan is asked to tidy up after the husband of the alliance has made a mess of the Middle East.25

25 With respect to the gender dimensions of hard and soft power, I am indebted to a conversation with Lily Ling and her arguments in Ling (2017). For a similar analysis of US- European relations, see Sjoberg and Via (2010).

186 Although these efforts have done much to accustom observers to the idea of the alliance as a form soft power, not every observer followed along. In- stead, conceptual politics has also emerged in the exact opposite way, in that the importance of soft power is taken as a reason why the alliance should not be further strengthened. Such arguments are not particularly widespread but, in principle, the alliance is sometimes said to undercut Japan’s soft power as it limits Japan’s ability to engage in multilateralism and consensus-seeking in international affairs. This is especially the case as Japan’s neighbours closely eye the evolution of the US–Japan alliance to assess whether Japan assuming new security roles will make the region more or less stable (Akaha 2005, p. 81; Arase and Akaha 2011). Such arguments do not shake the foundation of soft power as a social fact, that is, soft power is also used here as if it existed, can be enhanced or diminished, is important for foreign policy and therefore needs to be taken into account in policymaking. In other words, conceptual politics still revolves around the question of what is or is not subsumable under the category of soft power, and it does so by exploiting an existing familiarity with and attachment to soft power among audiences.

All in all, in concrete policy discussions, debate participants rely on the facticity and normality of the soft power concept to present any policy as either necessary and legitimate, or violating the principles of soft power. The more soft power is recognised as a real thing, the more persuasive such arguments become. Especially when it came to presenting the alliance as indispensable, the normalisation of soft power and its performance at the level of action made it possible to appeal to audiences with a commitment to soft power that might otherwise have been less inclined to support the controversial alliance.

7.5.3 Japans as a responsible and proactive soft power Another important way in which soft power’s travelling between the levels of observation and action facilitated the emergence of a new sight of conceptual politics was in the context of the controversial question of Japan’s future role and responsibilities in the global order after the end of the Cold War. As noted above, the demise of the Soviet Union led to sustained debates on the very identity of Japan and its place in the world—debates that were further accentuated by the level of uncertainty around Japan’s economic prosperity. In response to such uncertainties, domestic opinion in the early 1990s was divided into two broad camps. First, there were those who hoped that Japan would maintain a low international profile, focus primarily on itself and keep its pacifism largely

187 intact.26 The opposite policy position advocated that Japan should become a “normal” country. Although the notion of normalcy was contested (Hanssen 2019; Soeya, Tadokoro, and Welch 2011), in principle Japan was often presented as deviating from the norm as a state because it had relinquished the sovereign right of states to go to war; did not exercise military or political power, despite its substantial economic power; and was not shouldering its international responsibilities in the way a great power state should. The latter position in particular is associated with LDP politician Ozawa Ichiro.27 For him and his adherents, Japan needed to become a normal state to overcome the flaws in a regime put in place at the end of World War 2 that was no longer adequate for the new world order that was emerging in the 1990s. To become a normal state required a reconsideration of what “peace” meant, what had enabled Japan to be peaceful and what furthermore would be necessary in order to maintain peace. The debate around Japan’s pacifism is a clear case of conceptual politics around the peace concept and its meaning for Japan. Peace concept entrepreneurs challenged the meaning of peace and argued that peace should no longer be interpreted negatively and passively, that is, as the absence of war and something that Japan is able to enjoy as others provide for Japan’s safety. Japan’s “one-country pacifism” was problematic because it was not commensurate with Japan’s international status. Nor was it a stable condition for world peace as “there are times when the international community, in order to defend international peace based on justice and order, must unite and stand up to tyranny” (Jiyu Minshuto Kokusai ni Okeru Nihon no Yakuwari ni Kan Suru Tokubetsu Chosakai 1993, pp. 204; 206).28 The proposed solution was to adopt an active and positive stance on peace as something that needs to be actively defended rather than simply received. In contrast to the widespread belief that pacifism had enabled Japan’s reconstruction and economic rise, Ozawa and others argued that it was the (liberal) international

26 As Green (2003, p. 19) notes, this position was for example represented by the writings of Takemura Masayoshi who “enticed the Japanese public with images of safe national retirement and a low international profile”. 27 Both the 1991 “Ozawa report”, which concluded an LDP investigation into Japan’s international role, and the Blueprint for a New Japan (Ozawa 1994) set out Ozawa’s policy position (Hanssen 2019, p. 131). On the report, see Jiyu Minshuto Kokusai ni Okeru Ni- hon no Yakuwari ni Kan Suru Tokubetsu Chosakai (1993). Wherever this report is cited, I rely on the translations of Hanssen (2019), please also see Hanssen (2019, p. 145, footnote 1). 28 Starting from this period, Japan’s pacifism is increasingly referred to as an “abnormal”, “naive”, “immature”, “irresponsible, “selfish” and “dangerous” “one-country pacifism” in newspapers, journals or the Diet, in clear efforts to shape how Japan’s pacifism is understood and policies should be pursued (as discussed Gustafsson, Hagström, and Hanssen 2019; Hagström 2015a; Hanssen 2019).

188 order that had enabled freedom, economic growth and prosperity, and hence had allowed Japan to reap the “harvest of peace and free world markets more than any other nation” (Ozawa 1994, p. 96). Finally, if something threatened the international order and peace, Japan would need to do as much as possible within its power to defend it (see also Hanssen 2019, p. 135; Hagström and Hanssen 2015). In other words, this reinterpretation of the meaning of peace would necessitate a different course of policy action. Japan’s security legislation has undergone profound changes since the early 1990s. While still short of revising Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, the country has steadily adapted its security regime. It has dispatched the SDF for peacekeeping purposes with or without a direct UN mandate to places such as Cambodia, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq. It promoted the National Defence Agency to become the Ministry of Defence in 2007, established a National Security Council in 2013 and formulated a National Security Strat- egy in 2013. It also relaxed restrictions on weapon exports in 2011 and passed collective self-defence legislation in 2015 (for the official documents, see MO- FAJ 2020; see also Hagström and Hanssen 2015; Oros 2017). Each of these steps was controversial and accompanied by fierce debate as domestic and international observers alike wondered to what extent Japan’s changing regime amounted to a worrying remilitarisation or should instead be understood as reasonable in the light of Japan’s security environment and status. In this context, the soft power concept became an important tool that enabled concept entrepreneurs to participate in debates on the meaning of peace, Japan’s international contribution and its security regime. As with the question of the US-Japanese alliance, these debates incidentally had little to do with the soft power concept but, once soft power had arrived in Japan and become a social fact, concept entrepreneurs were able to rely on its popularity and familiarity to intervene in the debates. In principle, this might take one of two forms. Especially among the concept entrepreneurs accustomed to cultural soft power, it became common to appeal to the importance of soft power to Japan when arguing that potential remilitarisation, various territorial disputes (especially with China and Japan) and its history problem (involving regular visits by Japanese politicians to war shrines or the comfort women issue) were problematic as they diminished Japan’s soft power.29 While important, a second group was more vocal in making the exact opposite argument, suggesting that it was Japan’s preoccupation with itself that

29 Lam (2007, p. 357) for example cautions that soft power could “easily be undermined by the insensitive statements and clumsy behavior of a new generation of nationalistic leaders over politically sensitive issues pertaining to Japan’s past militarism” (see also Burgess 2008; Kobayashi 2007; The Korea Herald 2001).

189 made its pursuit of soft power fruitless. Specifically, concept entrepreneurs began to argue that Japan would have to contribute more to the international community than it had been doing, and the importance of understanding such contributions as a form of soft power that is suitable for a responsible great power. For many, this revolved around issues such as Official Development Assistance (ODA) or more extensive humanitarian aid. As one parliamentarian argued, Japan should “contribute with soft power in the broader sense of culture, education, non-military matters and humanitarian aid” beyond Asia (Stm. of Takano 1999). Similarly, the President of the JICA, Ogata Sadako, emphasised that the “core of Japan’s contribution to the international community is ‘soft power”’ and that “JICA bears an important responsibility” in this regard (JICA 2009; see also Katada 2005; MOFAJ 2010; Söderberg 2011). Others argued for an even greater international contribution beyond monetary support. Here, the coincidental timing of soft power’s arrival with the “Gulf War trauma” is particularly important. This trauma refers to the shame and humiliation many Japanese politicians and officials felt—or were reported to have felt—when Japan was criticised for its limited contributions to the Gulf War (Purrington 1992; Sieg 2001; I#21).30 This lack of a comprehensive contribution would come to be understood or presented as standing in the way of Japan’s pursuit of soft power. Put differently, concept entrepreneurs made soft power seem contingent on becoming a more normal nation with an understanding of peace as something that needs to be sought proactively. For instance, during a discussion in the Japanese Diet on the 1992 legislation on peacekeeping operations, it was argued that the post-Cold War era was the “age of soft power” and that this made Japan’s participation in peacekeeping operations increasingly important (Stm. of Endo 1991). Later, concept entrepreneurs suggested that the SDF’s participation in Iraq’s reconstruction or in tsunami disaster relief efforts in Indonesia were important sources of soft power (Stm. of Ono 2005), or that Japan’s anti-piracy and counterterrorism activities were something that would increase its soft power (Stm. of Shindo 2009). Moreover, various policy recommendations and academic articles over the years have lauded these activities as something that Japan needs to do in order to shoulder its responsibility and display its soft power (Heng 2015; JFIR 2004). Still today, criticisms of Japan’s reluctance to do its share and the deep humiliation many felt at the end of the Gulf War are used to argue that the international community expects Japan to do more (such as by I#21). The Commission

30 Specifically, Japan had spent some US$13 billion to support the UN-mandated US-led coalition against Iraq but sent no troops and was therefore criticised for only engaging in “chequebook diplomacy”.

190 on the Constitution concluded in a report in 2011 that Japan should conduct a strategic review of the use of a form of “super soft power” to contribute to the peace of the international community (Secretariat of Commission on the Constitution 2011). By 2015, the argument that the “international community expects Japan to play a more proactive role for peace and stability in the world” had become a central pillar of Abe’s proactive contribution to peace policy (Government of Japan 2016), and observers made a clear link between such policies and Japan’s soft power: “‘Positive pacifism’ can be Japan’s new foreign and security policy which will enhance Japan’s attractiveness which will contribute to peaceful but influential diplomacy without coercion or payment. Accordingly, the ‘positive pacifism’ policy will enable Japan to strengthen its soft power […]” (Akimoto 2012, p. 46). In this context, it is also noteworthy that Nye was involved in the report by the National Institute for Research Advancement (2000) (as noted by I#21)) that popularised the idea of a proactive contribution to peace. In addition, Nye has publicly supported Abe’s policy of constitutional reinterpretation (Fisher 2016). This relation between soft power, the sense of shame and international responsibility is perhaps most clearly expressed by Kamiya (2014): As Joseph Nye of Harvard University has written, the importance of a nation’s “soft power” (the ability to attract others through appeal) is growing in today’s world as a form of national power. But criticisms on the lack of contribution to peace and a decline in international presence hinder Japan’s power to attract other nations. With the economy contracting, “soft power” offers Japan new opportunities to expand on its national strength, but to use this situation to its benefit, the nation needs to respond to the criticism quickly. The minimal requisite to doing this is to win the world’s recognition that the nation is fulfilling its international obligations commensurate with its power.

In essence, the above sections have shown how the epistemically right understanding of soft power that was once taken for granted has been challenged by advocates of a broader understanding of the sources of soft power Japan could wield. Be it in terms of Japan’s alliance with the US or Japan’s international responsibility, changing the understanding of soft power makes it inevitable that the practice of soft power must also change to go beyond the narrow confines of cultural soft power. In other words, debates about the meaning of soft power have aimed to steer the concept’s performance in society, all of which is a consequence of the concept’s prior performance.

191 7.6 Travelling 7.6.1 The emergence of new sites of conceptual politics The previous sections illustrate how various interpretations have emerged over the years of what soft power means and for what form of soft power Japan should stand. Practically, Japan as a cool and benign soft power constituted a first translation, the widespread performance of which allowed the emergence of new sites of conceptual politics where soft power was translated as a pillar of the US–Japanese alliance and of Japan’s international contribution. While different concept entrepreneurs might disagree about what constitutes soft power, such efforts hinge on a shared underlying assumption that soft power truly describes a real-world phenomenon and is crucial for Japan. It is precisely this tacit agreement that soft power is real that makes it possible to use the concept in other narratives of what Japan should do or be in order to possess or exercise soft power. Importantly, the more soft power is recognised as benign, scholarly, necessary and commonsensical, the more any issue framed as a matter of soft power is able to benefit from a discursive spillover effect. In other words, the very fact that the normalisation of soft power in Japan and the portrayal of Japan as a soft power superpower raises few eyebrows can be leveraged to build new narratives of the role Japan should play. For instance, during one of the interviews, the interviewee shifted gear constantly between soft power as culture and the need for Japan to contribute internationally (I#21). As has also been shown, the argument that something is detrimental to Japan’s soft power and should therefore be addressed is used by those who find Japan too isolation- ist, pacifist and constitutionally constrained and by those who find Japan too militaristic or too unapologetic about its war history.31 Eventually, the more people within and outside Japan used soft power to make sense of their environment, and believed in its truth and benignity, the more persuasive the arguments became that Japan needed to be an internationally responsible partner of the US and contribute proactively to peace, or otherwise risk losing its soft power. As Taniguchi (2019, p. 84), a close associate of Abe’s, notes with reference to Japan’s security legislation, “these are mo- mentous changes that will be more readily accepted both in Japan and beyond if they are part of a broader strategy to reinforce Japan as a global proponent of soft power”. These different forms of conceptual politics aim to persuade different audiences of a specific interpretation of Japan. First and foremost, there is the

31 The former is expressed for example by Fulbright/CULCON (2009) and Kamiya and Przystup (2018); the latter by Lam (2007) and Nye (2004c).

192 domestic dimension, in so far as the international importance of soft power can be used to convince domestic audiences of the necessity of the alliance, a change in the interpretation of peace or Japan’s international responsibility. At the same time, there is also an important international dimension to these translations of the soft power concept. Thus, Japan’s alliance with the US, but also its changing security legislation are controversial in the region and beyond. States such as China for example watch Japan and its policies carefully to ascertain how far the country is continuing to atone for its war history, or how far changes to its security legislation indicate a return to its wartime aggression. Of course, Japan’s “history problem” is in itself a site of political contestation, for example, the Communist Party of China (CPC) regularly reminds China of its patriotic war against Japan in World War 2 to legitimize its rule (Y. He 2007) rather than out of concern with military aggression. Nev- ertheless, if Japan’s strengthened alliance or its international responsibility are seen as part and parcel of a soft power approach, and if soft power continues to be seen as internationally legitimate, then Japan’s changing security laws will appear far less threatening to Japan’s neighbours. Nonetheless, if Japan is serious about soft power, not all kinds of behaviour can be successfully portrayed as soft power, and in that sense the concept also constraints Japan’s possible courses of action. Effectively, we can see how the soft power concept becomes involved in the interpretation of shifting power politics, but also in steering states to behave in one way or another. From the above analysis, we can also see that forms of conceptual politics around the translated concepts in principle have little to do with the original soft power concept. Instead, they are a testimony to the creativity and agency of Japanese concept entrepreneurs who have expanded, altered and even ap- propriated the soft power concept for their own purposes. Certainly, positive feedback from outside was important, especially in the early days, such as when it came to recognition of Japan’s soft power, but sooner rather than later it was Japanese concept entrepreneurs who were seeking to enrol other concept entrepreneurs and move them over to their understanding of soft power. Thus, figures such as Nye, McGray and even myself were not simply invited to learn more about soft power and Japan, but were also courted so that we would af- firm, testify and spread the news of Japan’s soft power. Hence, rather than presenting the Japanese approach to soft power as that of a nation too reliant on outside endorsement—“infatuated” with foreign concepts (T. U. Berger 2018)— my findings underscore the agency of Japanese concept entrepreneurs, on the one hand, and that the soft power concept functions as a catalyst, on the other.

193 7.6.2 Responding to soft power’s travel abroad Another way in which the travelling of soft power is important is how Japan’s concept entrepreneurs respond to the journey of soft power in other states. For Japan, soft power’s journey to the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and China has been particularly important. Chapter 8 focuses on China but given the space constraints of this dissertation, an in-depth discussion of the journey of soft power to South Korea is not possible. It is important to note here that both states have embraced the concept and heavily invested in its pursuit and international recognition thereof. This has not gone unnoticed in Japan, and has profoundly changed the dynamics of the conceptual politics around soft power. Specifi- cally, the concept’s journey elsewhere has made the international pursuit of soft power competitive, which has meant that Japanese concept entrepreneurs have had to adapt the means of conceptual politics to maintain and further enhance Japan’s soft power in domestic and international eyes. The journey of soft power to South Korea presented a particular challenge for Japan. Like Japan, South Korea focused predominantly on the dissemination of (pop) cultural goods, and early on governmental agencies explicitly fostered content industries with an eye to the international market. South Ko- rea and Japan soon found themselves in a situation where they had to compete with one another for markets, revenue and customers. Since both states were promoting creative content in order to gain soft power, this also meant competition in the realm of soft power (Chua 2017; Iwabuchi 2015). Underlying this competition is a zero-sum perception of soft power, where one country’s growing soft power means less soft power for the other. This concern with having to compete with South Korea emerged during several of my interviews with Japanese officials who highlighted South Korea’s budget for public diplomacy or lobbying in the US as problematic for their work (I#10; I#17; I#22; I#76; I#09; see also Stm. of Moriya 2020). Japan therefore responded to the travel of the soft power concept elsewhere, and did so by doubling down on the promotion of its own soft power. Both Choo (2009) and White (2011), for example, report from their fieldwork in the late 2000s that Japanese administrators had South Korea on their minds, among other things, when they began more proactively to promote Japan’s “coolness”. Notwithstanding such efforts, one specific problem of Japan’s response to the travelling of soft power to South Korea lies in the similarity between the cultural goods that both South Korea and Japan are promoting. Several interviewees noted their difficulties in making clear to international audiences what was specific about Japan’s soft power compared to South Korea’s (especially I#22). To some extent, this dilemma also applies to China, given the cultural proximity between the states, as I#09 noted. In particular when it comes to bilateral conflicts, this translates into a concern that Japan’s soft power is

194 not sufficiently different from South Korea’s to be useful, and that South Ko- rea’s enhanced international profile has allowed the country to more successfully garner support for its policy positions, such as with regard to the comfort women or territorial conflicts, as one interviewee alluded to (I#10). If many Japanese observers were anxious about South Korea’s growing influence, China’s investment in soft power was viewed with even more alarm. To maintain the organisation of the chapters, I have avoided raising the China question until now, but it is important to note that China has played an important role in the conceptual politics around soft power in Japan. First, there is the question of Japan’s general approach to the rise of China. Japan’s economic stagnation coincided not only with soft power’s journey to Japan, but also with China’s rapid economic growth. Especially since 2001, when China was admitted into the World Trade Organization, the country has achieved staggering growth rates. It had replaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy by 2010 (BBC News 2011). Factors such as China’s large territory and population as well as its increasingly sophisticated army contributed to the impression that China was on the rise. Concerns about Japan’s decline thus also need to be understood as concerns about its relative decline vis-à-vis China. How should Japan understand and deal with the rise of China, especially in the light of its own seemingly inevitable decline? chapter 8 deals in greater depth with the politics around the notion of China’s rise, but observers generally tend to see the rise as either an (economic) opportunity or a threat (C. Pan 2012). Despite occasional tensions between the two countries, Japan’s China policy has for most of the past four decades accommodated China’s rise (Jerdén and Hagström 2012). That said, many of the aspects discussed in this chapter—especially the renewed Japanese–US alliance and the changing security legislation—are often presented as a response by Japan to China’s rise (Oros 2017), and Japan’s national security alliance also explicitly highlights the changing balance of power as a key security concern (Kantei 2013). These contextual challenges have also played a role in convincing observers of the necessity and importance of the soft power concept,32 in so far as a soft power policy would allow Japan to do something meaningful about the China problem without the risk of upsetting its allies, neighbours or China itself. For this to work, however, these activities would have to be commonly recognised as benign and legitimate manifestations of soft power. Japan therefore has a clear interest in soft power becoming an undisputed social fact of international politics—according to Japan’s (rather than China’s) interpretations of

32 The role of China’s rise in Japan’s embrace of soft power is for example briefly discussed in Bukh (2014, p. 463) and came out in several of my interviews, such as I#11, I#13, and I#21.

195 the world. While such dynamics have played out alongside China’s general rise, the dynamics of conceptual politics in Japan also responded more concretely to the journey of soft power to China. As various studies note, Japan and China have in recent years emerged as “charm rivals” who “battle” for audiences in a “competition era” of soft power (Hagström 2015b; I. Hall and F. Smith 2013; Heng 2010; J. Sun 2012). Just like South Korea, such competition is built on the assumption that soft power is a zero-sum game that Japan needs to engage in to counter the dangerous influence of China, but also to ensure that international observers side with Japan’s position on controversial issues, as China and Japan are involved in long-standing historical and territorial conflicts that flare up from time to time. In addition, during the planning stage of the Mirai programme for example, one of the organizers reportedly opened the session by noting that “we have to do something about China”. As one of the participants remarked later, I feel that, sort of, China was looming in the background. Not because of what was said, but maybe because of what was not said? […] You know, in the region, it’s hard not to—it’s the elephant in the room!—not to understand a country in the region’s soft power approach as […] relating to China, because it is a neighbouring powerful country with some extent of conflicts with Japan. (I#03) Such ongoing struggles for soft power in the region have shaped the conceptual politics around soft power in profound ways. For one, conceptual politics now revolves around contestation over the manifestation of other states’ soft power (i.e. the level of action), and in so doing takes on a far more confrontational dimension. Second, the notion of “having soft power” becomes increasingly tied to the ability to be heard and understood in international relations. This is not particularly new globally, as concept entrepreneurs in the US had hoped that strategic communication might help radical Muslims better understand and no longer hate the US. Chapter 8 demonstrates that the translation of soft power as communicating Japan’s position is also a key facet of conceptual politics in Japan. For Japan, however, the focus on strategic communication as a form of soft power emerged only in response to the concept’s journey elsewhere. As a consequence, Japan’s government has increasingly begun to focus on strategic communication. For example, since 2012, MOFAJ’s Bluebooks spend more space explaining how important it is for the world to gain an “accurate” image of the country (MOFAJ 2012).33 This desire to present Japan

33 In this context, the 2011 triple disaster of Tsunami, Earthquake and Nuclear crisis is also

196 accurately—something that especially the LDP under Abe has advanced— also led to the establishment of a “strategic communication hub” in 2014 that, among other things, oversees the above-mentioned Japan Houses, which are intended to “nurture a deeper understanding and appreciation of Japan in the international community” (MOFAJ 2012). These houses are meant to attract audiences through art installations and high-class cuisine, although those more interested in learning more about, for instance, the Takeshima or Senkaku is- lands would also find iPads for accessing more information.34 Here, the legitimacy of soft power campaigns and cultural exhibitions serves as a gateway to presenting more controversial topics in an ostensibly legitimate forum.35 An- other clear example to present an accurate image was apparent during the Mirai programme, in so far as MOFAJ sought to learn more about the before/after views of the participants on Japan, and often emphasised how misunderstood Japan is internationally (such as when it comes to its nuclear policy). Notwithstanding such efforts and notwithstanding the increasing ubiquity of soft power campaigns, the underlying problem vis-à-vis the perceived similarity with South Korea’s soft power still applies, and how far Japan will be successful in presenting its soft power as different to South Korea’s remains to be seen. With respect to China, however, the situation is different because China is an authoritarian state. In essence, this has contributed to a stronger focus on Japanese soft power sources that elude China—those that revolve around democratic values. Especially since the second Abe administration, Japan’s concept entrepreneurs have increasingly emphasised Japan’s rule of law, human rights supporting and peace-loving identities as pillars of its soft power. Funabashi (2017), for instance, begins his essay in the The Soft Power 30 on the state of Japan’s soft power with reference to its democratic identity, while Ichihara (2017) chronicles the increasing focus on the promotion of democracy as a form of soft power. In the context of UK–Japan relations, Taniguchi (2019, p. 88) argues that the communication of shared fundamental values such as democracy, human rights, the rule of law and freedom is an exercise in public diplomacy that strengthens the soft power alliance between the two countries. Various parliamentarians, including former Prime Minister Abe, also explicitly emphasise soft power in the context of the rule of law (Stm. of Abe 2014; Stm. of Abe 2015; Stm. of Kamikawa 2016). The Ministry of Justice of Japan (MOJJ) has since at least 2016 sought to further

important in so far as Japan’s reputation was tarnished and the country needed to restore confidence. 34 This was at least the plan as of 2017, I do not know whether it was indeed realized (I#10). 35 Unsurprisingly, some observers therefore perceive the Japan Houses as propaganda (Hi- rano 2018; The Japan Times 2015).

197 strengthen its “judicial diplomacy” as a form of soft power, and even established an international division in the ministry in 2018 (MOJJ 2017a, 2017b; Sese 2020). Japan’s emphasis on democracy and the rule of law that responds to China’s rise and specifically the problems associated with China’s soft power also became particularly clear during the Mirai programme. Besides university lectures, there were many other occasions—such as during a visit to the Hi- roshima Peace Memorial park or during an exchange with MOFAJ officials— were Japan was presented as a democratic, peace-loving country that seeks to promote the rule of law (unspoken here is the reference point of China that is authoritarian, aggressive and aiming to overthrow the status quo). Particularly noteworthy is also the way that the Mirai program has shifted for participants from Central Asia who since 2018 travel in their own group. These trips have thus far revolved especially around the rule of law, and even involved visits to Japan’s supreme court (MOFAJ 2019b). Although I had no chance to experience these trips or interview bureaucrats about them, it is safe to assume that they focus on these themes in an effort to foster capabilities in the region to counteract what Japan perceives as China’s problematic bending of the rules of law. As such, I understand it as part and parcel of judicial diplomacy discussed in this chapter. Although not overtly directed at China, the recurring reference to Japan’s democratic nature is a clear case of conceptual politics, as underlying such arguments is the logic that Japan presents the “true” approach to soft power, compared to China’s non-democratic, heavy-handed and insidious soft power efforts. As is demonstrated in the penultimate chapter of this dissertation, in so doing, Japan was also bandwagoning with US efforts to control China’s translation of the soft concept. In sum, this section has underscored that the soft power concept’s journey to South Korea and China shaped the dynamics of conceptual politics as it contributed to a more confrontational approach to the concept that increasingly sought to refute other states’ soft power—especially China’s—by emphasising the morally superior foundations of Japanese soft power.

7.7 Conclusion Relying on the thinking tools in the analytical framework, this chapter has revealed the dynamics of soft power’s travel to Japan. Tracking how a diverse set of concept entrepreneurs fitted the soft power concept to Japan has shown how much of the efforts of the early conceptual politics revolved around establishing Japan’s soft power potential, especially in terms of culture. An analysis

198 of the reification of soft power in Japan illustrates that observers do not typically distinguish between the performance of soft power as an analytical tool or a practice, which depoliticises and normalises the impression that Japan’s embrace of soft power was normal and common sense, rather than the result of the plethora of activities detailed in the chapter. It also becomes clear that the interaction effects between soft power’s various performances have thus far been poorly understood, something which my focus on feedback loops clearly brought to the fore. As illustrated above, the increasing normalisation of Japan as a cool and benign soft power in turn allowed the emergence of other feedback loops. Specifically, concept entrepreneurs were able to appropriate soft power’s prior performance as a tool for intervening in the debate on the US– Japanese alliance and on Japan’s international responsibilities and role. Put differently, soft power became a tool in other sites of conceptual politics. Eventu- ally, this culminated in the emergence of an assumption that Japan’s proactive and responsible international behaviour constitutes a quintessential source of soft power. The focus on travelling has also revealed how Japan was by no means a passive recipient of conceptual politics, but rather allowed the emergence of new sites of conceptual politics that have little to do with the original site. More- over, the chapter has demonstrated how the journey of soft power elsewhere profoundly altered the dynamics of conceptual politics, leading Japan to become increasingly concerned to narrow down the sources of soft power so that the emphasis on democratic resources as genuine soft power resources would become clearer vis-à-vis the soft power competition with Japan. All the thinking tools in the analytical framework were helpful in bringing many important facets to the fore, although the issue of travel was somewhat more difficult to address as it was important throughout all the sections.

