A Study About Joseph Nye's Soft Power

As a concept,Joseph Nye's "soft power" was proposed in 1990,and it is a response to the statements of America's decline.However,Nye's "soft power" has been constantly changing since its inception.Sometimes Nye's definition of the concept of "soft power"is clear but sometimes it is very ambiguous,which has become one of the reasons for the abuse and misuse of soft power by academics and political world.On the other hand,the academic world have less focus on the overall development and changes of Nye's soft power thoughts,and the emergence of "sharp power" also requires us to fully understand the connotation,original intention and development of soft power.This study combs and analyzes the main representative works of Joseph Nye from1977 to 2015 and other scholars' related research on soft power through text analysis methods and historical analysis methods.It found that the origin of "soft power" can be traced back to the classical realists' view of power,Antonio Gramsci's cultural leadership and other scholars' opinion of power(such as Robert W.Cox,Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz),and Nye's interdependence theory also laid a theoretical foundation for the "soft power".By combing other scholars' research on soft power,we find that academics either interpret soft power from the perspective of rationalism,namely these scholars analyze soft power from the level of structural system;or academics analyze soft power from the perspective of constructivism,namely they equal cultural factors to soft power.However,these analytical perspectives regard soft power as an exogenous given concept,which makes these perspectives confronted with soft power's becoming problems.In fact,the development of Nye's "soft power" has shown a tendency to "practice turn".Therefore,this study reinterprets Joseph Nye's "soft power" from the perspective of "practice turn".In the later period,Nye raised practical factors such as "scenario","implementer","implementation object" and "cognition" to a important position in some literature about soft power.Nye also believed that soft power and hard power can only be defined in a specific situations,and the target countries' perception of power plays an important role in the definition of soft power and hard power.As for China,Soft power itself has its own flaws and the value connotation ofWestern centralism.China cannot use it without thinking.China should check the development of its own soft power,and find out which is deviating from the original intention of soft power,and pay attention to the specific scenarios and object perceptions when apply soft power.