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International relations
Reference:

Conceptualization of the category of "soft power" in political science

Chzhan YUKUN

ORCID: 0009-0008-5346-6337

Postgraduate student; Department of Political Sciences; Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin

19 Mira str., Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk region, 620002, Russia

xy954504210@gmail.com
Kerimov Aleksandr Alievich

ORCID: 0000-0002-5807-9810

Doctor of Politics

Professor, Department of Political Science, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin

19 Mira str., Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk region, 620002, Russia

a.a.kerimov@urfu.ru

DOI:

10.7256/2454-0641.2024.2.69892

EDN:

KDMOFR

Received:

18-02-2024


Published:

19-06-2024


Abstract: The subject of the study includes the analysis and interpretation of the concept of "soft power" in the context of political science. The purpose of the article is to investigate the phenomenon of "soft power" in the context of the definition of Western and Chinese scientists and to analyze the balance between "soft power" and "hard power".The modern world is going through a profound large-scale development, changes and restructuring. Economic, political, social and cultural contradictions are accumulating, which leads to an aggravation of the dilemma of global governance, an escalation of international conflicts and a new round of national ups and downs. These processes have become typical symbols of international society in the new era, and the study of the conceptual paradigm of the use of "soft power" in the global governance model has become the subject of research by many scientists in the field of international relations and political science. In preparing this study, the author used: systemic, neo-institutional, comparative and other approaches. Methods of analysis, synthesis, analogy and comparison in the context of identifying common features and contradictions of Western and Eastern models of foreign policy in the context of the implementation of "soft power". An analysis of the scientific literature of Chinese and Western scientists gives grounds to assert the distinctive and original nature of the Chinese definition of "soft power", as well as the positioning of China as such a force in its own foreign policy projections. It has been established that Chinese "soft power" not only goes beyond the original ideological sphere proposed by the author of the concept of "soft power", but also has characteristic Chinese features, and also demonstrates enormous theoretical and practical strength. Special importance is given to the traditional culture of China, which is the basis and advantage of cultural "soft power" and emphasizes its unique advantages. The soft power of China's national culture is visibly reflected in national cohesion, and the strength of national cohesion depends on its core value system and the recognition of its core values in the world.


Keywords:

international relations, international institutions, soft power, public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, ideology, national interests, China, Resource Diplomacy, Joseph Nye

This article is automatically translated.

Introduction.

The modern world continues its rapid development, is changing and is being rebuilt. At the same time, economic, political, social and cultural contradictions are accumulating in the world, which leads to an aggravation of the dilemma of global governance, an escalation of international conflicts and a new round of outbreaks of nationalist manifestations. These processes have already become a typical “landscape” of the international landscape in the new era. For this reason, studies of the conceptual paradigm of the use of "soft power" in the field of international relations and political science have been updated.

After almost 30 years, stereotypes such as the clash of civilizations, the Cold War mentality and the "zero-sum game" are still present in the system of international relations, and relations between governments, markets and societies of the world's largest powers are mostly in a state of complex and profound transformations. There is a general "governance deficit" in all countries, and national development and global governance are increasingly diverging in their target and ideological orientation.

In the modern world, international organizations and rules of international governance, dominated by the West, have become the leading concept of global governance in the traditions of the same Western centrality. As a result of this initial intercultural, interracial, cross-border and inter-ideological cooperation in the field of global governance, it is still difficult to solve the problems of global governance [1, p. 509]. The understanding that China's foreign discourse lacks innovation, and the position of the United States towards competing countries is quite aggressive, should influence the traditional rhetoric of building international relations of the past world order.

In the 1990s, Joseph Nye, a well-known American political scientist, put forward the concept of a national strategy of "soft power", which was based on the fact that the structure of political power in the world had changed significantly [2, p. 196]. The main reason is that the power of power no longer depends solely on resources, and the ability to gently influence the choice of other countries has become the key to modern international influence [3, p. 146].