199 200 8. China, be soft: between discourse traps and soft rise

When it comes to the conceptual politics around the soft power concept in China, the first thing to note is the staggering level of interest in the concept from Chinese scholars, politicians and officials. chapter 4 shows an astound- ing level of academic and public interest. The concept has also emerged in a number of key governmental texts and speeches, from the call by former president Hu Jintao at the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (NCCPC) to “enhance culture as part of the soft power of our country to better guarantee the people’s basic cultural rights and interests” (Xinhua En- glish 2007) to the 2017 pledge in the Constitution of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to “enhance our country’s cultural soft power” (CPC 2017). Soft power now forms such an important pillar of China’s foreign policy that the government spends around USD 10 billion on it annually (Shambaugh 2015, p. 100). Even in the entertainment industries, China’s embrace has become so noteworthy that Broadway has responded by basing an entire musical on the topic. How to make sense of China’s enthusiasm for soft power? International and Chinese observers have advanced various ideas on China’s “true” motivations that differ widely. Perhaps the most common explanation proposed is that the country has needed to carefully manage its image and offset the notion of a threatening China, something which has become more acute in the light of its rapid economic growth since it joined the WTO in December 2001. Convinc- ing the outside world that China’s rise would be a peaceful one would in turn enable China to rise peacefully, that is, without other states attempting to prevent China’s rise (Glaser and Murphy 2009; J. Li 2005; Y. Wang 2008; J. L. Wilson 2015). Others saw China’s interest in soft power as a positive sign that the country was genuinely interested in enhancing its attractiveness and was working on those aspects that stood in the way of its soft power. There was a notion that the China of the 2000s was becoming ever more open, vibrant and perhaps even democratic. China’s interest in soft power reflected such develop- ments (I#63; Shambaugh 2005). Some scholars suggested that China was pursuing soft power as it sought to enhance its status as a great power. From this

201 perspective, China believed that soft power was indispensable for great power status, and therefore it needed to cultivate and demonstrate its soft power to achieve great power recognition (M. Li 2008; Men 2007; H. Wang and Y. C. Lu 2008). A final group of observers argued that the soft power concept was primarily important in China’s domestic sphere (Callahan 2015; Nordin 2012).1 Notwithstanding these contradictory explanations, there is something inherently puzzling about the embrace of the soft power concept by an authoritarian state such as China. After all, the key resources typically associated with soft power at the global level—such as attractive values and a vibrant civil society— are also the hallmark of democratic governance. From this perspective, it seems paradoxical that China would pursue something ultimately unattainable and financially very costly unless China was planning to adapt to the expectations of the soft power concept and embrace democratic governance. Some scholars tried to resolve this paradox by pointing out that the soft power concept suffers from a liberal democratic bias, and that only after the concept is reconceptu- alised or even de-Westernised can it help make sense of China’s (or Russia’s) approach to soft power (M. Barr, Feklyunina, and Theys 2015; Keating and Kaczmarska 2019; Kiseleva 2015; J. L. Wilson 2015). However, as this chapter shows, China engaged in soft power strategies because of the soft power concept and called it soft power outright. Such explanations thus confuse the analytical concept with its empirical manifestation and their interactions. This chapter shows how an analysis of the conceptual politics around China’s embrace of soft power—both domestic and international—helps make sense of China’s embrace of soft power and the consequences. Key to this analysis is the understanding that the soft power concept was translated to China in very particular ways, and that these distinct translations were sites of domestic and global conceptual politics in their own right. By analysing how diverse sets of concept entrepreneurs coin, use, hone, revisit and promote the soft power concept in China in the pursuit of performative effects, it is possible to reconcile some of the seemingly contradictory explanations for China’s embrace of soft power. After analysing the journey of soft power to China and its early translations, the chapter homes in on the conceptual politics around soft power, most notably reification and feedback loops.

1 In recent years, observers have begun to argue that China’s embrace of soft power was a ruse intended to deceive the Western world of China’s true intentions. I deal with this argument in chapter 9.

202 8.1 Soft power travels to China As in Japan, the soft power concept entered the Chinese intellectual landscape through various routes. Many of my interview partners noted that they or other scholars had encountered the concept during their travels to the USA, often with funding from US foundations (I#30; I#49). Others, especially scholars specialising in American studies, cited the publication of Bound to Lead. When asked how the concept travelled to China, some laughed and responded, “in my suitcase, I had bought a copy at an international conference” (I#35). In the light of the popularity of the concept abroad, a 1993 conference on international relations theory also touched on and evaluated the soft power concept (W. Xu 1993). Nonetheless, the translation of Bound to Lead was an important route (Nye 1992).2 Although many US International Relations (IR) books were translated almost verbatim in the 1990s (Shambaugh 2011), the translation of Bound to Lead was strikingly different on several grounds. First, the translation adopted a cautious and even suspicious tone towards the soft power concept. While the English language version presented the US destiny to lead as a thesis, the Chinese version translated it as a question: Is it certain that the US can lead the world?3 The book was translated by the Military Translation Publishing House, a press attached to China’s Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that typically translates books of military and strategic importance. The publishers note in the introduction explains that the book was translated in a hurry as it was deemed crucial to “better understand the international situation, study the strategic trends of the United States and the West promptly and increase our vigilance against the peaceful evolution [theory/strategy] of Western countries” (Nye 1992, p. 4). The notion of peaceful evolution in this context warrants closer attention. The term is typically credited to John Foster Dulles who proposed “‘peaceful means’ in the 1950s to ‘accelerate the evolution of government policies within the Soviet-Sino bloc’ and ‘shorten the expected life span of commu- nism’” (cited in Ong 2013, p. 117). Although seldom used in the US since, the term was much discussed in China especially between 1990 to 1992 to warn of the US strategy to “subvert the socialist system in China by peaceful means” (Shambaugh 1993, p. 274). With respect to Bound to Lead, the publishers argued that Nye and others: […] propose to increase the attraction of US cultural assimilation and the US lifestyle, so that the United States will have advan-

2 See also the discussion in Ohlberg (2013, p. 294-295). 3 美国定能领导世界吗? Meiguo ding neng ling dao shi jie ma?

203 tages not only in hard power, but also in soft power, and finally be able to establish ideological dominance of the world. In order to achieve this, they suggest stepping up the cultural and ideological penetration of China, the Soviet Union and Third World states so that these countries will unconsciously accept US values. […] For this reason, we should clearly see the importance of the struggle against peaceful evolution, and its protracted, complex and sharp nature. (publisher’s note in Nye 1992, p. 3) In other words, not only was Bound to Lead part and parcel of the peaceful evolution strategy, but the soft power concept was seen as the means of this strategy. This translation was probably read by a significant number of political military strategists, as many Chinese observers typically assumed that commentary on US strategy represents actual US strategy (S. Xu 2016, p. 130). In intellectual circles, however, the Chinese version of Bound to Lead was perhaps less influential than other efforts to transport soft power to China. Specif- ically, it is H. Wang’s (1993) Culture as National Power: Soft Power that proved decisive. Although not the first publication on soft power to be published in Chinese— Nye (1992), there were also S. Huang (1991) and J. Zhao (1992)—Wang is typically credited with introducing the soft power concept to China (d’Hooghe 2015). This arguably has much to do with not only Wang’s detailed analysis of the concept, but also his career path since the mid-1990s. At the time he was writing on soft power, Wang was a professor at Fudan Uni- versity, and he has since emerged as one of China’s most eminent politicians. Wang has been a member of the Politburo Standing Committee (PCP) since 2017 and, in his capacity as director of the Central Policy Research Office (CPRC) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) since 2002. He is generally associated with the theoretical work behind key ideological constructs.4 Wang was thus integral to the translation of soft power to China, and probably also its adaptation to Chinese politics. H. Wang (1993) can be seen as a clear response to the popularity of the soft power concept in international relations: the article begins with the observation that a “novel concept is spreading like wildfire in the world” (p. 91). From there, he introduces both the soft and the hard power concepts, emphasising that soft power has “achieved the same or an even more important status as

4 Such as Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents”, Hu Jintao’s “Scientific Outlook on Develop- ment” and Xi’s “Chinese Dream”, for a discussion see Patapan and Y. Wang (2018). Al- though there were a few citations of H. Wang (1993) in the 1990s, the article only gained traction in the mid-2000s, at which point Wang was already a member of the CCCPC and director of the CPRC.

204 ‘hard power”’ (p. 93), which means that “any reasonable and feasible strategy for increasing state power cannot forget ‘soft power’” (p. 95). Hence, “the development of ‘soft power’ at the strategic level is a general requirement of the international political structure” (p. 96). In general, H. Wang (1993) stayed relatively close to Nye’s work, and therefore also listed the political system, national morale, the economic system, ideology or science and technology as important bases of soft power (p. 93). That said, the article strongly emphasised culture as the basis of soft power, and this translation of soft power would later occupy a central position in the conceptual politics around soft power in China. Overall, H. Wang (1993) constitutes a positive appraisal of the soft power concept, certainly compared to the translator’s introduction to Nye (1992). That someone who rose through the ranks should present soft power as something that adequately captures world politics and should be pursued is important, in so far as it made soft power research and commentary a “safe” topic to pursue. Another important moment for soft power’s trajectory in China is the 2005 translation by Wu Xiaohui and Qian Cheng of Nye’s Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics with the Oriental Press publishing house (Nye 2005).5 There are several noteworthy aspects of this translation. First, in contrast to Bound to Lead, Nye was actively involved with the translation and met with the translators at Harvard. (A photograph documenting this meeting is printed prominently in the book.) In addition, according to the translators, they and Nye discussed many of the finer details of the translation and, specifically, what term to use to translate the “power” in “soft power” into Chinese (more on the terminology below) (p. 222) . Second, the translators explicitly discussed the implications for China in a postscript (pp. 221–223), in which they highlighted the relevance of soft power, that it would bring “immeasurable goodwill” for China’s rise. To them, caring about soft power meant caring about China’s future: “We hope the translation will attract readers who love China, care about China, wish China well and attach importance to the soft power concept”. Third, the translators argued that soft power was in line with Chinese traditional culture and Confucian values such as honesty, trust and compassion. In so doing, they inserted the soft power concept into a context that was very familiar to the Chinese audience, which made it easier to understand and embrace as something that reflected Chinese thinking. Fourth, the translators emphasised the generally positive appraisal of China’s soft power in the book as one of its key takeaway messages. Fifth,

5 The Oriental Press is a subsidiary of the People’s Publishing House, one of China’s major publishing houses for philosophy and the social sciences.

205 while the 1992 translation adopted a suspicious tone and presented soft power as part of a peaceful evolution strategy meant to change China from within, the 2005 version was careful to point out that Nye stood for and practiced the principle of engaging with China, rather containing or changing it. There was thus no threat emanating from him or the soft power concept. Finally, the translators emphasised that a world in which soft power is valued even more, where people attract, love and admire each other rather than point swords at each other is a more peaceful world. In essence, then, the translation makes the case for China to pursue soft power: It would be in line with its history, values and assets, enable China’s rise and make the world a more peaceful place. Moving on, a particularly intriguing aspect of the translation work on the soft power concept is the actual terms used. Until the late 2000s, Chinese writers translated the term “soft power” differently. S. Huang (1991), in the very first soft power publication, translated it as ruan shili (软实力), the translations of Bound to Lead and Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics use ruan liliang(软力量), while H. Wang (1993) translates soft power as ruan quanli (软权力). A few articles also use the term ruan guoli (软国力). While all of these can be translated as soft power, and one should perhaps not make too much of the differences, each has slightly different connotations. Thus, guoli emphasises national soft power (it contains the character for country), liliang is associated with strength, force and the Political Science (PS) concept, whereas shili is typically used to highlight resources or capabilities (as discussed also in J. Hu 2018; Q. Zhang and Feng Qi 2012). Until the latter half of the 2000s, no single translation had achieved dominance and authors were able to pick the term that best conveyed the points they wanted to make. As Z. Chen and Song (2012) note, quanli (similar to liliang,I would argue) has a slightly more offensive connotation as it implies changing other states’ preferences through attraction, while shili is more responsive and can also refer to capacities accumulated that can be used for various purposes. Bearing this in mind, it makes sense that the first translation of Bound to Lead, which was so suspicious of soft power’s role in “peaceful evolution”, would use liliang, while Hu Jintao’s reference to soft power as ruan shili in 2007 takes a more passive stance (China Daily 2007). Once the concept had been used in such an official context, it settled the question of the different translations, and since then articles that use ruan shili have far outnumbered any of the other terms. In other words, China has adopted a translation of the term that is more responsive in nature and focused on resources. By focusing on the journey of soft power to China and especially its translation, this section has shown that moments of translation can be sites of conceptual politics, be they the antagonistic translation of Nye (1992), the narrower translation of H. Wang (1993) or the positive translation of Nye (2005). This

206 underscores the active participation of translators in the role of mediators and intermediaries. These translators might not have taken centre stage, but they exerted a subtle influence over the trajectory of the concept which laid the foundations for various sites of conceptual politics around soft power. Before analysing the concept entrepreneurs involved in conceptual politics around China’s soft power, a short reflection is warranted on conceptual politics in authoritarian states. Notwithstanding periods of relative independence for the natural and social sciences (especially in the 2000s), the CPC claims a monopoly on wisdom and leadership on science (Holbig 2014). This monopoly necessarily defines the space in which conceptual politics can play out, who gets to participate and what forms of contestation are possible. Broadly speaking, the nature of China’s regime and above all the objective of the CPC to remain in power mean that the space for independent scientific inquiry in China is constrained for both international and Chinese scholars alike. Thus, any form of conceptual politics operates in a far more volatile and pre- carious space compared to either the US or Japan, in so far as advocacy for the epistemically right understanding of reality or specific performative effects can have real-world consequences for the future career or even safety of an individual concept entrepreneur. In recent years, international and domestic China scholars have reported a narrowing down of the intellectual space for research in and on China (Greitens and Truex 2020), an experience that I have also had. One interviewee for instance told how they faced severe problems after challenging the government’s monopoly on the concept of soft power (I#54). That said, when conceptual politics emerges around a concept, it still constitutes an arena of political contestation in China. Hence, to the degree it is are permit- ted, it offers a window into genuine internal debates on the direction of the country (Feng, K. He, and Yan 2019; Holbig 2014; Qi 2017).

8.2 Concept entrepreneurs 8.2.1 Joseph Nye Starting again with Nye, although he is a well-known figure in China and usually “treated royally” when visiting (Nye 2017b, p. 3), there are some noteworthy differences compared to his position in Japan (as discussed in chapter 7). For one, following the reform and opening up period, it became increasingly common for US scholars to travel to China to give lectures, participate in seminars and interact with Chinese scholars and officials. Thus, even though Nye travelled countless times to China (I#06), he was one among many scholars to visit China regularly (see discussion in Y. Zhang 2003, p. 102–103). Nonethe- less, several of my interviewees highlighted the approachability of Nye during

207 such events and his general willingness to engage with Chinese scholars as a key reason for the success of the concept in China (I#37; I#27). Second, Nye’s reception in China, or his symbolic capital, depends much on the audience. Nye’s background as a government official, esteemed academic and dean of the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS)—“America’s Cadre School” (H. Wang 1991)—meant that some Chi- nese observers felt that Nye had to be approached with caution in so far as he might be both an advocate of and an agent for US hegemony (especially I#49)). As G. Zhang (2017, p. 7) argues, the “proposal of soft power is obviously to demonstrate the necessity and legitimacy of the US practice of hegemony”. The interviewees referred to an audience consisting of Chinese intellectuals (especially at universities with a reputation for relative academic freedom) who typically saw Nye as an esteemed, respectable and trustworthy figure. To them, he stood for ideals that they also sought for China, such as the notion of rational, in-depth scholarship that is both independent of government interference and taken seriously in decision-making processes. In addition, Nye represented an understanding of the world in which soft power strategies were seen as important for a country’s foreign policy; that is, where politicians attach importance to values-based and prudent international behaviour as well as international cooperation and participation in institutions. For these reasons, Nye’s symbolic capital was more readily accepted in such circles. Interviewees noted that they believed Joseph Nye rather than the CPC when it came to the “true” meaning of soft power (I#35).

8.2.2 Beyond Nye With regard to soft power concept entrepreneurs with an interest in China other than Joseph Nye, many authors and politicians have become involved at some point with China and the soft power concept. Given the opacity of China’s political machinery, much conceptual politics occurs behind doors. This makes it difficult to identify individual officials who embrace the concept, other than the highest official statements, such as Hu Jintao’s report to the 17th’s NCCPC, Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s notes at Davos or the 2017 Constitution (China Daily 2007; CPC 2017; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (MFAC) 2014). I have therefore focused predominantly on concept entrepreneurs from the academic and think tank worlds, as it was possible to arrange interviews and rely on public documents in such cases. With that in mind, there are in principle four groups of concept entrepreneurs. First, there are the many Chinese concept entrepreneurs who obtained their undergraduate degree in China but attended graduate school elsewhere (typically the US), and have since assumed positions at Western

208 universities.6 Typically, such entrepreneurs have substantial social and cultural capital as they have lived, studied and worked in both China and the West. They therefore often assume the role of intermediaries who assess and translate China’s understanding of the world, its behaviour and its ambitions for a non-Chinese audience. With their in-depth knowledge of both the sending and the receiving state, they operate in a distinct space between China and the rest. A second group of concept entrepreneurs can be found among non-Chinese area specialists (typically with good Chinese language skills) who seek to make sense of China’s interest in the soft power concept and the country’s international outreach. Due to their substantial China expertise, such scholars typically enjoy much symbolic capital.7 Third, there is a large group of non- Chinese concept entrepreneurs with little specialist knowledge of China or Chi- nese. In this group we find generalists who see China’s soft power push as natural given its rising power, and even welcome in so far as it means that China is taking the softer side of politics seriously. Others from this group—best understood as China’s anti-concept entrepreneurs—perceive China’s soft power efforts as a problematic and alarming sign that China will alter the international world order and prevent young democracies in particular but also authoritarian states from embracing the rules-based international order.8 Finally, there is a large group of concept entrepreneurs that is based at Chi- nese universities and predominantly publishes in Chinese. Occasionally, its members publish in English or speak at public events on the soft power concept, something which is typically facilitated through the support of philanthropic foundations or think tanks. Much of their work revolves around engaging with the soft power concept and its meaning for China, but also translating and explaining such debates for international audiences. The special role of soft power’s translators, from the translators of the PLA publishing house in 1992 to Wang Huning’s 1993 work and the translation of Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, is discussed above. Alongside this, there are countless concept entrepreneurs from the academic or think tank sectors.9 One of the most active concept entrepreneurs is Zhang Guozuo from Hunan University who boasts some 30 publications in Chinese on the soft power con-

6 Such as Li Mingjiag, Sun Jing, Zhang Wanfa, Huang Yanzhong, Shen Ding, Zhao Su- isheng, Wang Jian or Pan Chengxin. 7 There are for example David Shambaugh, William Callahan, Bonnie Glaeser, Shaun Bres- lin, Ingrid d’Hooghe, Falk Hartig, James Paradise or Astrid Nordin. 8 Examples of this group include Joseph Nye himself, the playwright David Henry Huang, Joshua Kurlantzick and Christopher Walker. 9 See e.g. Wang Jisi, Wang Yiwei, Pang Zhongying, Yan Xuetong, Qi Haixia, Zhang Lihua or Zhao Kejin, Zhang Guozuo.

209 cept, and whose work is associated primarily with cultural soft power. Zhang’s social capital is substantial since he worked as deputy director of the theory bureau of the Central Propaganda Department as well as director of the National Philosophy and Social Science Planning Office. The postscript of G. Zhang (2017, p. 125) also makes clear that he was in many ways able to rely on his social capital to engage in conceptual politics: I also want to thank my friends in the related departments of the Central Committee and in the academic circle for their contribution to the completion of my book: they have frequently attended the high-level forums on China’s cultural soft power hosted by me in addition to delivering the intelligent speeches.10 There are many other noteworthy Chinese concept entrepreneurs whose work on soft power has been influential in China. We encounter them throughout this chapter but, to name just two, there are Men Honghua and his work on soft power for the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China and Yu Xintian from the Shanghai Institute of International Studies (SIIS). While these groups differ with regard to their geographic background, it is crucial to underscore that many concept entrepreneurs share common concerns. One distinct site of conceptual politics revolved around promoting the soft power concept in an effort to steer China’s rise, and this involved concept entrepreneurs both inside and outside of China. Of the reasons for becoming involved in conceptual politics, many concept entrepreneurs became involved with the concept and China because they perceived the concept to be epistemically right, that is, as something that for the most part captures the world as it is and as it should be. This holds particularly true for the concept entrepreneurs who envisage a future in which China has risen peacefully and is well integrated into the international order (see below). Another reason to become involved with soft power lies in how the common sense status of the concept allows a plethora of different strategies, that concept entrepreneurs can rely on in order to participate in other debates, chief among them on China’s trajectory and behaviour as a rising state, China’s status as a great power and China’s core values and identity. Third, concept entrepreneurs have also embraced the concept for reasons linked to potential career opportunities. Several entrepreneurs became involved with the concept so they could be among the first to introduce a concept to the intellectual landscape of China (such as e.g. S. Huang (1991),

10 Based on the subsequent list Zhang provides, it is clear that he has enrolled many concept entrepreneurs who are based in important positions in ministries, research offices and the CPC.

210 H. Wang (1993), and J. Zhao (1992)). Similarly, towards the latter half of the 2000s, concept entrepreneurs were able to be among the first to draw attention to China’s expanding international presence as a case study of soft power (see e.g. Gill and Y. Huang 2006; Y. Huang and Ding 2006; Kurlantzick 2008). In this context, concept entrepreneurs could rely on the established concept of soft power to describe a phenomenon in the world that they felt had not received enough attention. Another group of concept entrepreneurs—myself included—responded specifically to the popularity of the soft power concept in China and in Chinese discourse and sought to understand the reason behind this and the content of the debate (see also Glaser and Murphy 2009; Hwang and Tesori 2018; H. Wang and Y. C. Lu 2008). For many Chinese concept entrepreneurs, there is also something instrumental (or even opportunistic, as one interviewee criticised (I#54)) about their embrace of the soft power concept. Soft power is a relatively “safe” research and discussion topic in China, as can be seen from Wang Huning’s career trajectory, and from the government’s call after 2007 to enhance China’s cultural soft power. Just as is generally the case when the government announces new topics, research interest in soft power exploded as new concept entrepreneurs vied for easy funding and publications (as several interviewees noted, (I#41; I#49)). In addition, concept entrepreneurs can also become involved with the concept if they are advised to or assigned to work on soft power by their su- periors, which can apply to both academic entrepreneurs and officials tasked with implementing soft power as a policy (more on this group below). Finally, none of these dynamics occur accidentally or are predetermined. Instead (as is demonstrated throughout this chapter), concept entrepreneurs actively forged a resonance between soft power and its new audiences and aimed to enrol new concept entrepreneurs in China and abroad. Untangling such efforts is pivotal to understanding China’s enthusiasm for the soft power concept.

8.3 Means of conceptual politics It is possible to distinguish between two key approaches to the means of conceptual politics. First, concept entrepreneurs relied on the common sense status of the concept in order to become involved with the debate on the rise of China. Second, concept entrepreneurs contested the epistemic rightness of soft power to either reject or revise and reshape the concept in order to deter unwanted performative effects. As is demonstrated below, an important consequence of these dynamics is the emergence of distinct sites of conceptual politics. Specif- ically, one site interacts with the global conceptual politics around soft power while the other has a primarily domestic dimension.

211 8.3.1 Promoting soft power, steering China’s rise Just as concept entrepreneurs relied on narratives to promote the soft power concept as a solution to US decline, this section shows how concept entrepreneurs from both China and abroad relied on soft power to intervene in debates on China’s rise. This first required a revision of the concept “rise”.

Contesting the concept “rise” As a key concept in IR, the concept rise is best understood as an open, contestable and in practice often contested interpretive device through which observers make sense of the world, aim to steer political thought and thereby attempt to channel political action. The overarching concept of rise in many ways constitutes the polar opposite of the decline concept or, put differently, they stand in a dialectical relation since the rise of newcomers is typically seen as a contributory factor to decline in states. Both concepts are also deeply entrenched in (especially realist) IR thinking, where the dynamics of power shifts are taken to be a key destabilising force in international relations. As noted above, the concern is that rising states are prone to opt for warfare or conflict as a means of overturning the existing order, while declining states are said to become increasingly driven by fear which can lead to overreaction and bad decision making. The more specific concept of China’s rise is an issue that emerged in the mid-2000s. In a nutshell, it revolves around the very nature of China’s rise and what that means for international politics. Here, empirical phenomena such as China’s increased economic and military capabilities and its domestic and international behaviour are discussed and analysed in an effort to assess how far China’s rise is following or will follow the logic of disruptive power transitions. Do China’s behaviour and its capabilities imply that the country is seeking to integrate with the international order or that it would rather overturn it?11 How decision makers outside China answer this question will be crucial, as if a consensus is reached that China ultimately presents a threat, more antagonistic policies ranging from non-cooperation to containment or even war become a possibility. On the other hand, an interpretation that China is largely peaceful enables a more conciliatory approach that “engages” with China and encourages its participation in the international order.12 For decision makers in China, outside perceptions of the country are also watched carefully, in so far as a strengthening of the “China threat” interpretation makes China’s ability to navigate world politics more difficult and costly (see e.g. X. Li 1999; Zhu

11 This is arguably a stylised account. For an early overview and critical discussion of the notions of status quo, revisionist power China and international order, see Johnston (2003). 12 See also chapter 5.

212 2005). It is for this reason that contestation around the concept of “China’s rise” emerges, as observers try to shape the interpretation of China in order to steer political thought and action in a path commensurate with their own policy preferences. Of course, there is nothing inevitable about China adopting a peaceful or belligerent posture or anything in between. As discussed at length in chapter 2, the social world is not independent of our interpretation of it. Hence, knowledge of analogies, “laws” of the social world or expectations of doom and disaster all interact with the trajectory of China’s rise, as do issues such as domestic politics (such as electoral gains from being “tough” on China) or shocks (such as the COVID-19 pandemic). This means that China’s future and the stability of world politics always was and still is an open question, meaning that the direction and trajectory of China’s rise can in principle still be shaped. To return to soft power, as noted in chapter 5, the concept had challenged the very meaning of the decline concept by emphasising that “decline” will not occur as long as a state possesses abundant soft power resources and is willing to further strengthen such resources. By implication, for observers both inside and especially outside the country concerned with China’s rise, a full- scale “rise” will also not occur as long as a rising state does not yet possess soft power resources, or for as long as its soft power remains deficient. The problem thus specified was not so much that China was rising, but a misunderstanding of what “rising” meant and of what it took to rise comprehensively. For this reason, there had been a premature assessment of the dangers associated with China’s rise. By understanding that China’s rise was still incomplete, we were presented with a solution to the problem of its rise and the suggested course of action was a further strengthening of our own soft power. There are abundant examples of such narratives and it is particularly common to see commentary emphasising that China still has a long way to go when it comes to catching up on its soft power (such as e.g. in Nye 2004c, p. 84; Gill and Y. Huang 2006, p. 41; M. Li 2008, p. 297; Suzuki 2010, p. 211). Closely related to this, many concept entrepreneurs pointed out that while China might have many soft power resources, the transformation of such resources into actual soft power remained limited. China’s pursuit of soft power was said to be too government-centric, transparently authoritarian and insincere, and hence ineffective. Shambaugh (2013, p. 214) brought the essence of this argument to a point when he argued that in order to truly have soft power, China would have to “just get the government out of your own people’s way. China has an enormously talented society—just let it speak for itself” (see also d’Hooghe 2011, pp. 183–185; Ding 2008a, p. 169; Heng 2010, p. 300; Portland Commu- nications and Facebook 2016; Nye 2017b). A third related narrative in this context is the problem of China’s overly nar-

213 row potential sources of soft power. Observers pointed out that while China’s cultural appeal might be strong, given its long history, rich philosophy and cuisine, and even its pandas, this only constituted a small part of what soft power truly means. Specifically, what was missing was a prudent foreign policy or universally attractive values that did not just reflect China’s exceptionalism. Hence, China was presented only as a partial soft power (see e.g. Shambaugh 2013, ch. 6). Alongside non-Chinese observers who contested China’s soft power in this fashion, Chinese concept entrepreneurs also regularly emphasised the comparatively narrow sources of China’s soft power as a major hindrance to achieving soft power (I#35; I#43). What such narratives ultimately suggested was that China—or, more precisely, the party-state—simply did not understand what soft power was, that is, China just did not “get” soft power (Nye 2013b; see also Shambaugh 2013). In other words, concept entrepreneurs contested China’s specific translation of the soft power concept as incorrect, or as lagging behind a true understanding of world politics. As long as the concept was not properly understood, China would not be able to achieve genuine soft power and China’s rise would remain partial. Consequently, there was no need to be overly concerned about China’s ability to alter the international order. In this way, these concept entrepreneurs– predominantly non-Chinese observers addressing the China debate in a West- ern context—provided a solution to the problem they had specified. Crucially, this solution rested on the epistemic rightness of the soft power concept and its general acceptance in world politics as unless soft power was accepted as a social fact in both China and the world, such a solution would be ineffective.

