GC Powerlist debate
GC Powerlist, in association with Pinsent Masons, gathered leading general counsel to debate which roles soft power and hard power play in their day-to-day interactions with business, in their teams and with external counsel.
Douglas Alexander, Pinsent Masons: I will first contextualise and attempt to define ‘soft power’ because, it is more often discussed than defined, and in that sense, I should probably declare an interest. In addition to many roles I hold, I have been a senior fellow at the Belfer Center in the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard over the last six years, and Joseph Nye, who coined the term ‘soft power’, has been a colleague of mine.
He coined the term in 1990. In his book called Bound to Lead; Joseph was convinced at the time that the kind of declinism that was abroad about the United States was not justified. He argued that it is a methodology more than a destination in terms of how foreign policy is used. In terms of foreign policy, soft power is the ability to get what you want through attraction or seduction, rather than through coercion or payment. When we think about power, it is ultimately the ability to influence others to get those outcomes that you desire.