"Soft power" is based on the premise of a rational understanding of the model of the outside world, responding to the risky game between countries caused by the crisis of the current model of global governance based on the nation state through the mechanisms of perceptual discourse and empathy between countries [4, p. 65]. When political risk management, faced with "uncertainty", becomes a common global problem, "soft power", as a key tool, allows building a dialogue between countries in order to compensate for the emotional anxiety of world citizens about existing and potential world problems [5, p. 152]. Thus, the formulation of problems in international communication and the production of a discourse based on "soft power" should not create information content in isolation, but should promote dynamic and effective intercultural interaction by building a discourse of "common sense" (common meaning) based on the emotional interaction of countries and nations.

For this reason, the purpose of writing this article is indicated in the abstract precisely as clarifying the concept of "soft power" and laying the foundation for large-scale planning, theoretical deepening and systematic research of "soft power" by comparing Western and Eastern models of foreign policy.

Research methodology. In preparing this study, the author used systemic, neoinstitutional, comparative and other approaches. The systematic approach made it possible to comprehensively explore the role and significance of the "soft power" tools described in the modern scientific literature of Chinese and foreign scientists. Thanks to the systematic method, the integrity of the subject under study was revealed, the complexity of its constituent parts, various types and connections within it were reflected. The neo-institutional approach, in turn, made it possible to determine the role of informal agents of "soft power", who are also always involved in the process of developing and implementing public diplomacy tools. The comparative or comparison method was implemented in the context of identifying common features and contradictions of Western and Eastern models of foreign policy in the context of the implementation of "soft power".

Due to all kinds of limitations in political positions (after all, politics is the art of the possible) and methods of political thinking, the concept of "soft power" has many cognitive distortions. The research of "cultural soft power" in Chinese academic circles is based on the national conditions of China, emphasizes Chinese characteristics and forms an integral theoretical system. This approach was transformed through theoretical innovations in terms of structure, cultural role, system logic, breadth and depth of understanding of the subject of research, overcoming the boundaries of Western thinking of "soft power", and allowed to put forward a number of academic and rational countermeasures and proposals for further strengthening of "soft power" from China.

The results of the study. The expansion of direct force was the main foundation for building power in early Western capitalist countries, and events in the mid-19th century focused mainly on the colonial rule of metropolitans, when large-scale wars were the main form of capital accumulation. The goal of Western states was to seek the resources of the rest of the world for the sake of even greater accumulation and export of capital. After the end of the two world wars, Western countries, in order to avoid a repeat of destructive military conflicts, in order to realize their national interests, consistently strengthened their non-forceful influence, which was dominated by division, coercion and motivation, that is, "the power of division", "hard power" and "soft power". Subsequently, when Western countries could not fully achieve the desired results, they began to develop both soft and hard power, based on a certain international situation and the criticality of risks [6, p. 250].

Expanding expansion based on "hard power" was the way in which Western countries sought to build relationships to mitigate risks in their own development, but the way to build relationships was through colonial plunder during wars of conquest using coercive means at the same time. A bright period in the development of "hard power" was the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, when both superstates participated in an arms race, simply believing that military power was an essential component of national power, and through threats and confrontation infringed on the interests of other countries to achieve their own development.

The first manifestations of the use of "soft power" date back to the late 1980s. After the end of the cold war, the world fully realized all the costs of such confrontations, rethought the phenomenon of force more deeply with the understanding that physical power, such as military and resource, was already fading into the background, and the sphere of influence was moving into the sphere of culture and consciousness.

The concept of "soft power" was based on specific historical and international political and economic conditions, and its application led to various historical consequences. "Soft power" is based on the assimilative power of cultural charisma, ideology and international institutions that allow effective control of the political environment and change the behavioral choices of other countries in their favor. As Joseph Nye put it in his theory of "soft power", "the power of the state lies not in resources, but in the ability to change the choices of other countries, and the key to power now is not in having the most resources, but in how much they can be controlled in order to expand the power of the state and thereby realize pre-set goals" [2, p. 196]. Basic resources, such as economic and military capabilities, are no longer the main factors in measuring the strength of a State. This point of view agrees with Samuel Huntington's opinion on the clash of civilizations, according to which the primary cause of global conflict is the clash of civilizations, not military conflicts. The use of power acquires a deeper meaning, that is, how to form strong relationships, attract and use resources, and expand national power [7, p. 31].