Addressing the threat of China’s soft power At the same time, however, many observers outside China took a far more alarmist approach, arguing that China’s supposedly growing soft power was yet another indicator that China’s rise constituted a challenge at best and a threat at worst. Here, concept entrepreneurs relied on the familiarity of international observers with the soft power concept to shed light on a phenomenon in world politics that they perceived as problematic and neglected—China’s increasing international presence. By emphasising that China’s rise occurred not only with regard to its military and economic ascendency, but also across a third important domain—soft power—they were able to strengthen their argument that China’s rise was a multidimensional problem that required swift attention. One particularly prevalent theme was the element of surprise—the notion that China had ramped up its charm offensive while the rest of the world was not paying attention, thereby increasing the sense of urgency. Importantly, in this case it is the concept entrepreneur who is established as part of the solution— sounding an alarm bell. A prime example of such entrepreneurship is the work

214 of the journalist Joshua Kurlantzick (2008), who in the introduction to his influential book recollects his palpable frustration—just like Nye many years before with respect to decline—with policymakers everywhere who were not sufficiently wary of China’s charm offensive. His intervention was required to resolve the problem, which served as the overarching rationale for the book (see also Follath 2010). As a consequence of such narratives, the perception of China’s increased soft power in itself became a problem that required a solution. For entrepreneurs such as Kurlantzick (2008), the answer was to make sure that the US remained strong in its soft power, and to point out that even if it remained a challenging policy issue, there were still limitations on China’s soft power. A particularly interesting response to China’s soft power efforts was “Soft power: A play with a musical”. Space does not permit a detailed discussion of the complex story- line, but the production history is intriguing as it makes its way into the play itself. Early on, we see a dramatised version of a real-world encounter between writer David Henry Hwang and a Chinese producer called Xue. To increase China’s soft power, Xue wants to produce a show as popular as “Sex and the City”. As he notes “all we are doing is using our new leverage smartly. The way every powerful nation does. Because great nations do not just influence the world through riches and guns. A truly great civilization achieves “soft power”—through our ideas, inventions, culture— to change the way people think” (Hwang and Tesori 2018). The discussions do not go very well, however, as Xue insists that the sky needs to always be blue in Shanghai, whereas Hwang wants to write a more realistic show. In the real world, this encounter would be seen as a clear case of the limitations of China’s soft power, and specifically how government control over civil society stands in the way even when it tries to outsource the pursuit of soft power. Tellingly, the writer was puzzled enough by this encounter to devoted an entire play to it (I#68). A different type of narrative for addressing the problem of China’s increased focus on soft power (and by extension its rise) was to present it as a positive development. Here, concept entrepreneurs from inside and outside China suggested that China’s soft power was not really a problem as a China that takes soft power seriously and incorporates it into its strategic environment is indicative of a China that is striving for the very sources that underscore soft power, such as a free and open society, cooperation in international institutions and international responsibility. If that is the case, then there is little reason for concern as China is demonstrating its nature as a contented power that will assume its position as a great power without overturning the established international order. Many publications have depicted China’s interest in soft power as something positive because of its potential to shape the trajectory of China’s rise—even if

215 there were areas for concern, as for example I#63 noted. Ding (2010, p. 255) argued for example that “[…] when a rising power tries to develop its soft power resources and wield its soft power, its revisionist policy orientation will greatly decrease. This in turn allows for a smoother transition to a status quo power”. In a similar vein, Y. Wang (2008, p. 271) argued that China’s focus on soft power meant that it was seeking to achieve a soft rise that would be the “ultimate ‘win-win’ situation”. Glaser and Murphy (2009, p. 26) suggested that: […] As China continues to build its soft power and debates what ends it should serve, the United States and other countries should continue through engagement to help shape the choices that China makes. By so doing, we can increase the possibility that China will act as a responsible and stabilizing influence in international affairs”.13 In a nutshell, such narratives suggest that either way China’s soft power is not a problem because either it is deficient and hence ineffective, or China’s rise is going to be a soft one. In other words, concept entrepreneurs promoted the soft power concept in anticipation of performative effects and, more specifically, a China that rises softly by genuinely embracing the soft power concept. By suggesting that China’s soft power is either a positive development or not truly threatening as long as the country lags behind, concept entrepreneurs also brought an emotional dimension to conceptual politics. The expectations of China’s rise created much insecurity and concern among observers of world politics. What were the chances that China’s rise could (still be) peaceful? What would a Chinese-led international order look like? How likely are policymakers elsewhere to make reasonable policy choices with regard to China? What can be done about any of this, given that history seems to point to war? Amid such insecurities, the soft power concept paints a world in which mutual attraction, participation in international institutions, cooperation on the provision of global public goods, international exchange and peace are the key policy priorities of states. Not only is such a world less prone to conflict, it also has sufficient space for China to become a valued member of the international community, in sharp contrast to prophecies of doom and destruction as a consequence of the shifting balance of power (Allison 2017; Mearsheimer 2010). Thus, the soft power concept provides a reassuring narrative that conflict is not inevitable as it shows how states can rise without overturning the established order or becoming involved in war. The soft power concept thus supplies not only a practical solution, but also an emotional one as it restores

13 A more antagonistic response is discussed in chapter 9.

216 a sense of hope, predictability and agency against the forces of history. Such a solution however is contingent on China and other states agreeing that soft power is epistemically right and indeed crucial in world politics.

Promoting the epistemically right understanding of soft power These different strategies for addressing the problem of China’s rise and its soft power hinged on China’s ability and willingness to endorse Nye’s version of soft power. For this reason, much effort went into convincing China (and especially the CPC) of the epistemic rightness of the soft power concept as originally formulated. A key aspect of this was to keep an eye on what is sometimes called the “conceptual gap” between China’s understanding of soft power and the original. Many concept entrepreneurs from both China and abroad, for example, focused on comparing and assessing China’s understanding of the soft power concept with that of Nye or other states (Z. Chen and Song 2012; (Z. Chen and Song 2012; d’Hooghe 2015; Glaser and Murphy 2009; M. Li 2008; H. Wang and Y. C. Lu 2008). Such commentary not only served to establish the otherness—and sometimes even the backwardness—of China and its soft power, but also implied that there was one true and original representation of soft power towards which China needed to strive. Another key strategy that served to promote the epistemically right understanding of soft power was the continuous assessment and evaluation of China’s progress in terms of understanding and practicing soft power, and in particular the emphasis on soft power deficiencies that China needed to rectify if it truly wanted to achieve soft power. Thus, the discussion on the limitations of China’s soft power assumed a dual function, reassuring international observers that China had not yet reached soft power parity, on the one hand, and providing a manual for Chinese policymakers to follow, on the other. From China’s tight domestic control over its citizens, belligerent behaviour in territorial conflicts, nationalism and blunt international propaganda, any issue that contributed to the impression of a threatening China was presented as something that undercut China’s soft power and that therefore needed to be changed. The formulation that China needed to do certain things and abstain from others ran like a golden thread through much of the soft power literature. First, concept entrepreneurs established that soft power was a policy priority, which was typically done by referencing president Hu Jintao’s 2007 call for China to “enhance its national cultural soft power” (China Daily 2007). Since the leadership had endorsed the concept, China consequently needed to “deal with its problem of credibility”, “rethink some of its soft power strategies and political values”, “show that it places morality above selfish self-interest”, “loosen […] draconian restraints at home and reduce […] efforts to control opinion abroad” and “rethink its policies at home and abroad, limiting its claims upon its neigh-

217 bors and learning to accept criticism in order to unleash the full talents of its civil society” (d’Hooghe 2011, p. 186; G. Gao 2017; Kivimaki 2014, p. 432; Shambaugh 2015, p. 107; Nye 2015). That said, at the same time concept entrepreneurs needed to be careful that soft power did not appear too alien to China. Just as the translators of the 2004 Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics emphasised the proximity between Chinese traditional thought and the soft power concept, many concept entrepreneurs highlighted aspects of Chinese history, such as harmony in Confucianism, to illustrate how deeply soft power was anchored in China’s psyche (Chitty 2010; Ding 2008b). What can also be seen here is how many concept entrepreneurs assumed the role of teacher of the soft power concept and detailing its true meaning, bringing to light the stumbling blocks for China (or more specifically the restraints of the CPC), indicating the steps necessary to address such issues, and providing progress reports and recommendations on China’s soft power. Consider, for example, how frequently Nye travelled to China to promote the proper understanding of soft power (see also Guzzini 2016).14

Hence, this section has shown that there were sustained efforts to promote the epistemically right understanding of soft power to China. The country’s correct understanding of the concept in turn made it possible to rely on soft power as an incentivisation tool, to which I now turn.

Soft power as an incentivisation tool As discussed in previous chapters, as a consequence of conceptual politics, the soft power concept was increasingly associated with great power status. Soft power therefore assumed the role of an incentivisation device in China— just as it did in Japan. While Japan was primarily concerned with maintaining its status and relevance as a great country, the driving force in China was the quest to gain the recognition and status of a great power. There is much recent research that suggests that China’s foreign policy is in large part driven by status-seeking, or a desire to be recognised as a great power (Fung 2019; Paul, Welch Larson, and Wohlforth 2014). Thus, the more great power status became contingent on soft power, the more obvious it became to China observers that China must pursue soft power. One interviewee, for instance, noted that China was “desperate to build soft power” because it wanted to be recognised as a “great power with good manners” (I#51; see also I#35; I#40). As in

14 Such as at Peking University, Renmin University, Shandong University, the SIIS or Fudan University (Center for American Studies Fudan University 2020; H. Gao 2012; Y. Liu 2012; Renmin University 2020; SIIS 2016; Steidl 2016; Yenching Academy of Peking University 2017).

218 Japan, this also underscores the importance of outside recognition of both soft power and great power status. Indeed, many influential international concept entrepreneurs were regularly asked to comment on the progress of China’s soft power (see e.g. Nye 2017b; Shambaugh 2013). One interviewee for instance emphasised that “the Chinese were very happy to talk about their soft power. They came to see me afterwards for years, […] [asking me] how are we doing? How can we do better building our soft power?” (I#64). China’s professed interest in soft power meant that (non-)recognition of soft power in itself became a means of conceptual politics. Thus, denying China soft power, such as by saying “you still have a long way to go”, could create insecurity among Chinese actors, which would then strengthen efforts within China to match the criteria of the soft power concept in order to receive outside recognition.15 In this way, the soft power concept became a tool for proponents of soft power to steer China’s rise in a “softer” direction. If China wanted soft power and great power status, it simply had no other choice but to change in such a way that the outside world would recognise China’s soft power as genuine. It is crucial to underscore that such efforts were not simply pursued by foreign concept entrepreneurs. Certainly, non-Chinese such as Nye, Shambaugh and Glaeser played important roles as promoters of China’s embrace of soft power, but so did Chinese concept entrepreneurs who operated between China and the US, such as Li. That said, many Chinese concept entrepreneurs also became proactively involved in conceptual politics by highlighting the international relevance of the concept in an effort to persuade domestic audiences of the need to embrace the soft power concept. Precisely at a time when the future of the country was open for genuine discussion (especially in the 2000s), Western theories and ideas provided not simply a template for mimicking the West, but ammunition for domestic debates on the path ahead for China. For example, several of my Chinese interviewees remarked that they and others embraced the soft power concept precisely for this reason, as they had seen it as a window of opportunity to convince the Chi- nese government to adopt moderation in its foreign policy (I#27; I#28). In a similar vein, J. Wang (2011, p. 78) argued that China “will have to learn that soft power cannot be artificially created: such influence originates more from a society than from a state”. Y. Wang (2008, p. 268) also recommended that China “take on all the responsibilities of a great power and participate actively in international affairs”, while Men Honghua called for China to provide public goods for international institutions and to “be responsible to its own country and

15 On the other hand, this could also have a detrimental effect, as frustration with denial can ultimately give way to rejection of a soft power identity, a discussion I pick up below.

219 people” (cited in Wilson Center 2020). As S. Xu (2016, p. 59) reports, many scholars in China “argue[d] that Chinese soft power should found on the liberal values of freedom and democracy”. Qi (2017, p. 232–233) argued that “more and more Chinese scholars have been inclined to envision an influential China in world affairs, and that their preference is for China as a ‘responsible great power’”. Although not as explicit, the need for such a form of soft power was also mentioned in several of my own interviews (I#27; I#51; I#54). These dynamics become particularly clear when examining how soft power shifted and later superseded the concept of Comprehensive National Power (CNP). This concept dates back to the early 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping asked scholars to provide an analysis of the future security environment that should measure a country’s national power comprehensively from all sides, in an effort to assess the international hierarchy of states (S. Huang 1992; cited in W. Zhang 2010, p. 386). Several studies set out to investigate the CNP of various states (for reviews on CNP, see Z. Chen 2015; Pillsbury 2000; W. Zhang 2010; Lampton 2008, pp. 20–25; Qi 2017). These studies are intriguing, not least because they fall squarely within the category of the “scientific” approach to concept analysis so dominant in global IR. This is important because it indicates that many Chinese scholars shared a scientific outlook on the power concept with their non-Chinese colleagues, which in itself can be seen as a demonstration of the pervasiveness of global IR’s way of doing science. Like the soft power indices discussed in chapter 6, scholars broke CNP down into a flurry of different indices that were weighed against each other in complex ways. Most of these studies from the 1990s to the mid-2000s contained a staggering number of subcategories, such as those of S. Huang (1992) and S. Wang (1996) with their 70 and 150 plus subcategories, respectively (cited in Pillsbury 2000; Qi 2017). Like English language IR studies on the power concept, CNP is a contested concept in so far as each study established its own approach and there was no consensus on the underlying category (i.e. what CNP truly is) or which state gets to enjoy how much CNP. What made matters more complex was that public outcry and disapproval was often a consequence if China came either too high or too low in such rankings, especially military rankings (see the examples in Z. Chen 2015; Qi 2017). The specific epistemic culture in China therefore interacted with the efforts to determine China’s rank and status in international politics. That said, it is clear that China’s goal was in general to increase its CNP . Hence, once something was recognised as relevant in the context of CNP, it was reasonable for Chinese scholars and policymakers to strive to improve its score in an effort to enhance China’s overall status and standing. In that respect, CNP also functioned as an incentivisation tool. The CNP concept predated the soft power concept by several years. Al-

220 though soft power was introduced in the early 1990s, it is not until 1999 that soft power became part and parcel of CNP. Concept entrepreneurs then began to integrate the soft power concept specifically into the CNP framework. That is not to say that there were no aspects of CNP that might be understood as soft power. Logically, however, as Skinner (1969) would caution, aspects of CNP such as ideological strength could not anticipate the soft power concept. Rather, later work that sought antecedents of soft power in CNP needs to be seen as a particular strategy of conceptual politics intended to persuade audiences of soft power’s epistemic rightness by showing just how much it was baked into the notion of CNP. In other words, concept entrepreneurs who aimed to persuade Chinese scholars and policymakers that soft power was relevant relied on their familiarity with the CNP framework to promote soft power as a neglected aspect of precisely this framework (J. Chen 1999; Dong and Dong 2005; X. He 2008; Mei 1999; Wen Hui Newspaper 2004). Consider, for example, the titles of these publications: We Cannot Ignore the Enhancement of Our Country’s ‘Soft Power’; Enhance ‘Soft Power’ and Enhance Comprehensive National Power; Enhance Cultural Soft Power and Increase Comprehensive National Power; There Are ‘Hard’ and ‘Soft’ Aspects of Comprehensive Na- tional Power; Use Soft Power to Upgrade National Comprehensive Competi- tiveness. What can be seen here is not only a specific strategy of conceptual politics, but also how a “new” observation of the world that relied on soft power was beginning to shift how CNP was made sense of. Hence, there was a subtle shift in the preoccupation of Chinese scholars away from “hard” military and economic indicators to a focus on soft power. Just as soft power had become increasingly tied to great power status as a legitimate dimension of power in the English IR literature, the evolution from CNP to soft power in the Chinese context also established a tight relationship between CNP and soft power. Indeed, by shifting the sources of CNP, soft power effectively shaped how CNP was made sense of, and what China should and could do to improve its position. In other words, the interpretation of CNP interacted with the interpretation of soft power. As Table 8.1 shows, by 2010 soft power had even superseded the discussions on CNP (see also Qi 2017), indicating that its relevance had increased still further. By focusing on the conceptual politics around China’s embrace of soft power, this section has illustrated how a distinct site of conceptual politics emerged around the understanding and trajectory of China’s rise. Observers from inside and outside China relied on the common sense status of soft power internationally, as well as China’s desire to achieve soft power and great power status, to argue what China should do or refrain from doing to ensure that its rise would overall be a soft one.

221 Figure 8.1: Occurence of phrases in Chinese books

0.00260%-

0.00240%-

0.00220%-

0.00200%”

0.00180%-

0.00160% ”

0.00140%-

0.00120% ”

0.00100%- 软实力 0.00080%-

0.00060%-

0.00040%“  0.00020%” 国力

0.00000% 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 Note: Query on Google Ngram Viewer. Graph shows percentage of 软实力 (blue) and 综合国力 (red) against all terms contained in sample (Simplified Chinese books) between 1982 and 2019.

8.3.2 Contesting soft power and avoiding the discourse trap All the concept entrepreneurs discussed in the above section accepted the epistemic rightness of the soft power concept and—other than the occasional nod that China was different—there were few critical reflections on the Western origins of soft power. While perhaps the most visible internationally, however, this group of concept entrepreneurs was only one among many. As soft power grew increasingly popular in China among the former, another group of concept entrepreneurs emerged that began to contest soft power out of concern about the potential performative effects of the concept in China. Its efforts revolved around deterring such performative effects by various means. A key aspect was to contest soft power for its Western origins and inherent bias. In many ways, the first translation of Bound to Lead had built the foundation for contesting the soft power concept in this way as its introduction had been wary of the soft power concept as the latest addition to the US hegemony toolbox. Thus, many concept entrepreneurs were concerned about the Western origins of the soft power concept and sceptical that a concept originally intended to serve a different purpose could simply be applied to China. Such work was characterised by a form of “epistemic scepticism” (Y. Zhang 2016) combined with an understanding that concepts are not value-neutral tools by which scientific laws of the social world can be established, but made by someone and for someone. Several of my interviewees vehemently highlighted the political origins of the soft power concept and how little it matched China’s particularities (I#51; I#37). Similarly, G. Zhang (2017, p. 7) argued that Nye’s “proposal of soft power is obviously to demonstrate the necessity and legitimacy of the US practice of hegemony”. Many of these entrepreneurs were also critical of how the soft power con-

222 cept had become a global criterion that China chased and against which it was judged. A poem by Y. Long (2015) illustrates such dynamics well: The first major power on top the global tower, The US boasts a scholar, the father of “soft power.” It has become a singular standard, By which all are judged. One direction, In which all are nudged. Many voices answer, Upon hearing the call. And one single size, Cannot fit all. Soft power comes, In many different forms Not just the American style, Though it is the norm. In a similar vein, Pang (2015) argued that the “American soft power rubric [is] not universally applicable”, and that the “worldwide spread of the concept has rendered the soft power theory itself into a bulwark of American soft power” which the author called “the ‘soft power’ of soft power”. This is also the essence of an article by Y. Sun (2016): The Western discourse on the world order and soft power assumes a specific set of political systems and social patterns. For countries that had a late start in the modernization process, it is also a kind of ‘discourse trap’ that needs to be handled with wariness and sensibility. […] China should establish its own independent theoretical discourse on soft power that reflects its values, national conditions, and long-term interests. More specifically, the discourse should centre on the actual objectives of Chinese cultural revival, at home and abroad, rather than on chasing so-called influential power. Several interviewees also noted the dangers of falling into the soft power discourse trap (I#26; I#11). This demonstrates how chasing the soft power concept became incompatible with the “actual objectives” of China, which meant that China needed to establish its own soft power discourse to avoid such a discourse trap. Importantly, the soft power concept was not fully rejected, but instead the concept needed to be challenged and amended so that it represented China’s reality. Hence, despite its perception as a ruse and a trap, there was still something about the concept that required China to respond with its own discourse. In that sense,

223 even as these concept entrepreneurs sought to free themselves and China, they were nonetheless locked into the concept. Others took a more antagonistic position towards the soft power concept. S. Zhang and W. Zhao (2018), for instance, picked up the peaceful evolution theory that the PLA translation had also cautioned against and argued that “West- ern governments and public opinion circles are good at concept creation and discourse construction”. Lauding how sceptical Russia remained of the soft power concept, they criticised its popularity in China. What is more, they suggested that China’s supposed inability to achieve soft power lay not in the “superficial definition of ‘soft power’, but the deeply ingrained Western-style democratic monism behind it” which meant that “as long as China does not accept Western liberal democracy, it cannot truly have the ‘soft power’ based on Western-style democracy”. There was therefore no reason to “dance to the drums beaten by the US”, and China needed to “be vigilant not to fall into this logical thinking trap”. The concept of a discourse (or thinking) trap warrants special attention as it refers to the idea that Western countries—especially the US—promote concepts such as “integration”, “stakeholder”, “democracy” or “Thucydides trap” to persuade China to adapt its policy or behaviour accordingly (as discussed in K. Chen 2019; S. Chen and Y. Liu 2015; Y. Yang 2019; Z. Zhang 2013). Embracing these concepts on the terms of the West implies being tricked into believing that something is universally valid, whereas it is actually undergirded US hegemony. Thus, discourse traps were presented as a manifestation of peaceful evolution strategies intended to deviously change China from within (X. Zhao 2018). Moreover, the concept is closely related to the notion of “discourse power” (huayuquan) that China as a great power also needed to pursue. This concept has various connotations (see K. Zhao 2016) but mostly refers to the right to speak and have a say, which is built on a growing realisation that how a subject (such as China’s rise, the South China Sea etc.) is thought and talked about, and by whom, constitutes a distinct form of power. As K. Zhao (2016) suggests, “he who controls the discourse also controls the reality created by the discourse”. The pursuit of discourse power is not just something discussed in academic circles; it has become increasingly central for the government. Xi Jinping for instance has repeatedly emphasised that China needs to “create new concepts, new categories, and new expressions that could be accepted by both China and foreign countries” to strengthen the international discourse power of China (Xinhua News 2013; cited in Z. A. Huang and R. Wang 2019, p. 2986; see also Xinhua News 2016). Indeed, just like Japanese officials were concerned that their perspectives were heard (and by implication, accepted in international politics see chapter 7), all interviewees from the government talked to during

224 the excursion to Tibet emphasised the importance of getting a “correct” image of China (I#78; I#79; I#80; I#81). What makes discourse power particularly important is that it is supposed to provide an antidote to the peaceful evolution strategy—or, more broadly, the contamination of China by the West—as the stronger China’s cultural and ideological confidence are, the less likely China would be to inadvertently fall into discourse traps. Thus, it became part and parcel of efforts to protect China’s cultural security (wenhua anquan) from the perceived malign influence of the West (as discussed in S. Xu 2016, p. 58; d’Hooghe 2015, p. 3). With this in mind, we are able to better understand the criticism of the soft power concept as a discourse trap, in so far as it refers to the misguided belief that the concept is universal and value-neutral, rather than a concept developed for the US and the maintenance of its hegemony. These themes come out particularly well in a cartoon that accompanied a call by Y. Sun (2015) to stay alert to the discourse trap (see Figure 8.2) (Gou 2015). A large, Western man (note his long nose) gently invites a much smaller Chinese man to sit on a golden throne. The alluring throne rests on a soft power book that is flying high in the sky, implying that whoever sits on the soft power throne will preside over the world. The throne is golden, shiny and desirable, but the book is also tilted. As soon as the Chinese man sits on the shiny throne, he will lose his balance and fall a long way. Looking more closely, it becomes obvious that the seemingly gentle Western man is smirking, indicating that he is well aware that the throne is ultimately a trap. In essence, the concept of a “discourse trap” is a dramatised representation of the phenomenon of conceptual politics, as it is based on the assumption that concept entrepreneurs coin, promote and revisit concepts in anticipation of real-world effects; and that conceptual politics does not unfold in a vacuum separate from geopolitics. Although the argument that soft power constitutes a discourse trap and is part of a devious and coordinated strategy to change China from within might be an exaggeration (I have for example not encountered much coordination), in principle the core of the argument is not wrong.

8.3.3 Sinocising soft power The question therefore arises of how China should deal with such a discourse trap, especially when the concept has already become so widespread in China. It is here that we encounter one of the great ironies of China’s translation of the soft power concept. Concept entrepreneurs have sought to discredit the soft power concept as a discourse trap but, as is demonstrated below, “sinocising” and then pursuing soft power have become the means of inoculating China from

225 Figure 8.2: Soft power as a discourse trap

such traps. In essence, sinocisation refers to the process by which something becomes more Chinese, from the forced assimilation of minorities to concepts and theories. Compared to outright rejection of Western concepts such as soft power, sinocising soft power constitutes a far more common response for contesting the concept. The basic narrative that carried this strategy was a problematisation of the soft power concept as too Western, which therefore meant that it was unable to provide explanations or guidance for China. This required concept entrepreneurs to become active and develop a solution, in the form of a sinocised concept. In other words, concept entrepreneurs sought to translate and revise the soft power concept so that it fitted China’s reality. Men (2007, p. 21) for instance argued that “when we analyze China’s soft power, we must enrich this concept according to China’s practice, implement the localization of the concept so that it forms the basic fundamental content of China’s soft power”. Similarly, G. Zhang (2017) repeatedly argues the need for

226 research into soft power with Chinese characteristics (see also J. Hu 2011).16 Of course, this is not a question simply of the fit between the Western soft power concept and China, but also of the limited possibilities that China could embrace the concept given the country’s authoritarian nature. As such, if China was to heed the implications of soft power, the CPC would need to encourage China’s civil society and restrain its authoritarian impulses. Short of that, the only way to achieve soft power would be to change what soft power means and what its sources are; or, in other words, the concept needs to be cleansed from its Western connotations. This sentiment emerged in the vast majority of my interviews, especially I#29. From this perspective, it is perhaps less surprising that the central strategy for sinocising the concept was to contest the sources of soft power, that is, to challenge the aspects of a country that are supposed to be attractive to an international audience. Although some concept entrepreneurs had a relatively broad outlook on the potential sources of Chinese soft power, such as its development model, independent foreign policy or, more recently, the Belt and Road Initia- tive (BRI) (Zheng and C. Zhang 2007; H. Wang and Y. C. Lu 2008, fn. 23; 24; Z. Fan and Zhou 2016), the cultural soft power “school” in the tradition of H. Wang’s (1993) article has been the most influential (Courmont 2013; Glaser and Murphy 2009, see also). This is also reflected in the analysis in chapter 4, which indicates that the most common keyword in the China National Knowl- edge Infrastructure (CNKI) is cultural soft power. In a nutshell, the cultural school held that soft power grows out of a strong and confident culture: “the core of soft power is culture, and it is mainly the core values of culture” (Yu 2008; see also X. He 2008; J. Hu 2011). Whereas Japanese concept entrepreneurs sought to broaden the sources of the soft power concept, in China we can observe the opposite, in so far as the focus on cultural soft power meant narrowing down the soft power concept away from the tripartite notion of culture, political values and foreign policy that Nye had es- poused, towards taking culture as the concept’s main source. As a consequence of this narrowing down, other sources of soft power—especially (democratic) political values and foreign policy—became increasingly marginalised in the Chinese context.

