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

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

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.