J. Nye combined the elements of power into two sections, although he classified the types of power as military, economic and "soft" force (Table. 1) [2, c. 201].

Table 1 – Classification of forces in the system of international relations

Types of power

Behaviour

Basic tools

Government policy

Military force

Force

Threat Coercive diplomacy Deterrence

Power

War

Protection

Alliance

Economic strength

Encouragement

Income

Help

Investment

Bribes

Admiration

Values, culture

Public diplomacy

Soft power

Creating an agenda

Politics

Institutes

Bilateral and multilateral diplomacy

Against the background of economic globalization, the desire for an accurate definition of the concept of "soft power" helps to reveal, within the framework of the basic categories of international law, the logic of interaction between international law and international politics. The balance of power between the strongest Powers is the foundation on which public international law is based. However, since "soft power" plays an increasingly important role in foreign policy, it constantly strengthens the diplomatic power of the state in the direction of the main categories of international law [8, p. 94].

In international relations, the "soft power" of a certain state is usually expressed as the ability to force other countries to voluntarily follow its example or accept its international value system through the attractiveness of its own ideas and culture [9, p. 160]. J. B. Mattern gives an almost similar definition of "soft power": "Due to its ideological and cultural attractiveness or the ability to raise acute issues and create new diplomatic tools, "soft power" forces other countries to voluntarily follow its example or voluntarily accept the norms of its international system, thereby indirectly encouraging them to adjust their value preferences and foreign policy in their favor" [10, p. 584]. In other words, "soft power" is the ability to force others to achieve their goals through attraction, not coercion [11, p. 247].

Compared to hard power, soft power has a global dimension. It is characterized by globalism, influence and interdependence. In the context of globalization and localization, the cosmopolitan nature of soft power reveals its universality, since values and systems that are local or reflect only national characteristics cannot be voluntarily accepted by the international community in the process of globalization [12, p. 909]. Among the main techniques necessary for the implementation of "soft power", one can single out "attractiveness and attractiveness", which indicates the active recognition of such power by other countries [13, p. 738].

The globality of "soft power" is conditioned by the commonality of human civilization and the common interests of the international community, especially the common response to threats to the survival of humanity as a whole. These three characteristics of "soft power" are not independent of each other, there is a certain interactive relationship between them. Interdependence and universality reflect a certain objectivity, and attractiveness and attractiveness are voluntary recognition and interdependence between countries [14, p. 668].

Since interstate cooperation is based on extensive, interconnected and multilevel heterogeneous discourses, and the international audience is subject to differentiated concepts, beliefs and knowledge systems, the tools of "soft power" have very different group boundaries. Therefore, a dynamic and productive logic of continuous dialogue is an indispensable condition for making sense of the discourse of "soft power". In order to create global concentricity and emotional resonance, soft power must be able to coordinate historical narratives based on facts and "polyphonic" narratives based on identity building.

As we have already noted, soft power is a relatively new term in Chinese scientific discourse, largely borrowed from the works of Joseph Nye. Chinese scientists and politicians easily refer to this term because it reminds them of the philosophical concepts of Sun Tzu [15, p. 125]. The term has remained relevant enough for the leaders of the People's Republic of China to perceive the practice of "soft power" as a historical chance to revive the glory of their country. In addition, the Chinese government has realized the differences between the elements of force and the fact that many countries see a threat from China. Therefore, China has focused on the development of "soft power" in order to present the country as not posing a threat [16, p. 19].

Confucianism has become the basis for defining Chinese values, where kindness, correct judgments and ceremonial conventions are the most important. Today, the Chinese authorities use these categories to build a harmonious society as an alternative to communist values [17, p. 911]. These values are even more important because they have spread rapidly in countries where Confucian culture dominates. In the imperial dimension in Chinese culture, concepts such as the national state or sovereignty did not exist in traditional thinking [18, p. 93].