16 In China, “with Chinese characteristics” is primarily used in the context of socialism with Chinese characteristics, where it refers to the Marxist-Leninist tradition of socialism adapted to the Chinese context. Under Deng Xiaoping, “socialism with Chinese characteristics” was used to ideologically justify the pursuit of market economics, which was once at odds with the class struggles of the CPC (Gregor 2014, p. 216). Today, it refers to efforts to adapt theories or concepts that come from abroad to China’s circumstances. In the English language literature, it is (too) often used to highlight China’s otherness, in terms of capitalism, aid, international relations theory or even soft power.

227 There is much variety within the cultural school of soft power. Some concept entrepreneurs emphasised aspects of China’s long history as potential sources of soft power, such as calligraphy, painting, martial arts or cuisine; or values such as harmony, benevolence, virtue or piety from Confucian or Taoist traditions (L. Zhang 2014; H. Wang and Y. C. Lu 2008, fn 15; M. Li 2008, pp. 292-293). Others focused on more modern cultural soft power sources, such as sporting events (especially the 2008 Beijing Olympics), giant pandas and pop cultural assets such as films (Buckingham, David, and Jepson 2013; Pang 2008). Finally, some advanced socialist values as sources of cultural soft power (recall also discussion in chapter 4 and G. Zhang (2017)). Who precisely was the target of such efforts to narrow down soft power and promote cultural soft power? First and foremost, there was the domestic audience of Chinese concept entrepreneurs. By narrowing down what could count as soft power, it became far more difficult to steer China’s soft rise from within by relying on the epistemic rightness of universal soft power. As the section on feedback loops below demonstrates, the Chinese government has played a key role in pursuing such a narrow interpretation of soft power in the hope that unwanted performative effects, such as increased space for human rights, could be deterred. Internationally, the cultural school also played an important role by highlighting aspects of China’s culture and especially history that underscored China’s peaceful nature in the hope that this could mitigate fears of a rising China. For this reason, discussions on socialist soft power played out primarily in Chinese, as international observers might otherwise become concerned about competition between democratic and socialist values. On the other hand, internationally more agreeable concepts such as “harmony” were presented as quintessential Chineseness, which meant that a rising China would necessarily put the pursuit of “harmony” at the heart of its international practice of soft power. Several of my interviewees repeatedly emphasised the relevance of traditional cultural values as the foundation for China’s foreign policy, in what from my perspective was a clear effort to persuade me, the scholar of China’s soft power, of China’s peacefulness (especially I#34; see also discussion Hagström and Nordin 2020, p. 5–7). However, this also worked in the opposite direction, as international concept entrepreneurs (sometimes with a Chinese background) could similarly highlight the importance of cultural soft power for China and present traditional cultural values as quintessentially Chinese in order to persuade Chinese audiences to take these facets seriously in their conduct with the outside world. Chitty (2010), for instance, argued that “Chinese soft power resonates with Confu- cian values. The integrity of Chinese culture and Confucian values is the fundamental ‘makeup’ (or construction) of Chinese soft power’s intentionality”.

228 Similarly, Ding (2008b, p. 195) suggested that “for more than two millennia, the idea of soft power had been consistently advocated and comprehensively utilized by ancient Chinese”. On these occasions, it is important to remind ourselves that it makes little sense to assume that Confucius or other ancient Chinese thinkers ever advocated soft power, as unless Nye is also a time traveller such thinkers had no way of knowing about the soft power concept (recall here Skinner’s (1969) point touched on above). Instead, such statements indicate a particularly powerful way of promoting soft power by suggesting that the concept had always been part and parcel of China’s identity and therefore was nothing dangerous that had to be rejected.

By focusing on the contestation around the soft power concept in China, this section has revealed the emergence of a distinct site of conceptual politics in China where conceptual politics emerged that sought to deter unwanted performative effects of soft power in China. By first highlighting the dangers of discourse traps and later by sinocising and narrowing down the soft power concept, Chinese concept entrepreneurs sought to resolve the problem of China’s embrace of soft power. In the same period as such debates unfolded primarily in intellectual circles, the Chinese government was also observing the performance of the soft power concept abroad and in China. Acting on such observations, the government emerged as a concept entrepreneur in its own right and was a driving force behind the narrowing down of the soft power concept. This had a profound effect on the future trajectory of soft power in China, and the subsequent perception of international observers of China and its embrace of soft power.17

8.4 Feedback loops The discussion up until this point has touched on a number of feedback loop dynamics. The first translations of soft power to China were shown to have been driven by observations of the performance of soft power in the US (Nye 1992; H. Wang 1993). Several of my interviewees emphasised that the performance of soft power abroad and especially in Japan and South Korea was seen as so decisive that neither scholarly nor political elites could avoid pay-

17 I opted to discuss the involvement of the government in the section on feedback effects as this makes the presentation of my material more cohesive. In principle, the dynamics detailed in this and the following section occur nearly simultaneously, and the means of conceptual politics outlined in the previous sections are also in large part driven by feedback effects.

229 ing attention (I#24; I#27; I#42; I#49). In addition, much of the effort to steer China’s rise relied on the normalisation of soft power internationally, just as much as it responded to the concept’s popularity and embrace in China. The contestation of soft power in turn also occurred in response to China’s embrace of soft power. As a consequence of such loops, the conceptual ties between soft power and concepts such as great power status, power dimensions (i.e., hard & soft; military/economic/soft), rise/decline and CNP were reinforced. All these concepts came to include a soft power dimension that had been far less prevalent before the concept emerged and China embraced it. This meant that the nature and trajectory of China’s rise were typically assessed from a multidimensional perspective that included soft power, to the degree that something we could call comprehensive rising had become contingent on how well China did in terms of its soft power (among other factors). These are all examples of micro and macro feedback loops, as it was the performance of soft power as an analytical tool and a state practice either abroad or in China that fuelled new processes of conceptual politics. Although touched on only tangentially, soft power’s particular embrace by the government and the emergence of the government as a soft power concept entrepreneur in many ways strengthened such feedback dynamics. After all, had the government completely ignored soft power, there would have been far less reason to encourage the performance of the concept as there would have been no space for suggestions that China had to reconsider its political system or international posture to achieve soft power. Of course, this begs the questions just how did the government emerge as a concept entrepreneur and in what ways did it become involved in the conceptual politics around soft power?

8.4.1 The emergence of the government as a concept entrepreneur Wang Huning can be seen as a key figure in popularising the soft power concept with China’s officials. In addition to authoring a key publication, his career path meant that he had the means and access to promote the soft power concept with Chinese officials. Starting around 2003, the PCP began to discuss the soft power concept (or to touch on it) in several of its collective study sessions (W. Zhang 2010). These meetings brought China’s top experts together with members of the Politburo, and typically involved lectures and Q & A sessions, which were sometimes followed by private conversations with the senior leadership (Y. Lu 2007). In preparation for many months, these meeting responded to important trends of the time as well as government demands for knowledge on a specific theme, and for this reason were an important channel

230 for experts to present their ideas to the government. According to one of my interviewees, it was in this context that the leadership was first briefed on the soft power concept and its meaning for China (I#54). The Central Foreign Af- fairs Commission also held a special study session on the soft power concept in 2007 (Y. Pan 2007). In addition, the Central Foreign Affairs Commission (CFAC) (formerly Central Foreign Affairs Leading (Small) Group) also reportedly discussed the soft power concept at two individual meetings (I#41). It is therefore reasonable to assume that the soft power concept travelled through such pathways into China’s leadership circles. The 17th NCCPC was in many ways a watershed moment, as it was there that the soft power concept was elevated to the status of an official policy concern (China Daily 2007). It is important to note that the government promoted the narrower version of soft power as culture, in what could be and often was seen as an intervention into the conceptual politics around the “true” meaning of soft power (as also pointed out by I#41; I#54). As touched on above, the additional adjective significantly narrows down the potential sources of soft power. In so doing, the government effectively set the parameters of the soft power debate—and hence largely of how the conceptual politics could unfold. Either way, from 2007 the cultural interpretation of soft power was strongly promoted by government agencies, as can be seen clearly by examining various funding calls. For instance, in both 2007 and 2008, the National Social Sci- ences Fund (NSSF)—China’s most prestigious social science research fund— called for major projects on “research on cultural soft power” (Guangming Daily 2007; Jilin University Law School 2008), which gave rise to projects such as “Research on improving my country’s cultural soft power”, “Soft power construction and China’s peaceful development path” or “Research on the development path of cultural soft power with Chinese characteristics” (The NSSF Project Database 2020). The CNKI offers some general insights into sources of research funding. Of all the articles that mention the sources of their funding, around 60% were funded by this research fund, while most of the other articles were funded by provincial (hence also governmental) research councils. Gain- ing access to such funds was so easy that several interviewees emphasised this as a key reason for their work on the soft power concept (I#41; I#49). Another important way in which the government promoted the cultural understanding of soft power was by establishing research centres, such as the Na- tional Cultural Soft Power Research Center (NCSPR), as well as cultural soft power research centres at Peking and Wuhan universities (L. Hu 2014; Wuhan University 2014). Such centres provided an endless stream of soft power research and closely tied the practice of soft power with its evaluation. The Na- tional Soft Power Research Center (NSPRC), for instance, organised at least eight high-level forums on soft power that brought together many scholars and

231 officials. Many of the reports on soft power by the NSPRC were read by the central leadership, and six out of 12 policy suggestions were reportedly taken up by the leadership (NCSPR 2020).18 In addition, two related journals, Cul- tural Soft power and Studies on Cultural Soft Power, were dedicated to the subject of China’s cultural soft power. By promoting the cultural understanding of soft power, the government thus emerged as a key player in conceptual politics. While the government set the parameters within which soft power research could take place, this specific translation also fuelled a new site of conceptual politics that had little to do with the original soft power concept, but instead revolved primarily around the question of China’s identity and the CPC’s relation to it, to which I now turn.

8.4.2 Soft power as a catalyst for new sites of conceptual politics As has been demonstrated throughout this chapter, the quest for cultural soft power was directed at both international and domestic audiences. In this, there lies perhaps one of the most intriguing consequences of soft power’s travelling, in that the concept has assumed the role of a catalyst driving forward a complex debate on what precisely the sources of China’s cultural soft power might be. As Callahan (2015, p. 6) notes, “soft power is about more than the export of pre-existing essential values—it also involves the production of values both at home and abroad. […] Before it can spread values abroad, soft power policy first needs to produce and police values at home”. Similarly, S. Xu (2016, p. 57) notes, “the domestic struggle for the identification of core cultural resources has become a quintessential feature of China’s domestic soft power campaigns”. What made this debate on China’s culture particularly salient was the question of who decided on the essence of China’s nature, and who got to represent the “true” China. For the CPC, the question of Chinese culture was particularly challenging in so far as the years of rapid economic growth and far-reaching reform continued to underscore the inherent paradox of a Marxist- Leninist party that privileged economic growth over class struggle. In addition, of course, despite the enthusiasm for turning to China’s long history and presenting it as a natural guiding principle of the CPC’s conduct of foreign relations, memories of sustained attacks on traditional Chinese culture such as Confucianism persisted in China and beyond. Seen in this light, the government’s promotion of cultural soft power can also be seen as an effort by the CPC to (re-)establish spokespersonship over the meaning of “China”. Rather than targeting the international world, such attempts to secure cultural leadership and confidence—for example through

18 It is unfortunately not possible to corroborate such accounts.

232 the “harmonious society doctrine” or the “China dream”— primarily targeted Chinese citizens and political elites. The aim was thus to develop national cohesion, which had little to do with the resonance of such efforts with international audiences. This became particularly clear during the journey to Tibet. For instance, during the visitation of a temple, our guides emphasised repeatedly how much the government has done to restore the temple to its former glory, which is ironic given that it had been the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s that had destroyed the temple in the first place. However, rather than simply accepting the government’s rhetoric, during my interviews, I encountered much resistance to the representation of the state as the custodian of Chinese culture. One of my interviewees exclaimed that China “has no values, no nothing, they [referring to the CPC] talk about something they don’t have. Even if China had soft power, it would be something negative!” (I#35). Other interviewees were less pessimistic but also emphasised the challenge of agreeing on precisely what Chinese culture and values are, and why the government could be the key promoter (I#39; I#49; I#50). In their interviews with Shambaugh (2013, pp. 169–171), other prominent concept entrepreneurs also lamented that “we have lost our values—we do not have any common values at all. There is a vacuum of values in China. Nor do we have an ideology” (Men Honghua); that “we need to build up a new mainstream culture, but this will take generations. Currently, Chinese society has an identity crisis (信用危机), an intellectual and moral vacuum, so we need to reinvent our culture” (Ambassador Wu Jianmin); and that China’s international identity has a serious problem. Our credibility as a developing country is ridiculous! Who are our friends? North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela! We have a big [image] problem. We do not have a priority identity. We have no main identity in the world, so we cannot prioritize. Who are we? We should identify ourselves as a quasi-superpower; if we do so, we can clearly define our national interests (Yan Xuetong). Thus, the contestation around soft power in China also needs to be seen as a site of conceptual politics in its own right over what or who China is. Here, the government’s call to increase cultural soft power opened up a space to engage with precisely that question. In this way, the soft power concept fuelled a debate on the nature of China that has far less to do with China’s international image, and far more to do with the internal contestation of the

233 very meaning of “China”.19 In fact, this specific translation of soft power also provides an important explanation for China’s embrace of soft power. Concept entrepreneurs from area studies or with a Chinese background typically point out the domestic dimension of China’s soft power (such as Callahan 2015; Glaser and Murphy 2009; S. Xu 2016), although they do not discuss what it means for the overall understanding of China’s so-called soft power push if its target is both international and domestic. Generalists on the other hand stu- diously avoid any consideration of the domestic dimension (Kurlantzick 2008; Nye 2013b; C. Walker 2016b). To them, China’s turn to soft power still needs to be measured against the “original” and universal conception of soft power. This is of course also far more convenient, as otherwise soft power could not resolve the problem of China’s rise or caution decision makers outside of China against the increasing threat emanating from China. It is also in this light that we need to see the inclusion of cultural soft power in the Constitution of the CPC (2017). For many international observers, this inclusion was seen as the highpoint of soft power’s career in China. Nye for example tweeted shortly afterwards that soft power “was written into the constitution of Chinese party. Wonder how Xi will use it?” (Nye 2017a). While this does not indicate that Nye assumed that China had wholeheartedly embraced his concept, what is typically overlooked by Western observers of China is that the inclusion was not for their benefit but rather to signal to the domestic audience that the CPC took the pursuit of cultural soft power as a national identity extremely seriously: the ““Party shall strive to […] enhance our country’s cultural soft power […] [,] hold firmly the leading position in ideological work, constantly consolidate the guiding position of Marxism in the realm of ideology, and cement the common ideological foundation which underpins the concerted endeavor of the entire Party and all the Chinese people”(CPC 2017, emphasis added). To be clear, none of this is to say that the international image of China was not a key concern for many Chinese concept entrepreneurs, or that many Chi- nese concept entrepreneurs were not driven by a desire to achieve soft power status. Nonetheless, it underscores that the travelling of the soft power concept and its highly specific translation in China had given rise to new sites of conceptual politics that need to be seen as largely self-contained, and that played out at the same time as conceptual politics around soft power were also unfolding at the international level. In this way, soft power was repurposed to achieve national cohesion, which Nye’s formulation had in no way anticipated

19 As Callahan (2015) notes, the domestic dimension is relatively antagonistic as it is built around the notion of China’s exceptionalism as well as the otherness and incivility of the rest of the world (see also Hagström and Nordin 2020).

234 or encouraged. In other words, soft power’s travelling increased the sites of conceptual politics that began to interact in complex ways. In this section, a focus on the soft power concept as a catalyst for new sites of conceptual politics has revealed how the concept has become involved in domestic debates on the very nature of China that have little to do with the original context of soft power. One additional side-effect of the government’s pursuit of cultural soft power was that it became increasingly common to treat soft power as if it was real; or, in other words, the reification of soft power also began to play a role when China came to make its embrace of soft power. This is discussed in the following section.

8.5 Reification Previous chapters have shown that the soft power concept is generally prone to be treated as a reified concept. In China, it is also possible to observe widespread formulations that the country has had to “construct”, “measure”, “build”, “strengthen” or “wield” soft power (such as in Dong and Dong 2005; Z. Fan and Zhou 2016; Yu 2008). Especially after the government called for China to “enhance” its soft power, it became increasingly normal for Chinese observers to treat soft power as if it were real and something that China needed to amass and store. At the same time, international observers of China treat “China’s soft power” as if it were a real property rather than merely an analytical tool (d’Hooghe 2011; Kurlantzick 2008; Thompson 2005). In most of these discussions, observers do not distinguish between the various performances of soft power at the levels of observation and action, that is, whether something happens because of soft power, is justified in the name of soft power or understood as a case of soft power. This is effectively a consequence of reification because if soft power were only an analytical tool, rather than something that states also explicitly pursue, we would not be in a situation where both observers of China and Chinese scholars and officials rely on the same terms of discourse (i.e. soft power) to understand, justify or practice policy. Just as was the case in Japan, in China also the analytical tool of soft power has interacted with its translation in politics, which has further shaped its performance as an analytical tool. This chapter has illustrated the profound effects of the conceptual politics around soft power on China and the international understanding of China. China has poured billions into soft power-related activities (Shambaugh 2015, p. 100). Many policy initiatives, such as the establishment of Confucius Insti- tutes to promote the learning of Chinese, would be unthinkable were it not for the soft power concept.

235 That said, the consequences of not distinguishing between the various roles that the concept has assumed are far-reaching. For one, there is a tendency to understand anything China does internationally as part and parcel of a coordinated soft power strategy, irrespective of the degree to which soft power mattered in the formulation of that specific policy or behaviour. Thus, while one might be hard pressed to find observers who argue that China’s embrace of soft power is innocent and benign, certainly compared to Japan (see chapter 7), a central consequence of the ubiquity of research and commentary on China and soft power, as well as the reification of the concept, is that it has become normal to make sense of China, its policy interests and its behaviour abroad by relying on the soft power concept. Be it China’s engagement with Africa, the BRI or even technology companies such as TikTok (Fijałkowski 2011; R. Long 2020; Thompson 2005), China’s international presence is often presented by both international and Chinese observers as a case of soft power. However, given the secrecy of the Chinese decision-making process, it is often unclear how specific policies are formulated and implemented, and the role a concept such as soft power might have played during the process. In general, when it comes to the implementation of soft power, much speaks of a relatively decentralised and messy process. For instance, a key complaint from Chinese scholars with respect to China’s seemingly ineffective soft power is the lack of a central institution that oversees the many different actors whose work in principle touches on soft power. Especially in the months after official announcements, many Chinese officials and scholars alike must scramble to flesh out such policies, and in the case of soft power, this reportedly occurs with little coordination (I#24; I#35; I#53). As a consequence, the soft power concept is implemented in many different ways that can even be contradictory. In some cases a policy might aim to increase our understanding of China and its attraction, while in other cases the target might be a domestic one. This comes out particularly well in Callahan (2015) when he notes that a statement by a Chinese diplomat likening Volde- mort to Japan was seen by many international observers as a clumsy and failed soft power event, whereas domestically it was lauded. In other words, while there certainly are feedback loops between the levels of observation and action, how profound the performance of soft power at the level of action is in terms of concrete policy needs to be assessed on an individual basis. Since it has become so common to conflate what happens because of soft power with what is justified in the name of soft power and how international or Chinese observers understand it, important nuances are being lost, to the degree that anything China does comes to be seen as part of a coordinated and carefully executed soft power strategy. By conflating the various levels at which soft power performs, we are also prone to overlook the mani-

236 fold translations of the soft power concept and the different sites of conceptual politics. In sum, by expecting to see the practice of soft power wherever one looks, it is easy to become blind to the complexity of the soft power phenomenon in China. As we have seen, one translation of soft power revolved around the necessity for China to build genuine soft power to facilitate a soft rise, while another site of conceptual politics contested the concept in the international arena (i.e. convincing the outside world of China’s nature as a soft power on China’s terms) while yet another site revolved around the predominantly domestic question of the nature of China. It is therefore crucial to untangle the various roles that the soft power concept is able to assume.

8.6 Conclusion By relying on the thinking tools of the analytical framework, this chapter has shed light on the phenomenon of the soft power concept in China. By untangling the dynamics of soft power’s travel to China and focusing on different groups of concept entrepreneurs and their means of conceptual politics, it became clear that various sites of conceptual politics emerged to motivate China’s embrace of soft power. One the one hand, soft power became an incentivisation tool in the hands of international and Chinese concept entrepreneurs to steer China’s rise towards a softer one. On the other hand, the contestation around soft power also fuelled a new translation of soft power as cultural soft power. Here, the focus on domestic and international sites of conceptual politics and their interaction effects has been extremely helpful to illustrate and make sense of the complexity of the phenomenon of soft power in China. Finally, as the analysis of reification reveals, it became increasingly normal to conflate the various roles that soft power has assumed, to the degree that China’s international behaviour and its overall rise came to be closely associated with the soft power concept. Chapter 9 shows that this would have substantial implications for the way the world engaged with China and for its rise.

237 238 9. Offspring: The emergence of the sharp power concept

In recent years, there has been an unprecedented surge in language that casts China’s rise as an existential threat to the US. As the previous chapters discuss, there have long been voices in the US that describe China’s rise as one of the most severe risks to the global order, peace and prosperity. What stands out from the intensified threat discourse since 2016, however, is the emerging consensus among national security elites that China constitutes a threat across all dimensions (see also McCourt 2020). Thus, China is no longer merely a military, political or economic threat, but also an ideological threat that has the potential to “infiltrate”, “disunite” and “infect” Western liberal democracies (Hamilton 2018; Wilson Center 2018). As US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo puts it, “the single greatest threat to the United States of America from a foreign power emanates from the Chinese Communist Party. […] [I]thas in- filtrated the United States in ways that Russia has not […]” (US State Depart- ment (State Department) 2020). A number of diverse aspects have contributed to the emergence of this comprehensive threat discourse. First, as China has become more repressive at home and more assertive internationally, the overall threat perception has naturally increased. However, China’s repression of minorities is a long-standing phenomenon (on Tibet, for instance, see W. W. Smith 2010), its increasing assertiveness was being vividly described prior to 2010 (Johnston 2013) and what is typically understood as China’s soft power push has been ongoing since the Hu Jintao era (see chapter 8). Second, especially in the US, domestic politics have played an important role in casting China as a comprehensive threat. For example, the Trump administration’s increasingly antagonistic stance could be seen as a reach out to voters in struggling industries. In addition, the discussion of China’s potential interference in US democracy could be seen as an attempt to distract voters from the controversy over Russia’s alleged interference.1 Nonetheless, while all this certainly plays a role, Trump’s relations with

1 As a whistleblower complaints from September 2020 also suggests (Kanno-Youngs and Fandos 2020).

239 China did not take a distinct turn for the worse until 2018 (X. Yang 2020). Hence, none of these potential drivers of the comprehensive threat discourse address the new emphasis on an ideological threat, its timing or the unprecedented consensus across the political landscape. In this chapter, I argue that a new round of conceptual politics around the soft power concept began around 2015, enabled and driven by the avid prodigious travel of the soft power concept detailed in previous chapters. This new round of conceptual politics culminated in the “birth” of a new concept known as “sharp power”, which is usually defined as authoritarian influencing efforts that “pierce, penetrate, or perforate the information environments in the targeted countries (C. Walker and Ludwig 2017a, p. 13). As soft power’s “offspring”, the concept has played an integral role in the emergence of an ideological China threat and its acceptance in large parts of the world. Furthermore, it has rapidly begun to perform as an analytical construct and a social fact, and in these roles drives the perception of a multidimensional China threat. Furthermore, this has driven a coordinated US policy response, effectively heralding the end of the engagement policy. In what follows, I trace the new round of conceptual politics as it unfolded, primarily in the US, China and Japan.2

9.1 Conceptual politics The new round of conceptual politics around the soft power that culminated in the emergence of a new concept is in many ways a response to the prodigious travel of the soft power concept. First and foremost, it responds to the journey of the latter concept across levels of observation, in so far as it relies on and

2 As a relatively recent phenomenon, we are examining here the early stages of conceptual politics, which are manifest primarily through a lack of much attention to the notion of travelling. Given the case selection, I focus the analysis in this chapter on the US, China and Japan, although much of the ideological China threat was first discussed in the context of Australia and New Zealand which have undoubtedly paved the way for discussions elsewhere. In addition, I also argue that the new round of conceptual politics has played an important facilitating role in making the new ideological China threat possible. That is not to say that China and its actions were insignificant. My point is rather that without conceptual politics that serve to narrow down the options for interpretation of China’s behaviour, there would not have been the consequences detailed in this chapter. One factor of the ideological China threat that I do not address in detail in this chapter is the role of Russia and the historical legacies of the Cold War and Soviet espionage, which also facilitated the emergence of the China threat. Together with Björn Jérden, I address these questions in a paper that is currently under review. My main contribution to the paper was the collection of empirical material (especially interviews), the theory and methodology section as well as the soft and sharp power analysis. The discussion in this chapter feeds and draws from these sections.

240 targets the widespread popularity of the soft power concept as an analytical lens with many observers of world politics, especially in the US. Second, it responds to the journey of soft power to the level of action, meaning that it is directed at the performance of the soft power concept as a social fact, particularly in the context of foreign policy. Third, the new conceptual politics is a consequence of soft power’s journey across space, and specifically from the original context of the US to China (and to a lesser degree Japan) and then back to the US. If it had not been for the travel of the soft power concept across levels and space, and its various distinct translations, there would be few grounds for or little substance to engagement in a new round of conceptual politics. The new round of conceptual politics is new in the sense that it presents a novel understanding of the soft power push of authoritarian states as dangerous. Certainly—as discussed in chapter 8—China’s growing soft power has been seen not just as a positive development, but also as a reason for concern, especially in the developing world. Overall, however, the dominant narrative until 2016 was that China’s soft power was lagging behind, and that even if it was evolving into a genuine soft power this would be a positive indicator of China’s soft rise. From around 2015, however, a decisively different understanding of authoritarian states’ soft power emerged. No longer a clumsy and transparent approach to sway people’s opinions of China, the country’s soft power push was increasingly portrayed as a dangerous appropriation of the concept for malign purposes, and this in turn became a key facet of a new ideological China threat.

