Soft Power a La Russe: Making Sense of Russia’s Soft Power Approach.
Journal: Doria (University of Helsinki)
Year: 2016

In 1990, Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” to define co-optive power that is based on attraction rather than coercion. For quite a long time it was believed that soft power was a prerogative of Western-style democracies as they were closest to the values constituting the basis of Nye’s classical soft power concept. Nye remained skeptical over the ability of hard states to produce soft power. However, nowadays all types of governments including non-democratic ones turn to soft power. In Rus