At the same time, it is worth noting that China's strength is based on huge economic growth, which is due to the high level of well-being of the Chinese population. The country's economic growth allows China to be recognized as a global hegemon [19, p. 67]. Having joined the modern international system of nation–states, China, fearing the specter of imperialism threatening its territorial integrity, began to fiercely defend the foundations of sovereignty - the most important foundation of the national state system. Using Western concepts of legal uniformity and territorial sovereignty, the Chinese political elite began to defend its national and territorial sovereignty from foreign interference [20, p. 196].

Soft power uses culture, but public diplomacy and foreign cultural policy are different things. Discussions about the cultural dimension of China's "soft power" are mainly focused on Confucius Institutes and the growing popularity of Chinese language learning [21, p. 238]. China has a great past and a very rich cultural heritage, although its recent history has been marked by humiliating failures. When the Chinese economy became one of the largest, the country had a chance to catch up with Western countries not only in economic terms [22, p. 4].

The export of cultural achievements can contribute to the promotion of Chinese national heritage abroad, strengthen the influence of "soft power" and gain China wider access to the global market. In addition, culture can help overcome the negative image of China in the Western media. According to Chinese scientists, "if China wants to become a real world superpower [23, p. 61], it must first strengthen the power of its culture. China can turn to its past, when its great civilization had a direct impact on Indochina, Japan and Korea" [24, p. 101].

Over time, the goals of using soft power also undergo some changes. The United States views soft power as an important means of promoting hegemony and power politics. China considers the improvement of cultural "soft power" as an important way to increase comprehensive national power and international influence: internally, it is aimed at strengthening the construction of basic socialist values, promoting China's high traditional culture, cultivating noble ideology and morality, as well as strengthening the entire Communist Party [25, p. 89].

China's cultural diplomacy is not so ancient and, perhaps, it lacks experience. In the future, it will be necessary to build a discursive system for the development of Chinese cultural diplomacy and neutralize Western efforts to discredit the export of Chinese cultural "soft power". On the other hand, China also needs to learn from Western cultural traditions of diplomacy. It can serve as a theoretical research and practical activity of Chinese cultural diplomacy. It is also necessary to understand that, although the process of manifestation of cultural "soft power" is long and tortuous, its impact has far-reaching and profound consequences.

Conclusion. Although the concept of "soft power" was first proposed by Joseph Nye, he did not give a clear, definite and consistent definition of "soft power". This omission was corrected by Chinese scientists, who defined hard power as all tangible, quantifiable force manifested in the power of resources, materials and methods of coercion. Soft power has been defined as all immaterial, difficult to quantify, non-coercive force manifested in the form of attraction.

The conceptualization of the category of "soft power" in the Chinese paradigm of international relations reveals its main content and main features, on which the resource dependence of soft power and the mechanisms of its implementation mainly depend. The study showed that the spread of soft power depends on three resources: culture, political values and the country's foreign policy, but foreign policy intersects with the first two, and they determine its content and rules of implementation. Therefore, for nation states in the context of the interaction of international law and national diplomacy, the components of "soft power" are mainly reflected in four aspects: firstly, the attractiveness of national culture; secondly, the influence of political values and real political systems; thirdly, the power of international discourse and the ability to raise international issues; and, in particularFourth, the ability to dominate international organizations and the ability to create international systems and institutions.

In the international community, due to the multi-layered nature of the power of countries and the different priorities of its constituent elements at different stages of history, the above four aspects are both statically independent and systematically interacting. In theory, the first usually leads to an understanding of the four dimensions as the main extensions of "soft power", the second – to an understanding of the four dimensions as constituent elements. In the system of international relations, the "construction" of the soft power of a particular country at a specific historical stage corresponds to the value of the main expansion, and the strengthening of soft power corresponds to the value of the constituent elements. This is because the latter reflects the internal interaction and dependence between the four elements in reality, as well as the consistency of specific elements in historical development.