9.1.1 Concept entrepreneurs The central actor pursuing the new round of conceptual politics is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED is an independent non-profit foundation established during the Reagan administration with the explicit purpose of promoting democracy abroad. As a foundation that enjoys bipartisan support, the NED receives most of its funding from the US Congress. In addition, it gives out grants to projects that seek to strengthen knowledge on and the practice of democracy. The NED also publishes the Journal of Democracy, and organises round tables and other events every year to publicise its projects and findings (NED 2020a). Of the actors involved with the NED, its Vice President for Studies and Analysis, Christopher Walker, is particularly noteworthy as a driving force behind several initiatives that culminated in the report that coined the concept of sharp power (Cardenal et al. 2017). He has been integral to a two-year initiative that published the widely circulated book Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy (Diamond, Plattner, and C. Walker 2016). The book

241 contains one of the first discussions on the appropriation of the soft power concept (Walker 2016a), which was also published in similar form in the Journal of Democracy (C. Walker 2016a). Walker was also central to several roundtable discussions that focused on the themes in the sharp power report and brought various area experts together. Shanthi Kalathil and Jessica Ludwig from the NED are also prominent concept entrepreneurs and were key to promoting the findings of the sharp power report. The NED’s ties to Congress and the academic field of democracy studies make it reasonable to assume its possession of substantial amounts of cultural and social capital. That said, the clear democracy promotion objective of the NED means that some audiences—unsurprisingly especially those in authoritarian states—perceive the foundation to be politically motivated, and hence its concepts as not epistemically right but part and parcel of US cultural hegemony. In an effort to rebut the sharp power concept, S. Liu (2018), for instance, quotes several voices critical of the NED as a “Trojan Horse” that supports dissident movements. Compared to soft power’s origins in the academic environment of Boston in the 1980s, the new round of conceptual politics thus originates in a quasi-governmental context with a clear political purpose. Anne-Marie Brady is another important concept entrepreneur for the new round of conceptual politics. Although not affiliated with the NED, she has participated in several interviews, events and reports linked to the NED (NED 2015, 2017b) and contributed a chapter to “Authoritarianism goes global” that, like Walker’s, was also published in the Journal of Democracy (Brady 2015). This chapter—together with her general expertise—is key to her 2017 work on “magic weapons”, where she launches a critique of soft power that is very similar to Cardenal et al. (2017) and C. Walker (2016a). Brady (2017) is a particularly important publication as it has reportedly been downloaded more than a 160,000 times. As an expert on Chinese propaganda with an academic professorship and a think tank affiliation to the Wilson Center, Brady’s social and symbolic capital can be regarded as substantial. Another group of concept entrepreneurs can be found in the original soft power entrepreneurs who have been successively enrolled in the new round of conceptual politics around soft and eventually sharp power. In many cases, this has involved entrepreneurs such as Bonnie Glaeser, Joshua Kurlantzick, Larry Diamond, Bates Gill, Joseph Nye and Utpal Vyas, who had previously been affirmative soft power concept entrepreneurs but grown increasingly disillu- sioned with China or the phenomenon of China’s soft power push. Although many of these entrepreneurs can be found in the US, there are also examples of concept entrepreneurs in Japan (such as Watanabe Yasushi and Kuwahara Kyoko) or China that fit into this category. Others, such as Niall Ferguson, Joshua Eisenmann or Josh Rogin, had been active primarily as more or less vo-

242 cal anti-soft power concept entrepreneurs or as sceptics of the possibility that China’s rise could ever be peaceful. In addition, there is also a group of staunch anti-concept entrepreneurs who reject both the new round of conceptual politics and the sharp power concept. Many of these, such as Chou and Q. Li (such as 2019) and Y. Sun (2018), are found in China. Finally, concept entrepreneurs can also be found among observers of world politics who are concerned with interference in elections by foreign powers. It is in this context in particular that politicians have begun to embrace the new round of conceptual politics. For instance, various senators became involved in a bipartisan open letter to the Trump administration that directly warned of China’s attempts at sharp power (Cortez Masto et al. 2018). In terms of the reasons for becoming involved in the new round of conceptual politics, most concept entrepreneurs emerge either because they feel that the concept represents the world as it is and should be understood, or they observe such a misfit with their interpretation of the world that they become active in pushing against it. There are also more instrumental reasons, however, such as the ability to establish a research agenda. Most work on sharp power has thus far been driven by think tanks and journalists, although a few select scholars with a background in strategic narratives and public diplomacy have also picked up the concept and integrated it into existing research frames (Wagnsson 2020; Vyas 2020). Several interviewees also noted that they were in the middle of setting up comprehensive research projects to further advance the sharp power concept (I#64; I#84; I#84). Research has also been commissioned on sharp power. The NED, for instance, is providing earmarked funding for sharp power projects such as to the Prague Security Studies Institute (NED 2020b).

9.1.2 Means and sites of conceptual politics Now that the central concept entrepreneurs have been identified, how have concept entrepreneurs been engaging in the new round of conceptual politics? How did the contestation around China’s soft power strengthen and how did the sharp power concept emerge? What sites of conceptual politics emerged? In general, there are three distinct sites of conceptual politics: one that revolves around a splitting off of sharp power from soft power; the second, a contestation of the sharp power concept in China; and the third, a hardening of the soft power concept. As in the previous chapters, it is primarily through narratives that the sharp power concept can be fitted to potential concept entrepreneurs.

Splitting sharp power from soft power The first important strategy of the conceptual politics around soft power sought to split the concept of sharp power from the concept of soft power. It relied on

243 various intermediate steps to do so.

Recognizing authoritarian soft power

The previous chapters have illustrated how the soft power concept has become a ubiquitous analytical tool and an omnipresent practice of foreign policy over the past three decades, to the degree that observers have become used to thinking of many of China’s or Japan’s international activities as taking place in the name of soft power. Just like soft power had once benefited from adjacent and well-established debates in the power literature (chapter 5), the emerging sharp power concept entrepreneurs were able to rely on the typical association of soft power with China to draw attention to what they presented as a clear threat— authoritarian influencing operations. Such operations can take different forms, from manipulating and distorting information to co-opting the Chinese dias- pora or nurturing China-friendly scholars and politicians, amplifying existing divisions in democracies or coercing compliance with market access (Brady 2015; C. Walker and Ludwig 2017a). To these authors, it appears as if many authoritarian activities abroad had occurred in the name of soft power, mainly because authoritarian states justify them with reference to the concept, but also because they use tools on which regular soft power policies also rely. C. Walker and Ludwig (2017a, p. 13) note that: “although Russia and China undertake some activities that can credibly fall into the category of normal public diplomacy, the nature of these countries’ political systems invariably and fundamentally color their efforts”. Broadcast news channels, for example, might be categorised as soft power projection, but also as an attempt to spread distorted narratives, just as people-to-people exchanges might enhance a state’s soft power but also be used to co-opt critics. In essence, the phenomenon of influencing activities was presented as both familiar and so distinct that continuing to rely on the soft power concept to make sense of such strategies would be fatal. According to C. Walker and Ludwig (2017a, p. 9), it has already “led to a dangerous complacency” that allows “authoritarians, through trial and error, to refine their existing efforts and develop a much more powerful array of influence techniques suitable for a modern environment”. In this way, concept entrepreneurs offer a narrative that problematises the soft power concept by suggesting that observers often misclassify soft power when they apply it to the case of authoritarian states’ international activities. Hence, there is a drastic narrowing down of the soft power concept coupled with a reinforcement of the concept’s boundaries. The new round of conceptual politics around soft power thus contests those phenomena which can be subsumed into the category of soft power by externalising authoritarian attempts

244 at soft power. While China was once seen as deficient in soft power and unable to understand the concept properly, the problem is now that observers did not understand that China was never genuinely trying to pursue soft power but instead exploiting the openness of democracies to allow China’s pursuit of sharp power. Typical examples often mentioned in this context are the phenomenon of the Confucius Institutes, which rely on the willingness and cooperation of non-Chinese partner institutions to host China’s soft power (such as Lo 2018), or allowing China to purchase advertising space to propagate its positions (for a discussion, see Hartig 2019). As can be seen, the soft power concept has increasingly been split into a benign (largely democratic) and a malign (largely authoritarian) version. This narrative is not in itself completely novel. Recall here, for instance, how the travelling of soft power to China shaped conceptual politics in Japan in such a way that the concept’s democratic sources were increasingly emphasised and juxtaposed with China’s approach. In addition, the reassurance narrative that China just does not understand soft power has also strengthened the democratic undertones of the soft power concept. That said, the externalisation of authoritarian soft power and the degree to which such a narrative is circulating are what make this round of conceptual politics such a noteworthy phenomenon.

Coining sharp power

Once soft power has been adequately problematised—as is key for narratives— the next step for the concept entrepreneurs at the NED is to offer a solution that takes the form of a conceptual intervention—the sharp power concept: “We are in need of a new vocabulary to describe this phenomenon. What we have to date understood as ‘soft power’ when speaking of authoritarian regimes might be more properly labeled as ‘sharp power”’ (C. Walker and Ludwig 2017a, p. 13). The central point of departure in the reports therefore is to establish the fact that the term simply had to be coined in order to satisfy the need for a new vocabulary with which to describe the phenomenon of authoritarian influencing operations, in the hope that no one would mistake sharp power for soft power. Based on this need, the necessary course of action also becomes clear: gaining a proper understanding of and research into the insidious danger that emanates from authoritarian states that are supposedly engaging in soft power. Sharp power was thus presented as a natural and necessary addition to the soft power concept. Once embraced, it naturally implies an understanding of China as an ideological threat. Advocates of the new concept might just as well have highlighted such operations and argued that they amounted to an ideological threat from China. As a matter of fact, other efforts prior to the 2017 sharp power report did just

245 that in an effort to keep the phenomenon under the soft power umbrella (C. Walker 2016a, 2016b). The terminology of “sharp power” however proved decisive. First, there is the imagery of “sharp”. The report notes that “authoritarian influence efforts are ‘sharp’ in the sense that they pierce, penetrate, or perforate the information environments in the targeted countries” (C. Walker and Ludwig 2017a, p. 13). In general, however, “sharp” can also mean “smart” or “clever”,3 but “sharp power” has a negative connotation. This constitutes a decisive difference from either soft, smart and even hard power, as all of these terms are desirable in global politics and something that states try to accumulate (as argued in previous chapters). Sharp power, on the other hand, implies severe criticism of the other’s behaviour, and it would be surprising to see commissions or research centres set up to enhance or strengthen the sharp power of any country. Indeed, sharp objects are threatening as they focus all of their strength on one small tip that can force its way into an object. The cover of the sharp power report also shows a sharp object piercing the globe, which implies the concerning assumption that sharp power has the potential to break the world apart. In addition to the metaphorical imagery, the concept has a nice ring to it as it chimes with the already established concepts of soft, smart and hard power. It is therefore easy to follow the argument that what China is practicing is not soft, hard or smart but sharp power. In addition, the fact that soft, smart and sharp power all start with the same letter establishes a strong connection between the concepts that makes it easy to remember and iterate them jointly. Calling the phenomenon of authoritarian influencing operations sharp power makes it possible to appeal to audiences with a prior attachment to soft power, as if someone already embraces the epistemic rightness of soft power, accepting the epistemic rightness of sharp power appears to be a logical next step. This is especially the case for many observers who had struggled in the past to make sense of China’s soft power push. Seen from this perspective, the sharp power concept provides an answer to the question of why an authoritarian state such as China would embrace a concept with clear liberal democratic foundations. Rather than genuinely seeking soft power, China had been up to sharp power all along. As I#64 argued: I think it’s important to not talk about what China is doing as similar to what we have called soft power. You know, somebody had to come up with a term to describe what China is doing. […] So everybody latched on to this one. I’m happy to use it because […] to me, it’s clarifying.

3 As one of the authors also points out (I#72).

246 The sharp power concept therefore provides a way to deal with China’s professed interest in soft power while at the same time affirming the value and relevance of “genuine” soft power. Authoritarian soft power was in this way decoupled from the “benign conception” (C. Walker and Ludwig 2017a, p. 12) of soft power, which means that what the Chinese government is doing can finally be distinguished from what democratic states ostensibly stand for.

Promoting sharp power

As the central concept entrepreneur, the NED has taken the leading role in the promotion of the sharp power concept and encouraging further commentary and research to shed light on the extent of the problem. In a way that mirrors Nye’s own publication strategy, the concept has been promoted through many channels. Besides the report itself, the NED organised an event in December 2017 to launch the report (NED 2017a), which was anticipated in a shorter article in the prestigious Foreign Affairs (C. Walker and Ludwig 2017b). Around this time, the mass circulation magazine The Economist dedicated its cover story and an editorial to the phenomenon of China’s sharp power (The Economist 2017). A little later, C. Walker (2018b) published an article in the Journal of Democracy further explaining the meaning of sharp power (C. Walker 2018b). Several of the NED’s concept entrepreneurs have also testi- fied to Congress (Hearing 28-385; S. Hrg. 116-230; House Hearing 116-36). Within a short time, most of the institutions in the think tank world have hosted events explicitly centred on sharp power, sometimes featuring NED staff,4 at other times not.5 The concept was also almost simultaneously introduced to Japan. The editorial in The Economist for example was translated into Japanese within a few weeks (Nihon Keizai Shimbun 2017). C. Walker (2018a) was published in the Japan Times and various other newspaper articles reiterated the NED’s narrative (Asahi Shimbun 2018; Yomiuri Shimbun 2017). In addition, think tanks and research institutes began to publish favourable articles on sharp power (Hideshi 2019; Kuwahara 2020; Yusuke 2018). In China, the concept was discussed shortly after sharp power publications in newspapers (Cui 2017; Y. Sun 2018; J. Xu 2019; Zai, J. Zhang, and Di 2018) or academic articles (Chou and Q. Li 2019; G. Liu 2019; X. Xu 2019; G. Zhang and Xie 2018). My fieldwork also coincided with the first few months after the sharp power concept had been

4 Such as Global Taiwan Institute 2019; Heritage Foundation 2018; Pacific Council on In- ternational Policy (PCIP) 2018. 5 Such as Brookings Institution 2018a; Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (Stanford University) 2018; Stimson Center 2018.

247 introduced. Consequently, many soft power concept entrepreneurs raised the question of sharp power with me (I#37; I#40; I#42; I#44; I#49; I#50; I#51).

Protecting soft power Soon after, the analytical step of splitting soft power from sharp power was “thoroughly applauded” as prudent and necessary by soft power’s first concept entrepreneur, Joseph Nye (PCIP 2018). Nye further refined sharp power on several occasions, such as when he suggested that “openness and limits on deliberate deception […] distinguish[…] soft from sharp power” but that “the distinction between them can be hard to discern” (Nye 2018b; see also Nye 2018a). In addition: Even though soft power and sharp power both use information, they’re very different. For soft power, it rests on the ability to attract. For sharp power, it rests on the ability to manipulate. And so […] one can shade into the other one. If we’re not careful about monitoring the boundaries, we may not notice that. (PCIP 2018) In Japan, several concept entrepreneurs also began to emphasise the value of the sharp power concept. Mitsuo (2017) for example argued that the sharp power report was “groundbreaking” and “useful for understanding the terrify- ing reality of China’s “Sharp Power”, while Yusuke (2018, p. 10) concluded “that the greatest analytical usefulness of the ‘sharp power’ concept is that it puts the spotlight on the fact that particular dilemmas exist for democratic countries when formulating solutions to a range of activities by authoritarian states”. That is not to say that there was no contestation around sharp power from soft power entrepreneurs. Nye for example also argued early on that it is paramount to strengthen US soft power as an antidote to China’s sharp power, rather than resort to sharp power tactics. The concern was that by “reducing themselves to the level of their adversaries, democracies would squander their key advantage”, and that this is “how sharp power threatens soft power” (Nye 2018b). I#65 also noted that it was important to prevent the Japanese government from engaging in sharp power tactics in response to the soft power challenge from China and South Korea. Another problem that Nye cautions against is misclassifying China’s genuine soft power as sharp power, that is, treating any interaction with China as a malicious attempt at sharp power in the guise of soft power (Nye 2018b). For example, “only when a Confucius Institute crosses the line and tries to in- fringe on academic freedom (as has occurred in some instances) should it be treated as sharp power” (Nye 2018b). In a similar vein, Hideshi (2019, p. 5) points out that “the distinction between soft power and sharp power cannot be

248 the benchmark for distinguishing influence from interference. Soft power is neutral and not unique to democracies”. Similarly, Glaser suggests that it is necessary to “distinguish between influence, which is appropriate, and interference, which is not” (American Association for Chinese Studies 2018). It is obvious from this that some soft power concept entrepreneurs felt obliged to defend the boundaries of soft power and reassert spokespersonship over phenomena that can be subsumed under the soft power umbrella. Nonetheless, the bottom line was that once its boundaries had been well established, sharp power constituted an epistemically right concept.

Embracing sharp power

The endorsement of sharp power by some of soft power’s first concept entrepreneurs arguably did much to strengthen the epistemic rightness of sharp power among other soft power concept entrepreneurs who had also been reap- praising Nye’s conceptualisation. Many soft power concept entrepreneurs were discussing various aspects of sharp power (Gill and Schreer 2018; Kurlantz- ick 2019; Watanabe 2018; Vyas 2020). Where my interview partners embraced Nye’s conception of soft power, they often also followed along with the sharp power concept. This was the case for soft and sharp power concept entrepreneurs in the US (I#64; I#65), in Japan (I#84) and in China (I#37; I#54). That said, not every participant in the new round of conceptual politics followed the entire narrative arc of the NED. Some observers for example were apprehensive of the debate that sharp power was fuelling and accepted the NED’s problematisation of the soft power concept, but less convinced about the NED’s solution of conceptual innovation. Instead, they preferred to use terms such as “influencing operations”, “political warfare” or “united front work”.6 In the larger debate, however, these nuances are often lost and work such as Brady’s (2017) is easily incorporated into the range of phenomena that sharp power denotes (such as in Bayles 2019; The Economist 2017). Ultimately, by enforcing the boundaries between soft and sharp power as not between democratic and authoritarian, but between open versus covert, it was still possible for China to strive for genuine soft power. In fact, in this way sharp power becomes an incentive for China to place increased emphasis on an appropriate approach to the pursuit of soft power. Thus, while some of my interview partners in China rejected the sharp power concept outright, others saw the concept as a legitimate criticism of China’s tactics in pursuit of soft power. I#51 noted, for example, that: “China was so desperate to build its soft power,

6 Such as Brady or Shambaugh (Brady 2019; Brookings Institution 2018b) and several interviewees (I#56; I#63; I#60).

249 so while I feel the sharp power criticism is exaggerated it is also plausible. […] There was just too much investment in soft power from the beginning, that was just the wrong starting point”. I#40 similarly suggested that “sharp power should arouse the reflection of the Chinese people, and should arouse the reflection of the Chinese government, including some Chinese enterprises and some reflections of the Chinese people”, which implied the validity of the criticism of China’s pursuit of soft power. Since it is “not possible to criticise other’s image of oneself”, the sharp power concept was reasonable and should be taken seriously in China (I#50). Finally, another soft power concept entrepreneur, I#54, indicated that they might establish a research project on the sharp power concept and China in order to highlight valid criticism of China’s tactics in pursuit of soft power. The problem as presented is that China’s soft power is perceived as sharp power, and the solution is to enhance the transparency and quality of China’s approach to soft power. In this way, the conceptual politics around the sharp power concept aim to deter unwanted effects in the US (i.e. an overblown reaction) at the same time as the aim is to encourage performative effects in China (i.e., China should re-evaluate its tactics in the pursuit of soft power).

Contesting sharp power A more common response to sharp power in China however was uproar among diverse groups of soft power concept entrepreneurs who began to engage in conceptual politics around sharp power to challenge the epistemic rightness of the sharp power concept, that is, the capacity of the concept to capture the reality of China’s international interactions. Specifically, three related narrative arcs were established to accomplish this feat. First, concept entrepreneurs problematised the sharp power concept as something that international audiences charge China with in an unfair “smear campaign” (I#49; Zai, J. Zhang, and Di 2018). They then provided the solution: the sharp power concept was part and parcel of an already familiar false “China threat theory” (I#42; J. Xu 2019) that “aimed at discrediting or paralysing China and disrupting our development process” (Cui 2017). Responding to a journalist’s question, Wang Guoqing, the spokesman for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Con- ference (CPPCC), said that “this kind of hype fully reflects the stubborn ideology of certain Western forces, adherence to the Cold War mentality and double standards, and is full of prejudice, discrimination and hostility towards China”, and that this “is not the first time that they have concocted new words to vilify China, and […] will not be the last time” (cited in Zai, J. Zhang, and Di 2018). The proposed course of action was to take the moral high ground: “staying sober and calm is the best response” (Cui 2017). A second solution for responding to the problem of the sharp power con-

250 cept was to contest the scientificity and therefore credibility of the concept. Hence, although it might look at first sight as if the NED was a non-profit and a non- governmental entity, it is a state-backed institution that receives its funding from Congress and has long been involved in activities around Tibetan or Xinjiang independence (Zai, J. Zhang, and Di 2018). Elsewhere, an op-ed in the Global Times (2018) argued that “different from hard power and soft power, sharp power is, in fact, a pseudo-academic concept useful for confirming Western biases”. In other words, anti-sharp power concept entrepreneurs were attempting to challenge the epistemic rightness of sharp power by emphasising the situatedness of its origins. The solution then is to understand that the concept is neither scientific nor value-neutral, and therefore cannot adequately capture reality. The third narrative arc also led Chinese observers of sharp power to contest the concept by suggesting that it revealed the double standards of the US. Thus, the problem of the sharp power concept could be resolved by emphasising that the behaviour that the concept denotes is not unique to China, but something that also adequately captures the US. For example, Y. Sun (2018) highlighted the cultural hegemony of Hollywood that penetrates China, while Cui (2017) argued that sharp power can also be understood as “Western self-introduction”. In two separate interviews, I found myself in a situation similar to my interviews in Japan where I became a source of information and a target of sharp power concept entrepreneurs. Specifically, my interview partners sought to enrol me as an emerging sharp power concept entrepreneur by suggesting that my project would be far more relevant if I were to focus on US sharp power, for example, in the Middle East (I#37; I#44). The solution in this case is thus to increase the number of phenomena that the sharp power concept can capture in an effort to draw attention away from China.

Hardening soft power Besides attracting soft power concept entrepreneurs in the US and in China, another means of conceptual politics was to “harden” the soft power concept. While soft power had always been popular among adherents to liberal internationalism, the concept had been largely disregarded or even attacked outright by observers of a more realist inclination. For them, a belief in soft power seemed utterly naive—just like liberal internationalism itself (see the discussion in chapter 5). In addition, from the beginning, the policy of facilitating China’s integration into the Western-led international order was seen as highly problematic. Ostensibly, this approach merely bought China time to rise under the pretence of peaceful intentions until it could become powerful enough to challenge the West outright. In sharp power, the US belief in soft power is presented as one of many

251 distractions that had preoccupied China watchers and politicians for too long, which meant that they had been blind to how rapidly China was becoming a threat across all dimensions of international interaction. Sharp power was thus made to resonate by confirming the view that many China watchers had completely misinterpreted China in the past (see also Friedberg 2018). In our discussion on sharp power, one interviewee for example noted that: China has put in place policies to make itself into a great powerful country at the expense of others and particularly at the expense of the United States […] [By the time] the US really figured out what the Chinese were doing they were so far along it was impossible to really stop them. And the diplomatic strategy that we opted for was very ineffective. The Chinese have continued to implement that strategy with very little push back from anywhere. […] The Chinese love dialogue. You know they’ll get you in a room and they will talk to you forever and you will come out at the end of the day with no understanding, no agreement. (I#64) Here, China is presented as exploiting a US willingness to wield its soft power. According to this narrative, it was due to a naive belief in the effectiveness of soft power that the US opened its doors wide to Chinese students and businesses, which were able to infiltrate, exploit and undermine the very structures that enabled such openness. Indeed, as we have seen in chapter 5, soft power had become closely associated with the overall engagement theory but it was now argued that “authoritarian regimes find that the way that we exchange ideas, our freedoms, is actually a weakness that can be exploited”’ (Heritage Foundation 2018; see also Hoover Institution 2018b). In the words of Fed- eral Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, the open US research and development environment means that China should be considered a “whole-of-society threat” (Redden 2018). Because sharp power stresses alleged problems with the original concept of soft power, sharp power also provides a sense of gratification for observers who are able to point out how they had told everyone about the dangers of soft power and China but not been listened to. As one of soft power’s major critics, Niall Ferguson, notes: I also agree wholeheartedly that it was naive to assume—as the past three administrations tended to—that including Russia and China ‘in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners’. A new report on China’s ‘sharp power’ by the National Endowment for Democracy shows just how wrong this was. (Ferguson 2019) Sharp power thus provided a way for realists to voice their criticism of soft

252 power. At the same time, they were able to rely on the familiar language of international institutions and public diplomacy to depict such features as dangerous if placed in the wrong hands. In this way, sharp power concept entrepreneurs successfully translated the soft power concept into a new concept with a realist twist.7 Even as such forms of conceptual politics put pressure on the soft power concept and its past relevance, the emergence of sharp power as something different to soft power ultimately legitimised the existence of genuine soft power. In so doing, the sharp power concept effectively manages to enrol observers with an attachment to soft power and an aversion to the original concept—an unthinkable combination just a few years ago.

Evoking emotions By drawing attention to the insidious challenge that China’s sharp power constitutes, concept entrepreneurs have also brought an emotional dimension into the new round of conceptual politics. While the conceptual politics around soft power primarily served to reassure observers that China’s rise would not be a disruptive one, now the central emotional resonance that concept entrepreneurs relied on was fear. That is not to say that fear of China played a marginal role in previous years. China’s image in the US has always oscillated between fas- cination and fear (C. Pan 2012; Turner 2014). What was different in the new round of conceptual politics was that soft power, something developed to give hope, had now become the cause for concern. Especially for the soft power entrepreneurs who had once embraced soft power in the hope of softening the decline and rise of states, this 180-degree turn from hope to fear contributed to a growing unease. More broadly, what makes the ideological China threat particularly alarming in the US is a growing sense of discomfort with regard to the resilience of democracies in the face of authoritarian influences. This crisis of confidence arguably has much to do with the tumultuous second half of the 2010s in US politics and Trump’s move into the White House and his staying power amid a chain of scandals. In addition, the assumption that Russian interference in US politics influenced the results of the 2016 US election greatly concerns observers who believe that US democracy is increasingly vulnerable. In the lead- up to the 2020 elections, the Trump administration has itself begun to stoke a sense of fear of election distortion, not only in terms of mail-in voting, but also in terms of Chinese and Iranian (rather than Russian) interference (Kanno- Youngs and Fandos 2020). Without going into too much depth, such discourses of fear are widespread in the public eye. A key example is the television pro-

7 As one interviewee also observed (I#63).

253 gramme Secret City, which tells the story of an Australian journalist who un- covers a web of conspiracies involving China. Another example is Soft Power - A Play With a Musical, which spotlights many flaws in US democracy and depicts a dangerous China at the epicentre of the military, political and cultural world. Either way, appealing to this sense of unease allows concept entrepreneurs to fit the sharp power concept to new audiences. Specifically, they are able to double down on the extent of the problem while also providing a solution and a course of action. The proposed solution externalises the source of the threat by suggesting that democracies do not struggle on their own, but that it is China that causes democracies to struggle. The suggested course of action is to expose China’s sharp power activities, as knowledge about them dimin- ishes their effectiveness. Hence, most reports call for transparency, vigilance and a reinvigorated emphasis on core democratic values (Brady 2017; Carde- nal et al. 2017; Diamond 2019). For this to work, a careful analysis of China’s influencing operations is required, which in turn requires the involvement of “independent experts who can offer unvarnished analysis and advice on China and Russia” (Kellogg 2018). In this way, the solution and course of action become dependent on the concept entrepreneurs who therefore establish themselves as indispensable to the problem, solution and course of action. What we see here is also the symbolic value of experts who can be trusted and can therefore provide a sense of hope and reassurance even when things look bleak. Consider for example the remarks of Robert Daly from the Wilson Center: American’s are well inoculated against Orwellian nonsense, against unattractive popular culture, and ideologies; provided that the experts and critical communities in the United States do their work in pointing out these influence operations. So one of the things I want to say to my colleagues: I am involved in these discussions about influence operations. We must be vigilant, we must be sceptical, but, chill out, America, we are way ahead on this, really, chill up, it is a little pathetic (Wilson Center 2018). Ultimately, even though it is necessary to be concerned, concept entrepreneurs emphasise that—given the right resources, and provided that they are listened to—they can address the challenge. In addition, the renewed emphasis on democracy and resilience served to restore confidence. During my fieldwork, this perhaps became clearest in the final minutes of the soft power musical. Even though depicting a future where China has replaced the US as the world’s super power, the musical ends with a stirring ballad on the staying power of democracy (“Democracy—we have the power to change—I still believe, I still believe” (Hwang and Tesori 2018)). By that point, the ensemble

254 have raised their fists into the air and around me most of the members of the audience had also raised their fists to demonstrate that they, too, believed in the resilience of democracy. Another noteworthy emotion about the new conceptual politics that several interviewees displayed was that of disappointment. On the one hand, this refers to China observers who are frustrated that China has not turned out the way they had hoped and expected (I#74). On the other hand, during many interviews with Chinese soft power concept entrepreneurs, there was palpable frustration at what they saw as the unfair sharp power concept which was “unfair” as it belittled their efforts to achieve soft power and would probably make future efforts more difficult as both the US and China itself would restrict China’s pursuit of soft power (I#53; I#42).

