What Is Soft Power? Definition, Origins, and Why It Matters
In the past, power was visible primarily through scale. Whoever had the most enormous army or the most money usually won—and dominated.
Nations influenced other nations by invading, coercing, or exploiting their resources. Empires were built on muscle, maps, taxes, and tariffs.
That still exists.
But today, there’s a different kind of power at play—the kind that doesn’t knock down your door, but slips into your textbooks, your headphones, your newsfeed, your lunchbox… even your underpants.
Ask yourself:
Why do people around the world name their babies after pop stars?
Why is brunch and padel suddenly a thing in cities that never used to serve either?
Why do teenagers in Sydney dress like skaters in LA?
Why would governments ban TikTok but still try to copy it?
Why does the world follow a war in Ukraine differently than it does one in Gaza?
It’s not just geopolitics.
It’s perception.
It’s familiarity.
It’s emotional affinity.
It’s culture.
That’s soft power.
So What Is Soft Power?
The term was coined by political scientist Joseph Nye in the 1990s.
In his book, Soft Power (2004), he defined soft power as:
“The ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment.”
In contrast, hard power is the ability to force someone to act—whether through military threats or financial incentives.
Here are two lists of examples that fall into hard power versus soft power:
Examples of Hard Power and Soft Power: from nuclear weapons and sanctions to TikTok, sushi, and BTS.
Soft power, then, is not just Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, nor the icons and IPs that travel across borders—but most importantly, it is rooted in values and ideas. Values are the soil from which cultural products grow, and without them, soft power would be decoration rather than persuasion.
Put simply:
Hard power is the stick or the checkbook. Soft power is the magnet.
It’s about influence without force. It’s about making others want what you represent.
It doesn’t shock—it seduces. It doesn’t invade—it invites. And once it lands, it sticks.