References
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2. Nye, Joseph. (2021). Soft power: The evolution of a concept. Journal of Political Power, 14, 196-208.
3. Nye, Joseph. (2010b). American and Chinese power after the financial crisis. The Washington Quarterly, 33, 143-153.
4. Berkman, P.A. (2019). Evolution of science diplomacy and its local-global applications. Eur Foreign Affairs Rev Special Issue, 24, 63-80.
5. Fan, Ying. (2007). Soft power: Power of attraction or confusion? Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 4, 147-158.
6. Lopez, de San, Roman A., & Schunz, S. (2017). Understanding European union science diplomacy. J Common Market Stud, 56(2), 247-266.
7. Bell, Daniel. (2009). War, peace, and China’s soft power: A Confucian approach. Diogenes, 56(1), 26-40.
8. Wang, Jian. (2006). Managing national reputation and international relations in the global era: Public diplomacy revisited. Public Relations Review, 32, 91-96.
9. Keohane, R.O., & Nye, J.S.J. (2004). Power and Interdependence (pp. 158-165). Peking University Press, Beijing.
10. Mattern, J. B. (2005). Why soft power' isn't so soft: representational force and the sociolinguistic construction of attraction in world politics. Millennium, 33(3), 583-612.
11. Taylor, P. M. (1978). Cultural diplomacy and the British Council: 1934–1939. British Journal of International Studies, 4, 246-265.
12. Solomon, Ty. (2014). The affective underpinnings of soft power. European Journal of International Relations, 38, 907-928.
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14. Flink, T., & Schreiterer, U. (2010). Science diplomacy at the intersection of S&T policies and foreign affairs: toward a typology of national approaches. Sci Public Policy, 37(9), 665-677.
15. 马方方. “亚太再平衡”战略下美国软实力外交探析——以非政府组织为视角[J]. 当代世界与社会主义, 2015(1): 125-130 [Ма Фанфан. Анализ дипломатии «мягкой силы» США в рамках Азиатско-Тихоокеанской стратегии перебалансировки – с точки зрения неправительственных организаций. Современный мир и социализм. 2015(1). C. 125-130].
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19. 王莉丽. 中国应正面应对西方“锐实力”舆论遏制[J]. 公共外交季刊, 2018(1): 65-71. [Ван Лили. Китай должен противостоять сдерживанию «острой силы» в западных СМИ. Public Diplomacy Quarterly, 2018(1). С. 65-71].
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21. Yang, Rui. (2010). Soft power and higher education: An examination of China’s Confucius Institutes. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(2), 235-245.
22. Guo, Xiaolin. (2008). Repackaging Confucius: PRC public diplomacy and the rise of soft power (pp. 1-50). Asia Paper, January.
23. 胡钰, 沈沁怡. 从“锐实力”概念演变看国际传播中的话语权与话语创新[J]. 中国记者, 2018(4): 59-62. [Ху Юй, Шен Синьи. Дискурсная власть и дискурсная инновация в смысле эволюции концепции острой власти. Китайский журналист, 2018(4). С. 59-62].
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The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.

