New Zealand’s Soft Power: Growing, but does it mean anything?

Aotearoa has been hailed as most improved in Brand Finance’s Global Soft Power Index, climbing six places to 16th in the rankings in the wake of its widely lauded COVID response. But what does it mean? asks Nicholas Dynon.

The Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index 2021 was launched at a recent Global Soft Power Summit virtual event. Keynoted by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the summit featured a stellar line-up of former foreign ministers as well as Harvard international relations professor Joseph Nye, the widely acknowledged originator of the soft power concept.

For the 2021 Index, responses from over 75,000 members of the general public in 102 countries were complemented with a survey of 778 experts in over 40 countries, including academics, NGOs, government officials, business leaders, and media.

While Germany took out top place, New Zealand was the fastestimproving nation in the rankings, jumping to 16th place, thanks to positive international perceptions of the way it’s handled COVID.

Other notable performances in the rankings include the US, which has lost its position as the world’s soft power superpower – dropping to 6th. Japan is the top-performing Asian nation and second overall.

Australia is the only new entrant in the top ten as traditional powerhouses – UK, France, China, Russia, India – received mixed reactions to their pandemic responses. Top placed Middle East contender UAE ranked 17th, bolstered by a probe to Mars and its handling of COVID-19.

New Zealand’s COVID response recognised “In the COVID response, it is fair to say that women leaders did an excellent job,” said Hillary Clinton, “not just in New Zealand and Germany, but in Finland, and in Norway, and in Denmark, and other places where their leadership, exemplified by Angela Merkel and Germany as your number one nation brand for soft power, listened to the science.”

“New Zealand has benefited from Jacinda Ardern’s empathetic leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” observed Rebecca Smith, Director of New Zealand Story, who was a Global Soft Power Summit panellist.

“Swift and decisive action in shutting borders and enforcing mandatory quarantine left the nation free of COVID-19 for months, while other nations saw daily case rates in the thousands,” wrote Steve Thomson, Insight Director, Brand Finance.

“Perceptions of New Zealand have no doubt been bolstered as nations such as the UK and the US cede their usual place as leaders in public health, with both battling repeated waves of the virus among loosened restrictions and ongoing debates about lockdowns.”

According to Thomson, Aotearoa recorded strong results across the board, with increased scores for almost all of the index’s metrics, with only a slight drop in the areas of ‘Culture & Heritage’ and ‘People & Values’. This strong result is likely accounted for, he writes, by increased mental availability. With positive global coverage of its COVID response, New Zealand “has likely been at the forefront of the public’s mind and has therefore benefitted from positive associations generated by stories of its pandemic response.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Arden’s leadership, he continues, “is perhaps at the heart of New Zealand’s increased recognition in [the areas of] Influence, International Relations, and Governance.

In relation to the pandemic, survey respondents were asked to rate how they perceived nations’ handling of COVID-19, and specifically their efforts in stimulating their economies, protecting the health and wellbeing of their citizens, and cooperating internationally, including the provision of aid.

At the other end of the spectrum to New Zealand, ranking at bottom placed 105th is the United States. “With the most cases and COVID-19-related deaths globally,” writes Thomson, “the world’s largest and strongest economy has encountered harsh criticism and questioning on the global stage.”

“The question is if we can recover our soft power, and I think the answer is yes,” commented Global Soft Power Summit panellist, Professor Joseph Nye.

“If America continues making progress on vaccines and can get the pandemic under control, coupled with a sharp economic recovery, then our prospects look good. So, if I were to comment on what the Global Soft Power Index will say next year, I believe the US will be back on an upward trend.”

Professor Joseph Nye.

A soft power aide memoire

‘Soft power’ has become a ubiquitous buzzword for describing the image or ‘non-material’ aspects of a nation’s power relative to other nations, and part of a much-debated way of seeing national power as a combination of hard and soft power.

In his seminal 1990 work, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, Professor Nye introduced his concept of ‘soft power’ as the power wielded by a state through harnessing the resources of “its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority)”.

In Nye’s conception, a country’s soft power relies on reputation and attractiveness to be effective – it’s about shaping the preferences of others through influence rather than coercion.

The concept contrasts with hard power, which refers to the use of military and economic means to influence the behaviour or interests of other actors – coercion as opposed to attraction. Hard power seeks outcomes through a carrot or stick approach as opposed to agreement, whereas soft power aims at outcomes through understanding and acceptance of another’s policies or position. It’s about winning hearts and minds.

In the cut and thrust of the international system, however, soft power is dismissed or minimised by many international relations commentators as little more than branding. They would suggest, for example, that the US’ woeful performance in 2021 soft power rankings means little against that country’s continued hard power (economic and military) dominance.

It’s important to note that Nye’s is not the only conception of soft power, and Brand Finance’s Global Soft Power Index is not the only soft power metric.

Other well-known indices include the UK-based Institute for Government and Monocle Magazine’s Monocle Soft Power Survey and London-based Portland Communications and University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy’s Portland Soft Power 30. Further complicating the soft power rankings space is the existence of several other indices in the related fields of nation branding and country reputation management, which measure similar – yet distinct – aspects of a country’s international image.

Country reputation management is largely the domain of public relations consultancies, which extend the methodologies of corporate reputation management to the reputations of nations and governments. Nation branding, on the other hand, is a sub-discipline of marketing that aims at maximising a country’s brand relevance and value among global consumers.

In contrast to these, the concept of soft power is a product of neoliberal thinking in international relations, yet the lines between soft power and its close nation branding and country reputation cousins are blurry, and the terms are often used interchangeably.

Perhaps nowhere is the overlap more obvious than in the case of Brand Finance’s Global Soft Power Index itself – a purported measurement of soft power delivered by consultancy better known for branding metrics.

There’s a lot of overlap, but the basic distinction between soft power, nation brand and country reputation can be explained: while nation brand is concerned primarily with which countries you’d prefer to buy from or visit, and soft power with which countries you are most influenced and impressed by, country reputation is about which countries you are more likely to trust.

Does soft power matter?

“A strong nation brand and positive soft power perceptions allow a nation to promote itself as a place for people to visit, invest in, and build a reputation for their quality of goods and services,” writes Brand Finance’s Thomson. It also allows a country to rise in the esteem of its neighbours, market its resources and compose the face it presents on the international stage.

“However, it is often overlooked that a strong nation brand and soft power can deliver better outcomes at home. Primarily it encourages domestic tourism, the consumption of domestic goods and services (rather than imports). Less tangibly it also just makes people feel better about their country.”

Thomson also points out that a nation’s attractiveness and soft power can impact most brands and businesses – “especially those with very clear national origins and associations.”

According to Nye, the potential utility of soft power extends well beyond branding, trade, tourism and international likeability.

A state is more able to influence others, he argues, if it is perceived as credible and its policies as attractive. Support for policies gained through the exercise of soft power, for example, can assist in the building of international military coalitions and alliances. It can assist in the taking of the moral high ground, and thus can support a state in exercising its instruments of hard power.

Ultimately, Nye argues that soft power is “a means to success in world politics” for those that know how to leverage it. With New Zealand flying high in soft power rankings, the now relevant question becomes how will New Zealand leverage it – and do we know how to?