Is the Liberal Soft Power Use a Myth? Comparing Democracies and Non-democracies’ Soft Power Use

Soft power literature has suggested that it is the liberal democracies that end up relying on soft power tools and not the non-democracies. The underlying theory advocates that soft power is an American concept that was created to support the spread of liberal ideology. This paper compares two groups of countries to test if the democracies and non-democracies actually use the same amount of soft power. The time-frame is 1995-2010. Using recoded events data, the findings indicate that non-democracies use a surprising amount of soft power. China uses 87% of soft power compared to the USA’s 83% and Russia’s 81%. Therefore, the results show that all countries use soft power, not just the liberal democracies.