The subject of the peer-reviewed study is the specificity of the conceptualization of the concept of "soft power" in Chinese political science in comparison with Western sources. Given the fact that modern governments are increasingly preferring "soft power" technologies and resources, and especially the impressive successes of the Chinese government in this direction, the relevance of the work should be recognized as very high. However, the research methodology declared by the author looks extremely strange: the title of the subject of the article indicates "conceptualization of a category"; the purpose of the study also mentions a certain "concept", but the author does not mention any methods directly aimed at the study of concepts, conceptualization, concepts, etc. For some reason, a systematic method is provided that supposedly allows "a comprehensive study of the role and significance of soft power tools in modern scientific literature of Chinese and foreign scientists." No, it doesn't allow it. The system method is completely different, and it is applied to completely different objects. And what the author describes is called conceptual or sometimes critical conceptual analysis, which is not mentioned anywhere in the work. The neo-institutional method declared by the author, for some reason, is used in the analysis of "the role of informal agents of "soft power", who also participate in the process of developing and implementing public diplomacy tools." The neoinstitutional method is therefore called neoinstitutional, because it is aimed at studying institutions (setting the framework for the interaction of actors), and not vague "guides". The declared purpose of the article looks no less strange: "to clarify the concept of "soft power" and lay the foundation for large-scale planning, theoretical deepening and systematic research of "soft power" by comparing Western and Eastern models of foreign policy." There is not only a discrepancy between the object and the subject of the study (how can one "refine the concept" "by comparing models of foreign policy"? a certain model or concept can be explicated from real foreign policy, and the concept can be clarified either by analyzing the representation of this concept in sources, or by analyzing empirical reality (but not a "model of this reality"), but also – more importantly – a swing at a doctoral dissertation ("lay the foundation for LARGE-scale planning" says for itself), but not for a small scientific article. Insufficient reflection on the methodology used, as well as the vague purpose of the study, led to a lack of clarity regarding the scientific novelty of the reviewed work. There is certainly scientific innovation in it (first of all, we are talking about the peculiarities of the conceptualization of the concept of "soft power" by Chinese scientists and politicians), and it could make a contribution to the treasury of scientific knowledge, but first, this potential contribution is lost against the background of many platitudes cited by the author as research results (like "the spread of soft power depends on three resources"), and secondly, only the result that was obtained in the process of applying scientific methods can be recognized as scientific, and with this, as we saw above, the author has serious problems. Structurally, the work does not cause any particular complaints: the author tried to follow the IMRAD structure accepted in world science, highlighting four of the five structural elements – "introduction", "research methodology", "research results" and "conclusion", omitting the fifth element "discussion". Although if the "research results" were divided into thematic blocks, it would simplify the perception of the author's thought. But with regard to the style of the reviewed article, the impression is sharply negative. An unacceptably large number of stylistic ones are found in the text (for example, oddities with quotation marks, when metaphors like Huntington's "clash of civilizations" remain without quotation marks, and the scientific term "zero-sum game", on the contrary, are taken in quotation marks: "stereotypes like the clash of civilizations, the mentality of the Cold War and the "zero-sum game"" it is also unclear why the author considers the zero-sum game (a completely common term in mathematical game theory), as well as the Cold War mentality, to be stereotypes, apparently not understanding the meaning of this term very well; or "research based on conditions" (and not conducted under conditions, for example): "Research" of a cultural soft the forces "in Chinese academic circles are based on the national conditions of China..."; or repetitions of words and expressions, for example: "... Typical events focused on colonial rule... when Western countries exercised colonial rule..."; another repetition: "... He did not give a clear, definite and consistent definition..."; another example repetition of three (!) words and expressions ("cold war", "deep", "power") in one sentence: "After the end of the cold war, the world fully realized the shortcomings of the cold war and the deep significance of national power, understood the theme of time more deeply and decided that physical power..."; etc.) and grammatical errors (for example, an uncoordinated sentence: "The expansion of power was the main idea of building power in early Western capitalist countries, and typical events focus on colonial rule in the middle of the 19th century, when Western countries carried out colonial rule and wars on a large scale, which became the main form of capital accumulation in the early period," which, unfortunately, is no exception). Although, with some exceptions, scientific terminology is used quite correctly. Among the exceptions, we can mention "encroachment on the resources of the real world" in order to accumulate capital (in science, the terms allocation of resources, extraction, extraction, etc. are accepted, and in the case of colonial expansion – exploitation, but not "encroachment" in any way); stereotype (as applied to the scientific term "zero-sum game"); no less strange (and not only stylistically!) the term "a new round of national ups and downs" used by the author looks like, which, by its metaphorical nature, only obscures, rather than clarifies, the essence of the matter. There are also simply poorly formulated and vague proposals, for example: "Due to the limited political position and methods of thinking, the concept of "soft power" has many cognitive distortions." What does "limited political position" have to do with it (what does it even mean?) does it have to do with cognitive distortions? And how does "limited methods of thinking" relate to this? Cognitive distortions are related to the peculiarities of cognitive structures, and not to the "limitations of political position and methods of thinking." Another example of an extremely vague sentence, the meaning of which, most likely, the author himself does not understand: "In the process of reforming the global governance system, the understanding that China's external discourse lacks innovation, and the position of the United States towards competing countries is quite aggressive, should influence the traditional rhetoric of building international relations of the past world order." Even if you do not pay attention to strange expressions like "the innovativeness of discourse", but simply try to understand the idea that the author sought to convey to the reader, you immediately find yourself at a dead end: how can you influence "the traditional rhetoric ... of the past world order"? how can you influence the past in general? It is possible to influence the interpretation of this past, but not on him in any way. An even more strange sentence: "This point of view agrees with Samuel Huntington's opinion on the clash of civilizations, according to which the primary cause of global conflict is the clash of civilizations, and NOT ("not" omitted? – rec.) military conflicts", which is incorrect not only formally and stylistically, but also in fact (Huntington's "clash of civilizations" is by no means opposed to military conflicts, it is their cause). There are also simply redundant, empty sentences from the point of view of meaning like "It is undeniable that "hard power" and "soft power" are completely different from each other"; – well, they probably differ, since they have received different scientific names, why make a special reservation about this? Examples can be multiplied indefinitely, but the verdict will not change: the article needs to be finalized.
The bibliography includes 25 titles, including sources in foreign languages, and adequately represents the state of research on the subject of the article. The appeal to opponents runs like a red thread through the whole work, given its conceptual and analytical nature. GENERAL CONCLUSION: the article proposed for review at this stage of its preparation can be qualified as a scientific work that meets most of the requirements for works of this kind. The presented material corresponds to the subject of the journal "International Relations". The results obtained by the author have signs of scientific novelty and will be of interest to political scientists, political sociologists, specialists in the field of public administration, world politics and international relations, as well as to students of the listed specialties. The article can be recommended for publication after the following shortcomings have been finalized and eliminated: - it is necessary to carefully reflect on the methodology used, as well as the purpose of the study; - the text of the article must be carefully subtracted and all grammatical and stylistic errors eliminated; - it is necessary to check the correctness of the use of scientific terminology; all terms that were used for greater scientific consistency of the article should be replaced by those terms, the meaning of which the author really understands; - in the final part of the article, it is necessary to list the results obtained during the research with an emphasis on their scientific novelty.