9.2 Reification The sharp power concept—just like soft power—constitutes a reified concept, as most observers treat sharp power as if it were real, hard and threatening, rather than a concept developed among entrepreneurs from the NED in anticipation of performative effects. In addition, sharp power has quickly become a term that is shared among observers of politics as well as participants. Apart from the methodological imprecision, not understanding how sharp power performs at the levels of observation and action obfuscates the interaction effects; that is, how the sharp power concept has shaped politics which in turn further shapes the observation of politics. As a consequence, the myriad feedback loops detailed below remain largely unseen to most observers, which means that sharp power’s travelling is largely perceived as a natural and apolitical phenomenon rather than a consequence of conceptual politics.8 The more the reification of sharp power advances, the further it strengthens the impression that China was engaged in a coordinated strategy to wield its sharp power and undermine the democratic foundations of the US. This assumption in turn further drives the policy response to the “fact” of China’s sharp power. It is interesting to note in this context that Chinese politicians do not share the terms of the sharp power discourse other than when the concept is being rejected. Given the negative connotations discussed above, it makes sense that China would not write the pursuit of sharp power into its constitution but, in this respect, the sharp power concept thus performs radically differently to the soft power concept. In principle, this could make sharp power a helpful analytical category for making sense of the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s discourse and its practice of magic weapons, if it had not looped back into US policymaking. This however goes against the field of sinology that typically argues

255 that the CPC and its actions should be understood based on their own terminology (Brady 2019; Brookings Institution 2018b). In this, we see explicit calls to share the terms of discourse with the CPC rather than rely on Western la- bels that might distort the analysis of the respective phenomena. I discuss the broader implications of this for the notion of conceptual politics further in the conclusions to this dissertation.

9.3 Feedback loops The new round of conceptual politics around soft and sharp power both represents and triggers feedback loops. Thus, the recognition of authoritarian soft power, the new conceptual vocabulary and the hardening of the soft power concept all constitute feedback effects as they respond to the phenomenon of soft power; that is, without reflection and re-evaluation of the soft power concept, the new round would not have been able to exist. As before, it is possible to distinguish between feedback loops that primarily play out at the levels of observation and loops that play out between the levels of observation and action.

9.3.1 Micro loops First, the new round of conceptual politics responds to several first-order observations, specifically the popularity and status of the soft power concept as well as China’s embrace of soft power. Compared to their own assessment of the world (second-order observation), there is a discrepancy with first-order observations that comprehend much of China’s international interactions as soft power, whereas they perceive the very same phenomenon as an appropriation of soft power in the case of interference activities. Just like Nye once disagreed with the perception of the US in decline, here concept entrepreneurs contest the assumption that China was pursuing soft power. Consequently, they have developed a conceptual intervention intended to shape first-order interpretations of the soft power concept and China’s embrace of it. What are the general effects of this conceptual intervention? In a nutshell, the sharp power concept has rapidly become a ubiquitous, hard-to-miss concept that puts a label on the phenomenon of authoritarian influencing operations. Thus, as a second-order interpretation it has interacted with first-order interpretations. In so doing, the sharp power concept has fuelled a profound re-evaluation (primarily in the US) of several related phenomena.

256 Reevaluating soft power First, the new round of conceptual politics has led to a reconsideration of soft power in terms of the epistemic rightness of the concept, the virtue of soft power, the universe of cases to which it applies and has been applied, and as its overall value and status in foreign policy. Starting with epistemic rightness, what was once a relatively firm belief that soft power reflects reality as it is and should be, the new conceptual politics has shifted towards a realisation that soft power does not adequately reflect reality, but rather reality as observers want it to be. In other words, soft power is increasingly seen as wishful thinking when it comes to China (see e.g. Browne 2017; Dinerman 2019). In terms of the virtue of soft power, although it had been clear at least since Bially Mattern’s (2005) article that soft power is not necessarily soft or good—a point Nye also makes repeatedly, (such as in Nye 2017b))—in general observers perceived soft power as a benign force for good that was morally better than its alternative of hard power. Following the new round of conceptual politics, however, it seemed abundantly clear that soft power can be misap- propriated and used for malign purposes, or that there is a sharp side to soft power. For this reason, it becomes necessary to reconsider the universe of cases to which soft power can and has been applied, and especially how far the characterisation of China’s pursuit of soft power warrants the label soft power. Ac- cordingly, past discussions of China’s soft power are being reconsidered and re- evaluated to assess whether they had ever been genuine attempts at soft power. As a consequence, China’s embrace of soft power is in retrospect seen as the beginning of a coordinated strategy for China to put in place structures that it could later leverage to influence and infiltrate Western democracies. Brady (2017, p. 5) for example dates the beginning of China’s influencing operations back to the 2000s, when she argues that the Hu Jintao government had used “Joseph Nye’s theory of soft power […] both as a justification and as a new euphemism […] for the Chinese government’s expanded and revised overseas Chinese and foreigner management techniques and propaganda offensive”. In a similar vein, Confucius Institutes that had been around since 2004 were now re-evaluated as something that had allowed China to “identify students who could become ‘agents of Chinese influence’ […] [as] part of a deliberate strategy on Beijing’s part” (Marco Rubio paraphrased in Government Publications and Press Releases 2018). Besides denouncing manifestations of China’s international presence as soft power, another form of re-evaluation lies in the incorporation of phenomena that had been around for a long time and presenting them as part and parcel of China’s sharp power strategy. The clearest example can be seen in the discussions around “united front work” (tongyi zhanxian), which was a Leninist strat-

257 egy for building strategic alliances that emerged in China as alliances between Communists and Nationalists to defeat first warlords and later the Japanese. After the consolidation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), united front work primarily served to nurture individuals or groups that would act in the interests of the CPC, while at the same time exploiting any internal divisions of the ally. The United Front Work Department (UFWD) was established under the auspices of theCentral Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) in 1942 and it still exists in a similar form to strengthen the CPC leadership. The UFWD has been strengthened since Xi Jinping took office in 2012 (R. Wang and Groot 2018) but had been active throughout the entire period, such as for example in Hong Kong since the 1980s (E. W. Y. Lee 2020). Notwithstanding the centrality of united front work to the CPC’s struggle for consent ever since its establishment, before Brady’s (2017) article on magic weapons, few observers had paid particular attention to united front work. In- triguingly, there is scant reference to the united front in either of the key works on China’s soft power.8 The same applies to newspaper articles. While there are a few exceptions,9 articles that discuss “united front” and “soft power” together only pick up after 2016, as Table 9.1 illustrates. From that moment, however, there is a rapid increase in commentary that presents united front work as an example of China’s malign soft power. Kynge, Hornby, and Anderlini (2017) for example refer to the address of the UFWD as the “headquarters of China’s push for global ‘soft power”, a multi-faceted but largely confidential mission that Xi Jinping […] has elevated to one of the paramount objectives of his administration”, while Brady (2017, p. 5) notes that soft power policies dating back to the Hu Jintao era were using the soft power concept as a “justification” and “euphemism” for united front work, and even refers to this as “soft power magic weapons” (pp. 5; 41).

Re-evaluating soft power concept entrepreneurs The re-evaluation of the soft power concept also led to a re-evaluation of the respective involvement of individual soft power concept entrepreneurs. Several interviewees noted that the sharp power concept helped put a label on something they had been uneasy with for a while—their own description of China’s international influence activities as a case of soft power. One interviewee noted with remorse that “we all said China was weak in its soft power. But we still

8 The term “united front” does not appear in either titles, keywords or abstracts in the Web of Science (WOS) dataset, and a full-text search of all the articles I have read for this dissertation finds only a short nod to the united front in Ohlberg (2013) and Shambaugh (2007). 9 Such as Ching (2014) and Cohn (2010).

258 Figure 9.1: Co-occurrence of “united front” and “soft power” in factiva 2007 to 2019

Count of publications 20

0 2007 2011 2015 2017 2019 Year

called it soft power” (I#64). This however revolves not only around individual responsibility, but also the question of collective responsibility. As one sharp power concept entrepreneur who has embraced the hardened perspective on soft power argued with obvious agitation: I think we are in deep shit and just waking up right now in a war that started many years ago. […]Sinologists had been co-opted 10 years ago […]. They are guilty but do not take responsibility. […] Now they lick their wounds, but everyone was singing Kumbaya. […] Why did we get it wrong? Because the last generation fucked it up.[…] These guys don’t speak Chinese, they are 5-star hotel bitches.[…] They only know what their handlers tell them. (I#61) As much a charge against previous generations of China watchers as a reflection on the past, China’s malign pursuit of soft power had made China watchers seemingly complacent and naive instruments of the Chinese state. In other words, not only did they not see what was really happening, they even exacer- bated the problem by discussing China’s international presence as soft power.

Re-evaluating the value of soft power Finally, the new round of conceptual politics has also led to a re-evaluation of the overall status and value of soft power in US foreign policy. To be more precise, as a consequence of the hardening of the soft power concept, whether it had ever been prudent to bet on soft power as a tool for changing China had to

259 be reconsidered. After all, US soft power had ostensibly not been particularly effective at persuading Chinese students, for example, of the superiority of the American way of life. Moreover, in retrospect it seemed that the US bet on soft power has been misguided, in so far as a belief in the effectiveness of US soft power had allowed China to enter the US hidden inside a Trojan Horse. Consequently, as Dinerman (2019) argues, “soft power in various forms will never really go away, but has been proven not to be a decisive force in world politics”.

Re-evaluating China’s rise and the engagement policy The re-evaluation of the soft power concept also contributes to a broader re- evaluation of the prospects of China’s rise being peaceful, and the related question of the engagement policy. As discussed in chapter 8, the soft power concept effectively shaped how “rise” was made sense of and what the implications of China’s rise were thought to be for prosperity and the stability of world politics. Now that it was clear that China was not pursuing genuine soft power but malign sharp power, the prospects that China’s rise would be a peaceful one seemed increasingly slim. Starting in 2016, an increasing number of observers were voicing such doubts publicly. Larry Diamond, for example, who had been one of the key figures suggesting that China would democratise sooner or later (Diamond 2012; Diamond and Myers 2000) emerged in the mid-2010s as a prominent sharp power concept entrepreneur. To him, not only is it now unlikely that China will democratise, but its interference in other states constitutes a threat to the resilience of democracies. Thus, the US has “lost sight of the fact that China is still a communist country […] [and that] Americans must also recognise that we are being played by a Chinese government that does not in the least share our values of freedom, openness, and accountability” (Hoover Institution 2018a; see also Diamond 2019). Hence, the prospects for China’s peaceful rise have been re-evaluated as increasingly poor. Importantly, this also sheds new light on the 2000s, as in retrospect China’s continued emphasis on its peaceful rise appears more and more to have been an insincere ruse (see e.g. Hornung 2020; Thayer and Friend 2018). In addition, this re-evaluation of China’s pursuit of soft power also entails a re-evaluation of the engagement policy that had characterised US China policy since the Nixon era. As discussed above, Nye’s efforts in government in the 1990s had also largely revolved around strengthening the US–Japanese alliance while simultaneously engaging with China. Now, with the emergence of a comprehensive China threat, the appropriateness of engagement was also being reassessed by former adherents to the policy. For example, Kurt Campbell who had been one of soft power’s earliest entrepreneurs, co-published an article on “how Beijing defied American expectations” in which he criticised the failed

260 engagement policy (K. M. Campbell and Ratner 2018). Similarly, soft power entrepreneur David Shambaugh, who had concluded in the 1990s that there was “no alternative but to try” engagement (Shambaugh 1996, p. 209), now called for “tough engagement” (Shambaugh 2017). Walter R. Mead, another soft power entrepreneur who in 2004 had argued that the right combination of power types (including soft power) offered a way out of the potential conflict between the US and China, was suggesting by 2018 that it was time to take off the “kid gloves” and “get tough” on China (Mead 2018; see also the discussion in S. Zhao 2017). The new round of conceptual politics and especially the sharp power concept are therefore driving a re-evaluation of diverse phenomena. In other words, as a second-order observation, it is altering first-order observations in profound ways especially in the US context. Such re-evaluations also have important implications when it comes to macro loops.

9.3.2 Macro loops Once the sharp power concept became a common thinking tool, in what ways did it loop back into the world? What sort of performative effects occurred as a consequence of the conceptual politics around the concept? In what ways does this again interact with the levels of observation? To begin with, the sharp power concept caught the attention of US policymakers and officials. As a foreign policy attaché to a US Senator who became involved in policymaking on China’s sharp power notes: It was an issue that had been rising in the consciousness of foreign policy professionals in Washington for some time; probably about a year. There have been a number of reports on sharp power, not just from China but also other countries. […] So it was just through talking among ourselves and how we thought this was an important issue and that we needed to take the lead on it from a foreign policy perspective. (I#82) The level of awareness was raised further by many hearings in the Sen- ate and the House that centred on China’s sharp power in various contexts, be it in terms of China’s export of authoritarianism (Hearing 28-385), China’s debt diplomacy (House Hearing 116-36), China’s repression of basic freedoms domestically and internationally (S. Hrg. 116-230), its influencing operations (House Hearing 115- 118), the crackdowns on Tibet (House Hear- ing 115-102) and Hong Kong (Hearing 37-960), or its competition with the US (S. Hrg. 116-215), but also in terms of the need to strengthen the US- Taiwanese relationship (House Hearing 115-147) and democracy promotion more broadly (House Hearing 115- 142). The concept of sharp power thus be-

261 came relevant in a plethora of different contexts, which built the foundations for an increasingly coordinated “whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach”10 that sought to draw attention to the phenomenon while pushing against it by defensive and offensive means. A first indication of this is an open letter sent by a bipartisan group of senators to the Trump administration that directly cites sharp power concerns as its main motivation. Specifically, the senators sought to “express […] [their] deep concern about growing Chinese influence operations around the world, and the implications for US institutions, alliances, and the international structures that support American prosperity” (Cortez Masto et al. 2018). To further support this effort, they introduced a bill, the “Countering the Chinese Government and Communist Party’s Political Influence Operations Act” to the House of Representatives and the Senate. This directly requested “an unclassified inter- agency report on the political influence operations of the Chinese Government and Communist Party with respect to the United States, and for other purposes” since it was: […] the sense of Congress that the Chinese Government and Com- munist Party’s political influence operations are not soft power intended to persuade, but sharp power intended to penetrate or cor- rupt democratic countries, foster attitudes and behavior favorable to the Chinese Government’s interest through disinformation, coercion, and other means, and to widen the scope of authoritarian influence globally” (H.R. 6010, p. 5, emphasis added; see also S. 3171).11 The sharp power concept thus appeared directly in legislative proposals. Shortly thereafter, several agencies addressed in Cortez Masto et al. (2018) also began to concretely respond to China’s sharp power attempts. For instance, the FBI has repeatedly emphasised how the CPC uses Chinese students for espionage of intellectual property, establishes Confucius Institutes to spread propaganda, pressures Chinese students to self-censor, monitors students and staff and uses financial leverage to discourage speakers with anti-government views from speaking (Redden 2018; Wray 2020a). In its 2019 worldwide threat assessment, the Office of the Director of Na- tional Intelligence affirmed its concern about China’s sharp power and highlighted China’s “expanding […] ability to shape information and discourse relating to China abroad […] [and that] China’s intelligence services will exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific com-

10 A terminology going back to FBI director Wray’s testimony in early 2018 (Redden 2018). 11 Both reintroduced in next Congress, remain in this phase at the time of writing.

262 munity, using a variety of means” (Coats 2019, pp. 7; 14). Although it does not refer to this as “sharp power”, these statement clearly echo the main concerns raised in the NED’s sharp power report. The State Department has also become increasingly involved in efforts to counter Chinese influencing activities. An example of this is the evolution of the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which was established in 2016 to “counter propaganda and disinformation from international terrorist organizations and foreign countries” (State Department 2018). Although the GEC was set back by the State Department’s general hiring freeze (I#57), it has slowly developed into a coordinating institution that cooperates with various partners in the US and its allies. While originally focused primarily on Islamist propaganda, its main focus is now on disinformation campaigns from Russia and China.12 As a consequence of the conceptual politics around soft power and sharp power, we can also observe a change in funding priorities. The GEC for example has seen annual increases in its funding.13 The John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 forbids the funding by the DOD of language training at universities that host Confucius Institutes. Although it is in principle possible to obtain a waiver, none of the institutes that applied were granted an exemption (T. F. Chan 2019). At the same time, the Confucius In- stitutes were also targeted through the Foreign Influence Transparency Act (S. 2583 (115); S. 2583 (115))14 which requires organisations such as Confucius Institutes to be registered as foreign agents, and forces universities to disclose donations and gifts of more than USD 50,000 from foreign sources. Against these odds—and especially having to choose between US funding or Chinese funding—it is highly likely that most universities will opt to shut down their Confucius Institutes. In one of the clearest examples of the performative effects of sharp power in terms of funding, a report that accompanies S. Rept. 116-126 notes that: Numerous reports and studies document the strategic objective of Moscow and Beijing to undermine democracy globally. The NED coined the term “sharp power” to describe the targeted efforts by our adversaries to expand their illiberal spheres of influence, which is “not principally about attraction or even persuasion” but “distraction and manipulation” intended to shake the foundations of democratic institutions and the confidence of citizens in demo-

12 A hearing in 2020 for example only discusses Russia and China (Stm. of Lea Gabrielle). 13 From $20.2 million to $55 million, plus additional funding from the US Department of Defense (DOD). For 2021, it has requested $138 million (Stm. of Lea Gabrielle). 14 Both reintroduced in 2019, remain in this phase.

263 cratic processes and practices. […] The Committee’s response to this ideological cold war, as described in the Introduction to this report, is a revitalization of democracy programs funded by the act, including a doubling of funding for the NED (S. 2583 (116), p. 14, emphasis added) This would have increased the NED’s funding from $180 million to $360 million. Eventually, the NED received $300 million, in what still constitutes a significant increase (H. R. 1865). As is noted above, the NED also funds organisations to strengthen their capacity to respond to China’s sharp power. In the same budget, $300 million is also dedicated to a “Countering Chinese Influence Fund” for the State Department, the purpose of which is to “increase transparency and accountability associated with the BRI [Belt and Road Ini- tiative] and other economic and influence activities of the PRC” in South East Asia (S. Rept. 116-126, p. 185). Besides these examples, there are also countless other ways in which the US has sought to address the comprehensive China threat, such as when it cancels the visa of Chinese students with any ties to the military (Redden 2020), forces the sale of the Chinese-owned TikTok app in the US (Allyn 2020) or closes Chinese consulates because of alleged espionage (BBC News 2020). That these efforts constitute nothing short of a paradigm shift can be seen from a document published by the White House on the “United States Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China”, which details the challenges that China poses to the US. Besides economic and security challenges, it also discusses at length China’s challenge to US values in language that closely mirrors the new round of conceptual politics. As such, it notes that China’s behaviour at home is irreconcilable with US values, but also that China exports such practices overseas using a “heavily resourced set of propaganda tools”, “uses a range of actors to advance its interests in the United States and other open democracies”, compels “Chinese nationals and others to undertake a range of malign behaviors” and “denies reciprocal access to American counterpart institutions”. Because of these challenges, the report reasons that “competition necessarily includes engagement with the PRC, but our engagements are selec- tive and results-oriented, with each advancing our national interests”. Hence, it “reflects a fundamental reevaluation of how the United States understands and responds to the leaders of China” (The White House 2020b). Over the course of June 2020, several senior officials doubled down on these efforts in a series of coordinated speeches. National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien for example focused on the CPC’s ideology and motives. Citing

264 the Hoover Institution (2018b),15 he argued that “over the past decade, the Party has invested billions of dollars into overseas propaganda operations to great effect” (The White House 2020a), and that the US had got it wrong as it did “not pay heed to the CPC’s ideology” as a Marxist-Leninist organisation. A little later, FBI Director Wray echoed the main content of the new conceptual politics and highlighted among other things Chinese threats to academia and the malign influences which are “subversive, undeclared, criminal, or coercive attempts to sway our government’s policies, distort our country’s public discourse, and undermine confidence in our democratic processes and values” (Wray 2020b). A week later, Attorney General William Barr drew more attention to how “China is leveraging its economic power to change America”, such as when it comes to casting decisions in Hollywood. Like the others, he focused on the threat to academia (W. P. Barr 2020). Last but not least, State Secretary Pompeo (2020) brought the implications of these efforts to the point where he argued that: We have to admit a hard truth. We must admit a hard truth that should guide us in the years and decades to come, that if we want to have a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century of which Xi Jinping dreams, the old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done. We must not continue it and we must not return to it.” (Pompeo 2020)

As detailed in this section, the performative effects of the new round of conceptual politics are therefore profound. By travelling to the level of action, the sharp power concept has become a key driving force of the ideological China threat, which has made it possible to present China as a threat across all dimensions, and one that warrants a whole-of-government and whole-of-society response. Finally, it is important to note that while the notion of an ideological China threat has captured large parts of the US foreign policy elites and politicians on both sides of the aisle, this should not be misinterpreted as an all-encompassing consensus that China constitutes an existential threat. There has also been significant pushback, in particular with respect to the terminology of sharp power, the magnitude of the problem, its relation to other problems facing the US and the appropriateness of the US response. In other words, we are already seeing first responses to the performance of sharp power as a social fact. Susan Shirk, a renowned China scholar with experience in the State Department, for example, notes in an addendum to Diamond (2019, p. 217): I respectfully dissent from what I see as the report’s overall inflated assessment of the current threat of Chinese influence seeking on

15 An earlier version of Diamond (2019) that explicitly discusses the sharp power concept.

265 the United States. […] The cumulative effect of this expansive inventory that blurs together legitimate with illegitimate activities is to overstate the threat that China today poses to the American way of life. […] Right now, I believe the harm we could cause our society by our own overreactions actually is greater than that caused by Chinese influence seeking. During my interviews in 2018, many China experts also emphasised that they felt that the current reaction in the US was overblown and was distracting the public and politicians from other important problems (I#56; I#60; I#74; I#63). In this, we also see the ambiguity of the sharp power concept, as for many it is not clear how it would be any different from smart power, other than in denoting bad behaviour. Despite the efforts to coin a new term—or perhaps precisely because of them—some observers therefore reject the concept as a fairly useless addition to the power literature, as “nothing but ‘unsmart’ power” (Xin 2018). The terminology of sharp power is also criticised by some of the officials tasked with countering China’s sharp power. As one interviewee lamented, “sharp power is a catchy phrase that has no inherent meaning and, you know, I think it just obscures kind of a deeper understanding of what we’re really talking about” (I#57). In addition, the conspicuous silence from scholars and theorists of power should also be noted. Perhaps it is still too early, but based on private conversations, it is highly questionable whether sharp power will ever be seen as a legitimate power concept that warrants our attention. As Wiseman (2019, p. 148) notes, “it remains to be seen whether ‘sharp power’ will usefully be added to the power lexicon as an analytically distinct subset of hard power, or an unnecessary addition to […] ‘hard’, ‘soft’ and ‘smart’ power categories”. Compared to the soft power concept, there has therefore been a lack of scientific authority lent to the sharp power concept. What can be seen from the above is how the conceptual politics around soft power has changed the arena, so that new concepts (even if they look familiar) must necessarily build on concepts such as soft power. In this sense, it reflects the trappings of the soft power concept and how feedback loops eventually develop a life of their own. At the same time, sharp power seems to have accomplished its goal of drawing attention to the phenomenon of China’s influencing operations, meaning that there is perhaps less of a need to further advance its performance. Another issue is the sustainability of the sharp power concept and the new conceptual politics beyond the current Trump administration. On the one hand, as I have illustrated in this chapter, the assumption of an ideological China threat is widespread and not just a phenomenon of Trump and his supporters. That said, the new round of conceptual politics is occurring in the context of Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US elections and accusations of col-

266 lusion against Trump and his administration. In addition, the 2020 electoral campaign looms large in the background, as does the COVID 19 pandemic. Whether a Biden administration would scale back on some of the issues discussed is difficult to judge, although it seems rather unlikely given that US public opinion appears generally to embrace the Trump administrations’ narrative on China (see also Pugliese 2020). Either way, all of these issues are likely to interact with the new ideological China threat, a discussion of which is beyond the scope of this chapter. Nonetheless, as has become clear, an unprecedented consensus is emerging across large parts of public life that China’s sharp power constitutes a grave threat to the US, and this is beginning to be part and parcel of politics proper. This effectively heralds the end of the engagement policy, which has been the cornerstone of US China policy since the Nixon era.

9.4 Conclusions By relying on the thinking tools of the analytical framework, this chapter has shed light on a new round of conceptual politics that emerged around the soft power concept and US policy on China. An analysis of the central concept entrepreneurs and their means of conceptual politics has shown how the conceptual intervention of sharp power was able to decouple authoritarian soft power from genuine soft power, and how it produced a good fit with potential new audiences. Quite soon, sharp power began to perform as an analytical tool and as a reified social fact. By focusing on the interaction effects between the levels of observation and action, the analytical framework has illustrated how the sharp power concept has led to far-reaching re-evaluations of soft power, China’s rise and the engagement policy. As detailed further in an examination of macro loops, this has begun to perform in politics with profound implications for the future of US–Chinese relations . The thinking tools developed in chapter 2 have been helpful in bringing these complex dynamics to light, although the question of travelling was least insightful, no doubt since the concept of sharp power has not been around for very long.

267 268 Part III

Conclusion

269

10. Conclusion

This dissertation had three overarching aims: first, it set out to further the field of critical concept studies by expanding the notion of conceptual politics through a better recognition of feedback loops, reification and travel; second, to conceptualise conceptual politics and develop an analytical framework that could be leveraged in empirical research; and, third, to study conceptual politics in practice by conducting an in-depth case study. The central research questions that this dissertation sought to answer were: How can we study conceptual politics? How do feedback loops, reification and travel shape conceptual politics? And what are the consequences of conceptual politics for world politics? In addressing these issues, I first conceptualised conceptual politics—that is, the ways in which actors coin, hone, revisit and promote a concept in anticipation of performative effects—and firmly anchored the dynamics of feedback loops, reification and travel into an analytical framework of conceptual politics. I subsequently studied the phenomenon of the soft power concept in the context of the US, Japan and China. Overall, this dissertation has taken an abductive approach to conceptual politics and has continuously used empirical insights to further reflect on the thinking tools of the analytical framework. In this concluding chapter, I present and synthesise the key findings of this dissertation and its contribution to our understanding of the soft power concept and power shifts in the context of the US, Japan and China, as well as to the emerging field of critical concept studies and the discipline of International Relations. The last section makes a final assessment of the analytical thinking tools and discusses ways to move the research agenda forward.

