Contrary to conventional wisdom, the concept of power has not always been central to
international relations theory. During the 1920s and 30s, power was often ignored or vilified …

The Persian Gulf state of Qatar has fewer than 2 million inhabitants, virtually no potable
water, and has been an independent nation only since 1971. Yet its enormous oil and gas …

Soft power has attracted significant attention in scholarly and public debates on foreign
affairs in recent years. Notwithstanding this greater attention, the treatment of soft power has …

Rethinking World Politics is a major intervention into a central debate in international
relations: how has globalization transformed world politics? Most work on world politics still …

At any given time, a limited number of national currencies are used as instruments of
international commerce, to settle foreign trade transactions or store value for investors and …

Moscow came late to the soft power game, but made it an integral feature of the drive to
restore Russia's great power status. Russia has a proud cultural legacy and has invested …

While the concept of soft power has rapidly moved from the academic theory to ubiquitous
political buzzword, it has, to this point, not received adequate critical assessment. Because …

The analyses of smart and soft power have developed little beyond what their critics would
refer to as 'soft theory', and in both cases the theoretical development is less than 'smart' …

The vast literature and references in policy circles that have followed Nye's seminal article of
1990 attest to the now extraordinary status of soft power in the study of international politics …

The rapid expansion of soft-power scholarship has made its central concept one of the most
recognisable terms in the discipline of international relations. Yet the increased attention has …