Second Peer Review

Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.

An article submitted for examination on the topic: "Conceptualization of the category of "soft power" in political science" is devoted to the urgent problem of methodological development of foreign theories of political science on the example of modern Chinese political science. The article, in general, meets the basic quantitative and qualitative criteria for this kind of scientific work. The author/s of the reviewed article substantiates the relevance of the research. A fairly wide base of research papers and publications was used in its preparation. It should be noted that the author/s of the article used exclusively the works of Chinese and other foreign authors. It is also noteworthy that the scientific works listed in the bibliographic list were published more than 7 years ago. Modern scientific works are not presented in the work, although the authors themselves indicate the modernity of the bibliographic list. This is quite important, since we are talking about the theoretical development of the concept of "soft power" by the author/s of the reviewed article, which thus do not take into account more recent developments on the research problem. In this regard, we believe that the scientific value of the reviewed article is somewhat reduced. It should be positively noted that the article itself is structured and the relevant sections are highlighted in a special way. At the same time, the analysis showed that the methodological section contains a fairly standard set of research approaches and methods. The role of each of them in the study is presented by the author/s in the most general form and is of a non-specific nature related to the research problem, but rather more general, descriptive in nature. The section titled "Research results" essentially presents a discussion of the problem. In our opinion, some scientific results in the reviewed article have been moved rather to the "Conclusion" section. In particular, the author has identified three types of resources on which the spread of "soft power" in China depends. They also formulated a number of aspects of reflecting the interaction of national States within the framework of international law and international diplomacy. The author/s of the article made several conclusions based on the results of the study. In particular, they emphasize that the conceptualization of the category of "soft power" in the Chinese paradigm of international relations reveals its main content and main features, on which the resource dependence of soft power and the mechanisms of its implementation mainly depend. With that said, however, we should nevertheless pay attention to the fact that the article, in our opinion, does not have sufficient depth of scientific study and, in its content, is rather descriptive. It is not possible to form a complete picture of the state of developments in modern Chinese political science regarding the category of "soft power". Nevertheless, the article is written in understandable language and is able to arouse some reader interest. Based on the above, despite the comments, we consider it possible to publish this peer-reviewed article in the desired scientific journal.