10.1 Key findings and contributions 10.1.1 The soft power concept, power shifts, and the US, Japan and China This dissertation has analysed the concept of soft power in great depth. Since soft power originated at Nye’s kitchen table, the concept has become a cornerstone of the study and practice of international relations. However, the phe-

271 nomenon of the concept was previously poorly understood. Many observers had a pejorative attitude to soft power or were preoccupied with fixing the concept by honing its ability to accurately capture reality (Ferguson 2003; Gal- larotti 2011; Layne 2010). Others held that soft power was a case of a concept that practitioners picked up simply because it was useful or well framed (Eriks- son and Norman 2011; Fukushima 2011; I#06). A final group perceived soft power as a form of discourse that (re)produces identities (Callahan 2015; Kise- leva 2015). The empirical chapters of this dissertation have clarified how existing understandings of the soft power concept are too simplistic. First and foremost, the journey of the concept was far more dynamic and complex than the vacuity argument suggests. Specifically, the chapters have shown how soft power has constantly evolved as its role as an analytical tool has repeatedly interacted with its performance in politics, for instance as China and Japan each observed and responded to the other’s pursuit of soft power (chapters 7 and 8). Second, the dissertation has revealed how the concept’s “usefulness” had to be carefully crafted and defended by many concept entrepreneurs in concrete contexts, from Nye’s original efforts to insert the concept into the decline debate (chapter 5), to Japanese concept entrepreneurs who relied on soft power’s common sense status to steer the debate on Japan’s international role (chapter 7) or Chinese concept entrepreneurs who emphasised how much of traditional Chi- nese philosophy anticipated soft power so that soft power could appear to be an unavoidable part of China’s political culture (chapter 8). Treating soft power’s usefulness as normal and inevitable downplays the concrete efforts made to make soft power a thing in academia and politics. In a similar fashion, the conceptualisation of soft power as a discourse also glosses over the agency and persistence required to establish soft power’s staying power. At the same time, the dissertation has also brought to light how the soft power concept has often eluded attempts at discipline, and developed a dynamic of its own that was beyond the control of any given concept entrepreneur, such as when soft power’s translations into Chinese led to a new site of conceptual politics in the US that led in turn to the emergence of the offspring concept of sharp power (chapter 9). Even when concept entrepreneurs tried to avoid soft power’s “discourse trap”, such as in China (chapter 8), there was still something about the soft power of soft power that kept people firmly in its grip. This dissertation has illustrated the value of subjecting a concept such as soft power to critical concept analysis, which understands concepts to be open, contestable and often contested interpretive devices with performative effects. It has revealed how the soft power concept has become a key site of politics with profound ramifications for the world. In particular, through an analysis of the

272 role of conceptual politics and the dynamics of feedback loops, the interaction effects between the various levels of observation and action; reification, the treatment of soft power as if it was real; and travel across space, levels, time and contexts, it became clear that there was nothing inevitable, normal or apolitical about the trajectory of the soft power concept. As has been demonstrated throughout the dissertation, soft power is a term that is shared by all kinds of observers from academics to pundits, politicians, journalists, cartoonists or playwrights, and from Americans to Japanese and Chinese. None of them hold sovereign rights to the meaning, scope or applicability of the soft power concept. Precisely for this reason, contestation around soft power does not simply entail minor spats about the best way to describe reality from the outside, but questions the kind of role soft power can and should play in political life. In its performance as an analytical tool, soft power has shaped and interacted with various concepts and debates, from decline (chapters 5 and 7) to rise (chapter 8), power (especially chapters 5 and 8), great power status (chapters 5, 7, 8), peace (chapter 7), identity (especially chapters 7 and 8) and engagement policy (chapters 5 and 9). These contestations are particularly consequential since the concept has not simply remained anchored at the levels of observation, but emerged as a practice in and social fact of politics, be it in terms of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State (chapter 6), Japan’s strategic communication (chapter 7) or the Constitution of the Communist Party of China (CPC) (chapter 8). The analytical focus on feedback loops has revealed how such performances of the soft power concept in politics have further shaped soft power’s performance as an analytical tool, which in turn has further shaped its performance in politics. As a reified concept, most observers treat soft power as if it were real and something that states can invest in, amass and wield, rather than an analytical tool that originated in Joseph Nye’s mind all those years ago in his Massachusetts kitchen. Consequently, it now seems as if soft power has always been part and parcel of politics, and as if human agency and persistence never played a role in the concept’s trajectory. This gradual entrenchment of soft power as a normal and common sense way of doing politics has opened up a plethora of dynamics and sites of conceptual politics that could never have been anticipated at the beginning. For instance, soft power’s reification means that the concept has assumed the role of a socialising tool in that it has incentivised the states examined in this dissertation to take soft power seriously both in global politics and in their respective foreign policies. This revolved around the prestige and status that the “having” of soft power indicates and that concept entrepreneurs have continually underscored and appealed to, be they the consultants at Portland Communica- tions with their soft power rankings (chapter 6), the official in the Ministry of

273 Foreign Affairs of Japan (MOFAJ) who showed me how Japan scored better in terms of its soft power (chapter 7) or the Chinese officials who constantly requested assessments of their soft power performance from some of the original concept entrepreneurs (chapter 8). At the same time, as a consequence of how soft power emerged as a legitimate and valued pillar of “power”, and in this role shaped the common understanding of what it meant to be a “great power”, soft power also came to play an important role in the context of power shift debates and policy responses. While great power used to imply military and economic power, over the past 30 years it has become increasingly common to think of soft power as a third dimension of power (especially discussed in chapter 6). Thus, since power shifts imply a change in the distribution of various power resources, the concepts of decline and rise have become contingent on losing or gaining soft power, respectively. For the US and Japan, both of which have struggled with the perception of being states in decline, as this dissertation has found, the soft power concept has done much to reassure political elites and the public that decline can be averted as long as soft power is properly understood, valued and practiced. Soft power has therefore made the prospect of decline less alarming. This in turn has made policies intended to deter other states from rising less necessary and tempting. In this way, soft power undergirded the Bill Clinton administration’s engagement policy on China (chapter 5) but also informed the re-strengthening of the US–Japanese alliance in the 1990s (chapter 7). At the same time, soft power has also made the rise of China appear less dangerous for world politics, either because China was still lagging behind or because a China that embraced soft power was unlikely to disrupt the international order (chapter 8). For China, alongside the domestic translations and contestations, we have seen in chapter 8 that the soft power concept provided an incentive to rise “softly” as the concept became closely associated with China’s quest for great power status. In these ways, although not a sufficient cause in the traditional sense, the soft power concept has played an important role in averting a Japanese or US “hard” decline and facilitating China’s “soft” rise over the past three decades.

The future of soft power The dissertation has found that concepts such as soft power require sustained efforts to ensure that the epistemically right understanding of reality succeeds and the concept becomes entrenched. Short of such sustained efforts, what becomes of concepts such as soft power? What is the staying power of soft power beyond the efforts of concept entrepreneurs such as Nye and others? What would it mean if the concept vanished or was no longer an inescapable term of politics; that is, what would happen if the concept was no longer a

274 social fact of political life? A key finding of this dissertation is that it was the people who believed in and relied on the soft power concept to make sense of the world who fuelled soft power over the years. Indeed, it was precisely because soft power had become a social fact internationally that it assumed the role of an incentivisation tool domestically for concept entrepreneurs in the states investigated. Had that not been the case, there would have been no reason for states such as China and Japan to strive for soft power. At the same time, had it not been for China’s and Japan’s embrace of soft power, there would have been no reason to further promote the concept’s epistemic rightness in these countries. In this respect, it is the reification of the soft power concept that sustains soft power’s staying power, in so far as the concept can only assume such dynamics if people treat it as if it were real. In principle, there is little to indicate that soft power’s performance as an analytical tool and as a policy tool might decline in the near future. Especially in Japan and the US, scholarly interest and news articles continue to grow, and Japan’s most recent bluebook for instance still emphasises soft power (MO- FAJ 2019a). If Trump is not quite seen as the embodiment of soft power, his presidency is regularly criticised as squashing soft power, which at least for the foreseeable future implies that observers will hold on to the concept to be able to advance such criticisms (Bach 2018; Nye 2020). In addition, as discussed in chapter 9, the debate around sharp power as soft power’s offspring has oc- cupied a central position in US debates on the rise of China, and has begun to be taken seriously in Japan. Simply because sharp power requires soft power as a reference point, it is unlikely that soft power will vanish any time soon. On the contrary, it is reasonable to assume that sharp power will reinvigorate the concept as new concept entrepreneurs emerge who rely on both concepts to make sense of phenomena such as China’s influencing campaigns. That said, as chapter 9 found, sharp power has seriously challenged the soft power concept, and we have already seen how it has triggered a profound re-evaluation of soft power and its role in US–China policy in the past three decades. As a relatively recent development, sharp power’s future is unclear and it is still too early to judge how lasting the challenge will be. What is clear is that soft power was already having to respond to and accommodate its unruly offspring, and has changed as a consequence, for instance through its “hardening”. In China, the situation looks somewhat different, as it has done for a few years. As we have seen in chapter 4, Chinese soft power commentary has declined significantly since 2013. In addition, the key site of conceptual politics around soft power engages a domestic audience grappling with identity questions, and far less with the global soft power discourse. At the same time, China’s international behaviour also seems to have become more assertive at

275 home and abroad since the early 2010s. Many of these issues have been unfolding for several years, and we should be cautious about assuming a radical break in China’s international behaviour. As discussed in detail in chapter 9, the rapidly growing perception of an ideological China threat owes much to the emergence of the sharp power concept. That said, one response that I came across repeatedly—especially from Chinese concept entrepreneurs—was surprise in my interest in soft power, since they felt that soft power was a phenomenon from the past that had little bearing on China in 2018. Indeed, one overarching sentiment that I regularly encountered—from US and Japanese concept entrepreneurs too—was a sense of nostalgia for an era, pre-Xi and pre-Trump, when the concept still meant something in China and the US, and when it still seemed to be possible for the US, Japan and China to coexist without inevitable conflict. From soft power’s birth in the 1990s to its coming of age in the 2000s and the fairly recent birth of its offspring, are we now witnessing soft power’s dy- ing breath? This seems unlikely if we consider how far the concept has travelled, how many concept entrepreneurs have committed themselves to it over the years and especially the various distinct translations with their own sites of conceptual politics that are likely to continue with little consideration for the original site of conceptual politics. Hence, this dissertation is by no means to be understood as a lengthy eulogy for the soft power concept. Nonethe- less, it should be clear that we find ourselves at a critical moment in the life of soft power, and how far concept entrepreneurs in the coming years will keep the concept alive as an epistemically right representation of reality following Nye’s original conception, or whether we will see the beginnings of soft power’s transformation into something completely different that has no bearing on the original site of conceptual politics around the concept, remains to be seen.

10.1.2 Critical concept studies This dissertation has contributed to the emerging field of critical concept studies by systematically introducing and critically discussing the strengths, particularities and blind spots of various critical concept approaches. In so doing, I have brought together a wide variety of literature characterised by similar concerns but that had previously remained disconnected. Furthermore, the dissertation has advanced critical concept studies by firmly incorporating and analysing the notions of feedback loops, reification and travel into the investigation of conceptual politics. With regard to feedback loops, as discussed in chapter 2, critical concept scholarship has underscored the importance of feedback loops but not fully

276 thought through what it means to study the interaction effects between the interpretations of the world (micro loops), and the world itself (macro-loops). Specifically, the existence of feedback loops as a dynamic of conceptual politics has been assumed but thus far barely empirically investigated (Guzzini 2000; Ish-Shalom 2013; for an exception, see Bartelson 2018). This dissertation has addressed this lacuna by first conceptualising feedback loops in chapter 2, and then exploring how they unfold in practice in the empirical chapters. The findings of the empirical chapters underscore the centrality of feedback loops to conceptual politics, and that feedback loops can be studied in depth and in practice. Each of the individual chapters sheds light on a plethora of different feedback effects, from micro feedback loops as soft power looped from observer to observer, or more broadly as the concept has interacted with the interpretation of other concepts and often led to their re-evaluation, such as peace in Japan (chapter 7), decline in the US (chapter 5) or identity in China (chapter 8) and, more recently, the ways that sharp power has interacted with soft power (chapter 9). The focus on macro feedback loops has revealed how soft power’s performance as a social fact has repeatedly interacted with its analytical performance, such as when Chinese observers responded to Japan’s pursuit of soft power policies, which in turn led to an interpretation of China’s embrace of soft power elsewhere. The analytical focus on feedback loops has worked well to draw out just how much practical work goes into the making and dissemination of a concept by focusing attention on the concrete efforts of concept entrepreneurs to respond to the concept’s earlier performance—be it by relying on soft power, tweaking soft power or rejecting soft power—to steer the concept’s future performance. In essence, this has allowed me to study concepts from the bottom-up. Once the concept has looped, however, the analytical focus on feedback loops has also clearly illustrated how the concept’s various performances further enable or constrain conceptual politics, so we can also make sense of the concept from the top-down. For example, Nye’s persistence has been a key reason for the various performances of the soft power concept but the more the concept underwent feedback loops, the more complicated it became for Nye and others to oversee and steer soft power’s performances. In this way, feedback loops help to address the role of agency and structure within an analytical framework. By drawing attention to various interaction effects between observations and politics, the dissertation has also advanced a dynamic understanding of the relation between academia and politics that goes beyond the common tale of two distinct and separate worlds. Specifically, it has drawn out the interaction effects between observations in the academic world and in the world of politics. Although previous critical concept studies have underscored the political nature of concepts, most have also struggled to deal with the demarcation between

277 politics and science when it comes to the notion of political actorhood. Ish- Shalom (2013) and P. T. Jackson (2006) for instance suggest that it is possible to be a theoretician or an academic without engaging in politics. In both cases, however, what makes someone a political actor seems to be primarily an active choice to cross the “gulf” between academia and politics. From this logic, as long as we do not choose to be political actors, the ways in which academic knowledge is used in politics is dependent on what politicians do with it, and we cannot be truly held responsible. Unsurprisingly—because it legitimises the soft power concept as an epistemically right representation of reality—this line of argumentation is also one that Nye follows in his reflections on his life as an academic who went into politics and came back (Nye 2009). It also comes out well in Nye (2017b, p. 3), where he notes that “concepts such as soft power are like children. As an academic or a public intellectual, you can love and discipline them when they are young, but as they grow they wander off and make new company, both good and bad. There is not much you can do about it, even if you were present at the creation.” Nye’s quote here is particularly intriguing, not just because he walks a line between taking credit and deflecting responsibility, but also because the example underscores the problems with distinguishing between academic and political actorhood, and when precisely one segues into the other. If Nye became a political actor by choice, when did this occur? Was it when he entered government in the 1970s, when he coined soft power in the late 1980s, when he noticed it was popular among politicians in the 1990s, after 9/11 when there seemed to be a window of opportunity or when he first travelled to China to discuss soft power? Arguably, political actorhood cannot be contingent on the self-interpretation and ethos of those who we study. Rather than debating what could and should be the ideal relation between academia and politics, as this dissertation shows, there is much to be gained from a more honest conceptualisation of political actorhood that understands that we as scholars are—like those we study— engaged in politics once we start to interpret a concept’s various performances. Thus, this dissertation has repeatedly drawn attention to my own role in the research process, be it in terms of my early efforts to grapple with soft power as an analytical concept that I seemed to be unable to fix (chapter 3), or the various roles that I assumed especially during the interviews as soft power’s audience, teacher, assessor, target or promoter. In that sense, the focus on the politics of concepts shifts our understanding of the concept of politics and should invite critical scholars to consider more broadly what political actorhood means. Moving on, while existing critical concept scholarship has drawn our attention to the issue of reification, it has treated it predominantly as a methodological problem to be averted, rather than a phenomenon to study in its own

278 right (especially P. T. Jackson 2006; Levine 2012). After discussing and conceptualising reification in chapter 2, this dissertation has shed light on the consequences when actors (deliberately or not) treat concepts as if they were real. It is clear that this often led to tautological accounts, where observers did not understand (or ignored) the problem of relying on the same analytical tools as political actors to understand how those said political actors make sense of, justify or practice politics. Specifically, I encountered many examples of scholarly accounts that rely on a discussion of soft power as an analytical tool and how to measure it. Based on this, these accounts set out to analyse the soft power of a given state without realising that—or perhaps sometime in the knowledge that—the state in question practices soft power precisely because of these exercises. Perhaps the clearest example is how soft power rankings respond to the ways in which states try to wield soft power by conceptualising soft power, which means that states try to score high on soft power based on addressing these categories. In addition to methodologically imprecise accounts, we have also seen that the reification of concepts contributes much to the concealment of the human origins of concepts, and the role that human agency and persistence play in making concepts appear to be social facts of political life. In that sense, reification is a key mechanism for depoliticising and normalising political orders. The more normal or common sense a concept appears, the easier it is to engage in new rounds of conceptual politics precisely because it becomes possible to rely on the facticity of a given concept to engage in politics. For instance, time and again concept entrepreneurs have appealed to the importance of soft power in international politics to argue that something had to be done or abstained from, such as in Japan when concept entrepreneurs suggested that the US–Japanese alliance was key to the country’s soft power (chapter 7), or in China where concept entrepreneurs suggested that the government’s tight grip on society stands in the way of increasing the country’s soft power (chapter 8). If states did not believe that soft power was real, important and achievable, there would simply be no opening for such forms of conceptual politics. Another effect of reification that became clear through the empirical analysis is how it can lend itself to potential misjudgements when it comes to the relevance and status of a given concept in a given context. For instance, as seen in chapters 8 and 9, the fact that all observers of politics—from academic observers to politicians and journalists—relied on soft power to make sense of the world, at the same time as soft power was also practiced in the world, meant that it was easy to overestimate the degree of cohesion and coordination when it comes to soft or sharp power strategies, which as we have seen had profound implications for US policy on China. In short, as this dissertation has illustrated, reification must necessarily be firmly anchored in any critical

279 concept analysis. Finally, existing critical concept scholarship had largely ignored the travel of concepts. In particular, with the exception of a few select examples, critical concept studies has focused on conceptual politics as it occurs in the West, and specifically in liberal democratic settings. As argued in chapter 2, this has meant that recipients of conceptual politics were often treated as passive bystanders in conceptual politics that either accepted a revised concept or did not. In addition, there was no recognition in critical concept studies of what it means for the conduct of conceptual politics when a concept begins to travel across time, space and contexts. By drawing on the area studies literature, I was able to address this lacuna and think through what it means to think of concepts in motion. Particularly helpful was the concept of translators as intermediaries who navigate the space between the global discourse on a concept such as soft power and its local manifestations. As was seen especially in chapter 8, translators have often exerted a subtle but important role in setting the stage for conceptual politics when a new concept emerges, be it the translators of Nye (1992), who induced a sceptical account of soft power, H. Wang’s (1993) cultural focus or Nye’s (2005) efforts to ensure that Chinese audiences understood how much soft power was baked into China’s past. Thus, by examining the involvement of translators, it is possible to draw out particularly interesting insights into the power asymmetries in which translations occur and where sending and receiving sides do not meet as equals. Perhaps the greatest value of the analytical focus on travel was that it focused attention on the agency of recipients of conceptual politics. New concept entrepreneurs did not just embrace soft power and rely on it simply because they felt it was a useful concept, and were not duped into believing in its epistemic rightness. Instead, they often became involved because they relied on soft power to open up space to engage in conceptual politics in their own contexts. In a sense, these findings are reminiscent of Critical Security Studies (CSS) on securitisation that carved out greater space for the audience (see e.g. Wilhelm- sen 2016). In Japan, for instance, many concept entrepreneurs emerged because it became possible to rely on soft power to suggest what Japan should or should not do, be it invest in cultural industries, strengthen the US–Japanese alliance or adapt its security legislation. Far from just mimicking Nye’s original conception, suffering from an infatuation with foreign concepts (T. U. Berger 2018) or falling prey to wishful or hopeful thinking (Leheny 2006; White 2011), it was clear that Japanese soft power concept entrepreneurs relied on, broadened and promoted the soft power concept’s performance in Japan and beyond, and how they often successfully enrolled new and old concept entrepreneurs such as Nye so that their own efforts at conceptual politics appeared legitimate.

280 In a similar fashion, the analytical focus on travel has also revealed that China was in no way a passive recipient of conceptual politics that simply failed to properly understand and implement the soft power concept as taught by Nye and others. Rather, we have witnessed the emergence of Chinese concept entrepreneurs who relied on the global common sense status of soft power, inserted it into a framework familiar to many Chinese (including the government), such as Chinese traditional culture, not to copy or mimic Nye’s original conception, but to steer China’s rise from within. At the same time, other Chinese concept entrepreneurs (especially governmental ones) emerged who tweaked and narrowed down the soft power concept so that it was reduced to issues such as culture in the hope that unwanted performative effects on China’s political culture could be averted. Thus, the dissertation has advanced a far more nuanced account of local translations that avoids treating them as sub-par copies of the original. Instead, it has drawn attention to how concept entrepreneurs appeal to, challenge or exploit the soft power concept in both domestic and international contexts. This, in turn, has done much to move away from the presumption of a single global soft power discourse and allowed us to focus on the manifold sites of conceptual politics that in some cases engage or challenge the original and global context, such as with Japan, and in other cases simply ignore it. Especially when concepts take on new roles and begin to function as norms or policies, we need to be particularly attentive to the type of role they assume, where they come from and what they do in such roles. A focus on conceptual politics in concrete regional contexts has also shown some distinct differences in the scope of the conceptual politics that can occur. While I do not suggest that academic concept entrepreneurs in Japan or the US can engage in conceptual politics without any real-world implications, we have seen that conceptual politics in China occurs in a more volatile space, given the authoritarian nature of the state. Specifically, it was possible to trace the interplay between the conceptual politics around soft power and the government’s response to it, which offered an intriguing insight into a form of politics that might otherwise have been missed by remaining focused on conceptual politics as it unfolds in Western countries. Finally, the focus on travelling has also invited us to consider what happens to conceptual politics once they are set in motion. Specifically, we have seen how the multiplication of concept entrepreneurs and translations has made it far more complex and challenging to ensure that the epistemically right understanding of a concept succeeds. Thus, in the early days of soft power, Nye and others enjoyed relative freedom to engage in conceptual politics to encourage performative effects—such as arethinking of decline—simply because there were as yet few others who relied on the same terms of discourse. Once the concept had travelled, however, the role of Nye as inventor shifted to that of a

281 herder of the soft power concept scrambling to maintain order over the concept and its manifold translations. Short of letting go of soft power, this concretely meant that Nye needed to reward, fend off or amend translations depending on how they related to his conception of soft power. An additional effect that the analytical concern with travel has revealed is the changing nature of feedback loops as the soft power concept travelled across time and space. Early on, feedback loops unfolded primarily at the level of observation but the more the concept travelled, the more observers began to respond to soft power’s prior and future performance in politics. In these ways, the notion of travel has helped us to gain a more complete picture of conceptual politics in practice. Although the analytical framework has not discussed the issue of contestation in detail, one aspect that the analysis of conceptual politics in practice has revealed is the many different facets that contestation—in essence the means of conceptual politics—can assume. Most clear are the effects of what can be called boundary work, based on the work of Science and Technology Stud- ies (STS) scholar Gieryn (2001). We have repeatedly seen how concept entrepreneurs have engaged in conceptual politics around the soft power concept through contestation over which phenomena can be subsumed under the category of soft power and those that are presented as too alien to fit. Specifi- cally, we have seen distinct cycles of broadening and narrowing efforts. In China, for instance, the concept was first narrowed down so that culture was soft power’s main content, but soon culture itself was broadened again so that the sources of soft power also became broader again. In a similar fashion, concept entrepreneurs in Japan sought to broaden soft power so that issues such as Japan’s changing security legislation could fit. Once China’s embrace of soft power became apparent, however, Japanese concept entrepreneurs began to narrow down the soft power concept primarily to exclude non-democratic sources so that China’s soft power could no longer be labelled and understood as such. We see here an important parallel with CSS, in so far as the 1990s also saw many efforts to broaden the security concept, but these efforts were soon coupled with efforts to challenge political actors when they sought to broaden the security threat concept (Fierke 2015). Another important way to contest the soft power concept lay in the contestation around the concept’s scientificity. As we have seen time and again, Nye and others had to carefully defend soft power’s boundaries (against hard power, military power, sharp power etc.) so that the concept could appear to be a scientific representation of reality rather than a partisan tool of politics. This was necessary because many contested the concept precisely on account of its supposed lack of clarity or scientificity, or its vacuity, as well as Nye’s background (Layne 2010; Manners and Diez 2007; G. Zhang 2017). This shows just how crucial an understanding of soft power’s nature as a concept is—rather than

282 simply a norm or an idea—as otherwise such forms of boundary work would be neither necessary nor possible. Finally, we have also seen the crucial role of financial and institutional support in making contestation around soft power possible to begin with. Without the time, venues and audiences to contest concepts, there are only limited ways of engaging in contestation, and this reminds us once again of the crucial importance of the material context that enables or constrains conceptual politics.

10.1.3 International relations This dissertation has contributed to the field of International Relations (IR) by challenging the role that concepts play in academic and political life. As my findings underscore, concepts such as soft power are key sites of politics with profound social and political consequences that will simply go unchecked if IR continues to treat concepts as vacuous mental shortcuts or scientific and values-free abstractions from reality. My findings have important methodological implications for the role of concepts in academia, in so far as they should invite IR scholars to approach the concepts they rely on in their research more carefully. For instance, I have made a strong case not to rely on the same concepts as those which we are analysing, as far as is possible. Indeed, this dissertation has found that the more concepts are shared by all kinds of observers (from academics to politicians to Americans and the Chinese), the more confusion this induces in our analysis of politics. As we have seen when it comes to making sense of China’s embrace of soft power, it has become increasingly difficult to identify whether something is occurring because of a given concept, is justified in its name or is simply understood as falling within the realm of the concept. Building on to the discussion in chapter 9, it of course makes sense to understand actors such as the CPC by analysing what their political terms do after they are coined, invoked and used (i.e. what does “magic weapon” do for the CPC discourse?). As Schoenhals (1992), drawing on Austin, Urmson, and Sbisà (1962), has argued so well, the Chinese like to do things with words as much as anyone else. Yet, contra scholars such as Brady and Shambaugh (Brady 2019; Brookings Institution 2018b), in the evaluation of such efforts, we have to avoid reifying shared terms as much as possible so that it remains abundantly clear that these terms are part and parcel of concrete political struggles—in China and beyond—and by no means simply neutral interpretive devices that help us make sense of the world. Thus, even where scholars might disagree with some of the findings of this dissertation, my hope is that the focus on the problems with reification can lead to more precision in the development of analytical frameworks so that at least this form of politics can be reduced and/or is recognised

283 as such. In terms of the social and political consequences, this dissertation has provided a concrete and in-depth analysis of the far-reaching consequences of the various performances of the soft power concept, and in so doing makes a clear case for treating concepts as part and parcel of the politics that they are, and hence as empirical phenomena worthy of our attention. While the ultimate goal of this dissertation was not to provide a theory of conceptual politics that identifies the conditions for the successful dissemination or entrenchment of concepts, it is reasonable to assume that the dynamics of conceptual politics I have revealed also apply to other concepts. In this way, the dissertation has fulfilled the promise of a critical concept analysis. The findings of this dissertation also speak to the literature on norms and ideas in IR. First, by clearly distinguishing between concepts and other cognitive terms, I have shown that there is much to be gained by accounting for the dynamics that are specific to concepts. We have for instance repeatedly seen that a concept such as soft power functions as a (contentious and political) classifying principle in IR (what are the phenomena/the states that can be subsumed in the soft power category), something which would have remained hidden had I treated soft power as an idea or a norm. In a similar fashion, the distinction also made it possible to draw out how soft power constitutes a specific knowledge claim of how the world is, and not how the world ought to be or hangs together. Such a claim appears trustworthy in large part due to the scientific credentials of the concept, and of course the continuous reminders thereof by soft power’s entrepreneurs. Finally, distinguishing soft power from other terms also allowed me to draw out how a key driving force of soft power’s “fit” was the concept’s capacity to provide an epistemically right understanding of the world—that is, a representation of the world as it is and as it should be. In this way, this dissertation has also dealt with the normative dimension of concepts without having to reduce soft power’s dynamic to that of a norm. A second way in which the dissertation speaks to the norms and ideas literature in IR is through its focus on feedback loops. As discussed briefly in chapter 2, there have been various efforts to consider the role of feedback effects in norms or ideas when it comes to assessing the evolution of norms (Acharya 2014b; Prantl and Nakano 2011). However, such accounts have been overwhelmingly concerned with explaining the respective successes or failures of ideas/norms in world politics, as if the (end) point of feedback loops was successful implementation or perpetual contestation. More problematically, these accounts treated feedback loops as if they happened “out there” in isolation from our observations of the world. Consequently, there was little reckoning with the ways in which feedback loops can lead to a profound re-evaluation of past behaviour. Perhaps the clearest example we encountered was in the

284 context of sharp power’s effect on the assessment of soft power’s role in the US over the past three decades (chapter 9), but we have also repeatedly seen how soft power has driven a reconsideration of a plethora of different concepts and in so doing changed the self-perceptions of the US, Japan and China in terms of what it means to possess a great power identity. By drawing attention to how micro and macro feedback loops cut across different groups of concept entrepreneurs, which include academics and politicians alike, this dissertation provides an important invitation to take the implications of a “double hermeneutic position” (i.e. how observers need to deal with an already interpreted world) more seriously, at the same time as it shows practical ways to not just deal with it but focus on it in empirical research. In so doing, it has drawn attention to the effects of feedback loops on issues other than the success or failure of a norm to be implemented or contested. Finally, the findings of the dissertation also speak to the larger IR literature on expertise and science in politics. In recent years, there have been important efforts to thoroughly map scientific practices (Kristensen 2012; Lohaus and Wemheuer-Vogelaar 2020; Tickner and Wæver 2009) or draw from other disciplines such as STS to think through the implications of science as a historically, socially and culturally situated practice (Bueger 2012; Mayer, Carpes, and Knoblich 2014). In adding to such efforts, this dissertation does not simply assume that we “sing our world into existence” (S. Smith 2004), but shows concretely how and with what consequences. Specifically, I have opened up the black box of a specific concept and offered a detailed account of how much previously hidden work has gone into the soft power concept as a particular knowledge claim of how the world is. At a time when climate change denialists challenge the foundations of science, where alternative facts seem to have become a staple of everyday politics and a global pandemic is underscoring just how radically differently states organise the relation between scientific advice and policymaking, my work provides some necessary nuance to the notion that there was ever an age of truth when scholars disinterestedly spoke truth to power (see also Jasanoff and Sim- met 2017). To be clear, this in no way implies that all scholarship is partisan and relative. Nonetheless, it is a plea to take the STS understanding of science more seriously in IR, and to think through its implications. Science, as Gieryn (2001) argues, is Nothing but a space, one that acquires its authority precisely from and through episodic negotiations of its flexible and contextually contingent borders and territories. Science is a kind of spatial “marker” for cognitive authority, empty until its insides get filled and its borders drawn amidst context-bound negotiations over who and what is “scientific”. (p. 405)

285 In essence, my work on conceptual politics should therefore be seen as an invitation to discuss and think through—to negotiate—what kind of philosophical and practical foundations could and should guide a discipline such as IR. Now more than ever, we need to abandon the idea that “truth” and “facts” are out there to be simply gathered, and to seriously think through the implications for IR as a science of politics and a political science.

10.2 Assessing the thinking tools and the way forward This conclusion has already highlighted several strengths of the analytical framework and its key thinking tools. In addition, conceptual politics has proved itself an extremely powerful thinking tool for addressing the phenomenon of concepts. A focus on key concept entrepreneurs has successfully drawn attention to actors and the reasons for their involvement in conceptual politics. The roles of translator and spokesperson in particular have revealed many intricacies of the soft power concept that had hitherto gone unnoticed. In terms of the means of conceptual politics, the analysis of narratives has been especially revealing and helped to focus and present the analytical narrative in the empirical chapters. There were also some challenges to implementing the thinking tools. For instance, as argued in chapter 2, the notions of feedback loops and travel are analytically distinct. Travel refers to the broad pattern of concepts that move across time, space, context and level, while feedback loops are more concretely concerned with the looping of concepts across the levels of action and observation. However, while such an analytical distinction has successfully guided the research process, feedback loops and travel in practice often occur simultaneously. This has at times made it difficult to write a cohesive analytical narrative that presents feedback loops and travel as distinct processes. It was a challenge, for instance, to decide in what order to present feedback loops and travel in the individual empirical chapters. Given this experience, it might be possible to integrate travel more closely with feedback loops when it comes to presentation of the analytical narrative. At the same time, however, maintaining their distinction as two processes has been extremely important to the research process as it continuously pushed me to look for the recipients of conceptual politics, and cautioned me to not treat local translations as sub-par copies but to shift attention to the role of soft power as a catalyst for new sites of conceptual politics. With that in mind, the most reasonable way forward is perhaps to refocus travel on to the dynamics of translation and new sites of conceptual politics. Another challenge I had to deal with was the issue of timing and sequencing and its effects on the thinking tools. When soft power had just been coined,

286 it was simple in the analytical narrative to identify the conceptual politics intended to intervene in the decline debate, which led to feedback effects. Once conceptual politics had been going on for some time, however, and there were several feedback loops to present, it became more difficult to separate these categories. This was the case as feedback loops and especially the reification of soft power often constituted a precondition or even an invitation for the emergence of new rounds of conceptual politics, and so it was at times a challenge to decide when the means of conceptual politics segued into feedback effects. To deal with this, I predominantly relied on a temporal ordering of the analytical narrative, as this made it possible to organise and present the empirical material coherently. This means, however, that it might be useful in future research to theorise and incorporate the issue of temporality into the notion of conceptual politics. A final challenge was the centrality of Joseph Nye to the trajectory of the soft power concept. When starting out on this research project, I had a broad idea that he mattered, but in many ways I had only seen the tip of the iceberg. As I delved into the empirical analysis, I realised just how central Nye was as a concept entrepreneur. In terms of soft power, this is not so much a problem as a finding. However, with respect to conceptual politics, the impression might be gained that the framework was prone to glorify individual actors (i.e. in some ways, my Nye is Latour’s (1993) Louis Pasteur), even though I have illustrated the relevance of other concept entrepreneurs and made the case that we should not reduce soft power to Nye alone. A natural way to address this impression would be to subject other concepts to a critical concept analysis around conceptual politics where no concept entrepreneur seems to be as central. Indeed, one way to move the critical concept research agenda forward would be to conduct such an analysis and reflect more substantially on the question of the (non)dominance of specific actors in conceptual politics. It would for instance be intriguing to see how the contestation for spokespersonship of two concept entrepreneurs might influence the phenomenon of concepts, or how it looks if no single person has any sort of monopoly on a concept. Similarly, it would also be meaningful to look at concepts that originate in different environments and are promoted by different types of concept entrepreneur. For instance, one could subject a concept to a critical concept analysis centred on conceptual politics that does not originate in the US. This would in fact constitute a crucial way to further address the Western-centrism of previous work. While this dissertation has addressed this issue by focusing on the agency of recipients of conceptual politics, much could also be done by focusing on a concept that originates for instance in China and attracts conceptual politics in China and elsewhere. For instance, it would be revealing to look at

287 concepts such as Xi Jinping’s “Community with a shared future for mankind”, and the ways in which this concept is contested, coined, promoted and revised to steer its potential performative effects. In a similar fashion, the critical concept research agenda could also be mean- ingfully advanced by looking at a concept that did not originate in an academic environment. We have for instance seen that soft power’s scientific status has been key to its trajectory, whereas sharp power’s origins opened up a specific form of conceptual politics that challenged the concepts precisely on that account (chapter 9). It would be possible, for instance, to choose a concept such as human security or the Responsiblity to Protect (R2P) with origins in the United Nations, but which have come to perform as analytical tools and in politics. What would also make such cases particularly interesting is that there is no consensus on what kind of cognitive item they are—that is, whether they should be classified as concepts, norms, paradigms or commitments—and this would provide an intriguing insight into the politics of the classification of cognitive terms. In general, such an exercise would also allow more comprehensive discussion of how the insights on conceptual politics could be leveraged into the study of norms and ideas, and what might be gained by distinguishing between different cognitive items and the role they assume in the academic and political worlds. It might be highly revealing to pick up the thread on the normativity of concepts and think through the implications of this study for the relation between interpretations of the world and political visions of the world. A final way in which the findings of this study can move the field of IR forward is the question of differences in the relations between science and politics in different states. Although I have not discussed this in great detail, it became clear in various places throughout the dissertation that the ways in which conceptual politics unfold can depend in many ways on the differences between science and politics from one state to another. The scope for conceptual politics is necessarily smaller in China than in Japan or the US, and this has shaped the form of conceptual politics there. While there have been efforts to better understand how countries differ in terms of what Jasanoff (2005) has referred to as “civic epistemologies”, and the difference this makes when it comes to the role of knowledge in IR, most of these efforts have revolved around the science question in democracies. We therefore know surprisingly little about the role of science vis-à-vis politics in non-democratic societies such as China, and the effect on China’s conduct of international affairs. Especially in the light of the pandemic, which has underscored crucial differences in the role of expertise in politics even between countries such as Denmark and Sweden, it seems that there is much to be gained from engaging in basic research on the science question in China and elsewhere, and its interplay with international relations.

288 Part IV

Appendix

Swedish Summary

Begrepp är centrala inom såväl akademisk forskning som internationell politik. Det råder ingen tvekan om att tolkning, klassificering och kommunikation kring olika begrepp har omfattande sociala och politiska konsekvenser. Likväl är förståelsen för begreppens roll och komplexitet outforskad inom internationella relationer (IR). Istället för att försöka bortse från begrepp, blanda ihop dem med normer, eller fundera på huruvida de skulle kunna fånga verkligheten på ett mer vetenskapligt sätt, tar den här avhandlingen avstamp i kritiska be- greppsstudier (Critical Concept Studies, CSS). Inom detta fält förstås begrepp som öppna och omtvistade tolkningsramar som används för att förstå världen och för att styra tanke och handling inom politiken. I den här avhandlingen studeras hur olika aktörer använder, förespråkar och tvistar om begrepp för att uppnå vissa performativa utfall. Sådana politiska maktkamper förstås som helt centrala delar av politiken, och benämns här som “begreppspolitik” (conceptual politics). Även om CSS har bidragit med en utvecklad förståelse för hur begrepp im- pliceras i politiska strider har forskningen framförallt varit teoretiskt orienterad, med få empiriska studier som undersöker begreppspolitik i praktiken. Syftet med den här avhandlingen är att bidra till CSS genom att utveckla förståelsen av begreppspolitik. Avhandlingen gör det genom att fördjupa förståelsen av tre fenomen som tidigare forskning har behandlat som viktiga men som inte har undersökts empiriskt: feedbackloops (interaktionseffekter mellan tolkningar av världen å ena sidan, och världen å den andra), reifiering (behandlingen av begrepp som att den återgav verkligheten snarare än fungerade som tolkningsramar skapade av människor) och rörlighet (begrepps förflyttning över tid, nivåer och rum). Avhandlingen utvecklar även ett analytiskt ramverk för att empiriskt spåra begreppspolitik. I fokus står följande frågor: Hur kan vi un- dersöka begreppspolitik? Hur bidrar feedbackloops, reifiering och rörlighet till att forma begreppspolitik? Vilka konsekvenser har begreppspolitik för internationell politik? Avhandlingen utgår från en abduktiv ansats och utvecklar ett analytiskt ramverk för att spåra begreppspolitik i praktiken. I fokus står begreppet “mjuk makt” (soft power), som brukar förstås som förmågan att påverka andra genom attraktion. Genom en fallstudie av hur begreppet mjuk makt har för- flyttats från USA, till Japan och Kina och tillbaka till USA, utförs en tolkande processpårning av begreppspolitik i praktiken. Även om mjuk makt har tagit plats som en central del av IR och internationell politik är förståelsen av begreppet och dess konsekvenser begränsad. Avhandlingen visar hur begreppet har blivit del av olika politiska strider om vad som är rätt tolkning av verkligheten och vad som är rätt sätt att agera på den. Avhandlingen visar hur begreppet behandlas som något verkligt som kan investeras i snarare än som en mänsklig skapelse som syftar till att förklara världen. Vidare visar avhandlingen på flera interaktionseffekter mellan de olika roller som mjuk makt har antagit. Begreppspolitik har givit mjuk makt rollen som ett vida spritt tolkningsverk- tyg för att förstå världen. En rad olika aktörer, såsom akademiker, policyska- pare, praktiker och den bredare allmänheten världen över använder begreppet. Ju mer begreppspolitiken har utvecklats, desto mer har sådana aktörer kommit att använda mjuk makt för att begripliggöra, etikettera och utvärdera begreppet “makt” (power). På så vis har begreppet mjuk makt interagerat med maktbe- greppet på helt grundläggande sätt, vilket i sin tur har haft konsekvenser för förståelsen av maktens natur, hur makt legitimeras, hur olika former av makt existerar och relaterar till varandra, samt vem som anses ha makt, och hur mycket. Det innebär att begreppet mjuk makt har förändrat hur andra fenomen i internationell politik förstås. Begreppet mjuk makt har först och främst interagerat med gängse förståelser av maktskiften (power shifts) (se framförallt kapitel 5, 7 och 8). Begreppet har gjort det möjligt att tänka kring maktskiften på ett sätt där det inte nödvändigtvis är oroväckande när stater som USA och Japan är på nedgång, så länge detta inte sker multidimensionellt och inkluderar en nedgång vad gäller mjuk makt. En nedgång är alltså inte given så länge som USA (kapitel 5 och 6) och Japan (kapitel 7) bibehåller sin ledning vad gäller mjuk makt och förhåller sig till det som del av “smart makt” (smart power) (kapitel 6). På ett liknande sätt har begreppspolitiken kring mjuk makt gjort att Kinas uppgång har framstått som mycket mindre hotfull, eftersom denna har ansetts vara beroende av en uppgång vad gäller alla maktdimensioner, inklusive mjuk makt (kapitel 8). När Kinas mjuka makt började komma ikapp andra staters sågs detta som en välkommen utveckling, men endast så länge som det tolkades som att Kina hade en genuin ambition att bli en attraktiv stat. På så vis har begreppet mjuk makt format synen på faror kopplade till maktskiften på ett helt grundläggande sätt. Vidare har begreppet mjuk makt intagit rollen som ett policyverktyg som stater och individer förstår som viktigt av flera olika anledningar, från legit- imeringen av existerande nationella och/eller internationella policys, till syften som rör statussökande, hantering av rädsla kopplad till staters uppgång och fall, framtvingandet av stöd för olika policys och strider om resurser och in- flytande över omstridda policyfrågor. Detta är bara några av de kontexter där mjuk makt finns och spelar en roll. Mjuk makt fungerar också som ett so- cialiserande verktyg då det ger incitament till stater och icke-statliga aktörer att både erkänna dess vikt och att agera därefter (se framförallt kapitel 7 och 8). Utöver vad som har framkommit ovan visar den här avhandlingen också att reifiering, feedbackloops och framförallt rörligheten av begreppet mjuk makt har givit upphov till en rad olika översättningar av begreppet. Begreppspoli- tik utövas i praktiken i sådana processer. I USA har begreppet implicerats i begreppspolitik som rör USA:s seger i det kalla kriget, och har bidragit till att rättfärdiga fortsatt engagemang med resten av världen efter Sovjetunionens fall (kapitel 5). Rörligheten kopplad till mjuk makt har även bidragit till ett förnyat fokus på diplomati som en säkerhetsfråga i kampen mot internationell terrorism (kapitel 6). Under senare år har översättningar av begreppet utom- lands även bidragit till nya former av begreppspolitik, vilka har resulterat i ett nytt begrepp. Begreppet “skarp makt” (sharp power) har både förutsatt och utmanat begreppet mjuk makt, till exempel genom att insinuera att mjuk makt har givit upphov till det felaktiga antagandet om att Kinas uppgång ens skulle kunna vara “mjuk”. På så vis har skarp makt spelat en viktig roll i den växande uppfattningen i USA och på andra platser att Kinas mjuka makt utgör ett hot mot liberala demokratier. Detta har i sin tur blivit en avgörande kraft bakom alltmer antagonistiska relationer mellan USA och Kina, vilka sannolikt kan komma att få allvarliga konsekvenser i en nära framtid (kapitel 9). I Japan har begreppet mjuk makt eldat på begreppspolitiken om Japans ekonomiska återhämtning och kultur, om USA:s och Japans säkerhetsallians och Japans remilitarisering (kapitel 7). Begreppet har även blivit ett centralt verktyg för att kontrollera Kinas fredliga uppgång utifrån och inom landet, på samma gång som det har utmanat hegemoniska och USA-centrerade diskurser i IR. Vidare har det bidragit till begreppspolitik om vad det är som gör Kina kinesiskt (kapitel 8). Den begreppspolitik som redogjorts för ovan interagerar på komplexa sätt. Japans uppgång under 1980-talet bidrog till begreppspolitik om huruvida Japan var ett attraktivt land i USA. Till följd av detta uppstod begreppspolitik i Japan om den egna kulturens attraktionskraft. När Kina omfamnade begreppet mjuk makt riktade Japan kritik mot Kina och betonade att Japans mjuka makt vilar på en demokratisk grund. USA, som är ursprunget till mjuk makt, blev också tvunget att hantera en uppsjö av översättningar av begreppet, vilket har gett upphov till en ny runda begreppspolitik (såsom skarp makt) vilket slutligen har lett fram till en omprövning av Kinas uppgång och ett slut på USAs vänskapliga relationer med Kina. Sammanfattningsvis visar den här avhandlingen på fördelarna med CCS och den komplexitet det innebär att studera begrepp som empiriska fenomen. Vi- dare understryks värdet av en empirisk undersökning av begreppspolitik med fokus på feedbackloops, reifiering och rörlighet. Avhandlingen bidrar således med en mer avancerad och komplex förståelse av begreppspolitik som fenomen och av begreppens betydelse inom IR. Acronyms

ACPD United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. 122, 123, cccix, cccxlviii

ANT Actor-Network Theory. 35, 53, 71

BRI Belt and Road Initiative. 227, 236

CCCPC Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. 204, 258

CFAC Central Foreign Affairs Commission. 231

CICIR China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. 79

CIIS China Institute for International Studies. 79

CiNii Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator. 76, 91

CNKI China National Knowledge Infrastructure. 76, 78, 92, 227, 231

CNP Comprehensive National Power. 220, 221, 230

CPC Communist Party of China. 20, 79, 193, 201, 207, 208, 210, 217, 218, 227, 232, 233, 234, 255, 256, 258, 262, 265, 273, 283, cccxxii

CPPCC Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. 250, ccclvi

CPRC Central Policy Research Office. 204

CSIS Center for Strategic & International Studies. 79, 105, 106, 149, 168, 185, 186, cccix, cccxi, cccxii, cccxxi, cccxxii, cccxxix, ccclxvi

CSS Critical Security Studies. 17, 32, 34, 280, 282

DOD US Department of Defense. 78, 80, 104, 106, 124, 137, 147, 149, 152, 184, 263, cccxxiv FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation. 252, 262, 265

GEC Global Engagement Center. 263

HKS Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. 82, 103, 106, 130, 166, 167, 208, cccxxxv

INSS Institute for National Strategic Studies, US National Defense University. 186, cccxl, cccxli

IR International Relations. 15, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 49, 60, 63, 65, 67, 69, 73, 77, 86, 104, 107, 108, 110, 115, 130, 139, 140, 156, 169, 181, 203, 212, 220, 221, 283, 284, 285, 286, 288

JET Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme. 164

JF Japan Foundation. 167, 170, 171, 175, 176, 177, 180, ccc, cccxxxix

JFIR The Japan Forum on International Relations. 174, 175, 178, 186, 190, cccxxxix, cccxl, cccxli

JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency. 170, 180, 190, ccc, cccxl

JIIA Japan Institute for International Affairs. 79, cccxxxiv, cccxliv

Kantei Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet. 169, 195, cccxli

LDP Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. 164, 188, 197, cccxlv

METIJ Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan. 164, 175, 179, 180, cccxlix, cccl

MFAC Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. 80, 208, ccciii, cccl

MIACJ Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan. 164, 179, cccl

MODJ Ministry of Defense of Japan. 164, 179, cccl

MOFAJ Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. 74, 80, 163, 164, 170, 171, 175, 177, 179, 180, 181, 189, 190, 196, 197, 198, 273, 275, ccxcix, ccc, ccciii, cccl MOJJ Ministry of Justice of Japan. 197, 198, cccli

NCCPC National Congress of the Communist Party of China. 201, 208, 231, cccxix

NCSPR National Cultural Soft Power Research Center. 231, 232, ccclii

NED National Endowment for Democracy. 80, 241, 242, 243, 245, 247, 249, 251, 255, 263, 264, cccxviii, ccclii

NSPRC National Soft Power Research Center. 231, 232

NSS National Security Strategy. 78, 106, 123, 124, 125

NSSF National Social Sciences Fund. 231, ccclxv

ODA Official Development Assistance. 190

PCIP Pacific Council on International Policy. 247, 248, ccclvii

PCP Politburo Standing Committee. 204, 230

PLA Chinese People’s Liberation Army. 203, 209, 224

PRC People’s Republic of China. 258, 264

PS Political Science. 86, 103, 107, 156, 206

R2P Responsiblity to Protect. 19, 48, 59, 69, 288

SDF Japan Self-Defense Forces. 170, 189, 190

SIIS Shanghai Institute of International Studies. 210, 218, ccclxi

SPF Sasakwa Peace Foundation. 79, 175, ccclxii

State Department US State Department. 78, 106, 124, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 239, 263, 264, cccii, ccclxvi

STS Science and Technology Studies. 282, 285

UFWD United Front Work Department. 258

USIA United States Information Agency. 122, 123

WOS Web of Science. 75, 76, 85, 86, 88, 91, 93, 131, 258

Interviews

I#01 2017. Interview #01 With Official From MOFAJ, August 17. Sweden. I#02 2017. Interview #02 With Mirai Participant, September 15. Sweden. I#03 2017. Interview #03 With Mirai Participant, September 16. Sweden. I#04 2017. Interview #04 With Mirai Participant, September 17. Sweden. I#05 2017. Interview #05 With Mirai Participant, September 19. Sweden. I#06 2017. Interview #06 With Joseph S. Nye, Octo- ber 18. USA. I#07 2017. Interview #07 With Scholar, November 8. Japan. I#08 2017. Interview #08 With Scholar, November 9. Japan. I#09 2017. Interview #09 With Scholar, November 13. Japan. I#10 2017. Interview #10 With MOFAJ Official, November 14. Japan. I#11 2017. Interview #11 With Scholar, November 15. Japan. I#12 2017. Interview #12 With MOFAJ Official, November 16. Japan. I#13 2017. Interview #13 With Scholar, November 17. Japan. I#14 2017. Interview #14 With Think Tank Offical, November 20. Japan. I#15 2017. Interview #15 With Japan International Co- operation Agency (JICA) Official, November 21. Japan. I#16 2017. Interview #16 With JICA Official, Novem- ber 21. Japan. I#17 2017. Interview #17 With Japan Foundation (JF) Official, November 22. Japan. I#18 2017. Interview #18 With Think Tank Official, November 22. Tokyo, Japan. I#19 2017. Interview #19 With MOFAJ Official, November 27. Japan. I#20 2017. Interview #20 With MOFAJ Official, November 28. Japan. I#21 2017. Interview #21 With Scholar/Adviser to Japanese Government, November 28. Japan. I#22 2017. Interview #22 With MOFAJ Official, De- cember 1. Japan. I#22 2017. Interview #23 With Scholar, December 1. Japan. I#24 2018. Interview #24 With Think Tank Official, January 20. China. I#25 2018. Interview #25 With Scholar, January 23. China. I#26 2018. Interview #26 With Scholar, January 27. China. I#27 2018. Interview #27 With Think Tank Officials, January 31. China. I#28 2018. Interview #28 With Scholar, February 1. China. I#29 2018. Interview #29 With Scholar, February 2. China. I#30 2018. Interview #30 With Philantropic Founda- tion Official, February 13. China. I#31 2018. Interview #31 With Journalist, February 15. China. I#32 2018. Interview #32 With Journalist, February 16. China. I#33 2018. Interview #33 With Journalist, February 19. China. I#34 2018. Interview #34 With Scholar, February 25. China. I#35 2018. Interview #35 With Scholar, February 26. China. I#36 2018. Interview #36 With Scholar, February 26. China. I#37 2018. Interview #37 With Think Tank Official, February 27. China. I#38 2018. Interview #38 With Scholar, February 28. China. I#39 2018. Interview #39 With Scholar, February 28. China. I#40 2018. Interview #40 With Scholar, February 28. China. I#41 2018. Interview #41 With Scholar, March 1. China. I#42 2018. Interview #42 With Scholar, March 1. China. I#43 2018. Interview #43 With Scholar, March 2. China. I#44 2018. Interview #44 With Scholar, March 2. China. I#45 2018. Interview #45 With Think Tank Official, March 4. China. I#46 2018. Interview #46 With Scholar, March 5. China. I#47 2018. Interview #47 With Think Tank Official, March 5. China. I#48 2018. Interview #48 With Scholar, March 6. China. I#49 2018. Interview #49 With Think Tank Officials, March 7. China. I#50 2018. Interview #50 With Think Tank Officials, March 8. China. I#51 2018. Interview #51 With Scholars, March 8. China. I#52 2018. Interview #52 With Think Tank Official, March 8. China. I#53 2018. Interview #53 With Think Tank Official, March 9. China. I#54 2018. Interview #54 With Scholar, March 12. China. I#55 2018. Interview #55 With US State Department (State Department) Official, May 8. USA. I#56 2018. Interview #56 With Think Tank Official, May 15. USA. I#57 2018. Interview #57 With State Department Offi- cial, May 17. USA. I#58 2018. Interview #58 With Scholar, May 24. USA. I#59 2018. Interview #59 With Think Tank Official, May 25. USA. I#60 2018. Interview #60 With Think Tank Official, May 30. USA. I#61 2018. Interview #61 With Scholar, June 1. USA. I#62 2018. Interview #62 With Scholar, June 4. USA. I#63 2018. Interview #63 With Scholar, June 5. USA. I#64 2018. Interview #64 With Think Tank Official, June 6. USA. I#65 2018. Interview #65 With Think Tank Official, June 6. USA. I#66 2018. Interview #66 With Scholar, June 7. USA. I#67 2018. Interview #67 With Think Tank Official, June 7. USA. I#68 2018. Interview #68 With Artist, June 11. USA. I#69 2018. Interview #69 With Scholar, June 13. USA. I#70 2018. Interview #70 With Scholar, June 14. USA. I#71 2018. Interview #71 State Department Official, June 19. USA. I#72 2018. Interview #72 With Think Tank Official, June 20. USA. I#73 2018. Interview #73 With Scholar, June 26. USA. I#74 2018. Interview #74 With Journalist, June 27. USA. I#75 2018. Interview #75 With Scholar, June 29. USA. I#76 2018. Interview #76 With MOFAJ Offical, June 29. USA. I#77 2018. Interview #77 With MOFAJ Official, July 2. USA. I#78 2018. Interview #78 With Ministry of Foreign Af- fairs of the People’s Republic of China (MFAC) Official, August 15. China. I#79 2018. Interview #79 With MFAC Official, Au- gust 17. China. I#80 2018. Interview #80 With MFAC Official, Au- gust 17. China. I#81 2018. Interview #81 With MFAC Official, Au- gust 17. China. I#82 2018. Interview #82 With Foreign Affairs Attache to Senator, August 24. USA and Sweden. I#83 2018. Interview #83 With Consultant, August 29. Great Britain and Sweden. I#84 2020. Interview #84 With Scholar, June 17. Japan and Sweden. Pers.Corrs. with Akiyama 2018. Personal Correspondance With Akiyama Masahiro, March 1. Sweden and Japan.

Legislative documents

H. R. 1865 Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 (Enacted, Signed by the President): H. R. 1865, 116th Congress (Dec. 20, 2019). H.R. 6010 Countering the Chinese Government and Com- munist Party’s Political Influence Operations Act: H.R. 6010, 115th Congress (2nd) (June 5, 2018). Hearing 28-385 The Long Arm of China: Exporting Authoritari- anism With Chinese Characteristics: Hearing 28- 385 before the Congressional-Executive Commis- sion on China, 115th Congress (2nd) (Dec. 13, 2017). Hearing 37-960 Hong Kong’s Summer of Discontent and U.S. Policy Responses: Hearing 37-960 before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, 116th Congress (1st) (Sept. 17, 2019). 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How Soft Power Changed the World

Stephanie Christine Winkler Conceptual Politics in Practice

ISBN 978-91-7911-342-1 ISSN 2003-1343

Department of Economic History and International Relations

Doctoral Thesis in International Relations at Stockholm University, Sweden 2020