Not Joseph Nye!

I was rather blown away by the Zahran and Ramos article, "From hegemony to soft power," a Gramscian interpretation of the ideas put forward by Joseph Nye. I should say that Nye's ideas have always resonated with me, maybe especially as someone who has been on the soft power side of things for quite some time. Nye's ideas as expressed in his book Soft Power (2004) being made up of a country's culture, its political values, and its foreign policies, and his combined strategies of daily and strategic communications as well as building long-term relationships with key individuals seems a logical if not simplified way to provide an overview of co-optive (non-coercive) power and how it is actually used in the real world.

Not that I think that hard and soft power should be separated out--they both have their place and are part of the toolkit (hate the word arsenal) that the State has at its disposal to be persuasive, and to promote its interests. Nye's article entitled "Public Diplomacy and Soft Power" (2008) reinforces this idea--that "smart power," or the use of all persuasive tools at our disposal is the way to go. He seems right on to me in saying that soft power is squandered quite easily by bad policy decisions, just as it is weakened by propaganda that lacks the credible backbone of well-thought out policy, and messages that are either too far from the policy they purport to explain or inappropriate for a particular audience.

Got it. Like it. Understand it. I'm with you, Nye.

Then Zahran and Ramos come along and try to explain in Gramscian terms that Nye is simply a tool of the system, an "organic intellectual" whose ideas work in support of a "globalist historic bloc" that found a way to stay in power across countries and cultures by implementing neoliberal economic policies, satisfying an elite liberal class, and throwing just enough privileges to certain groups in the underprivileged classes. The authors say that this group was doing all right until "private interests" in the financial sector tried to take too much, and and Bush swept into the White House with his cronies from the Cold War era and right-wing church-goers.

Fine, I get that, but...how in the world do the authors make the stretch to say that Nye is actually supporting this apparatus of idiots? Of course, we all have embedded perspectives, and Nye does, too, but I don't see his theories as those in support of the public policy he has clearly criticized. These authors really had to take a shoehorn to fit Nye into that role.

I would put someone like Jeffrey Sachs into the role of organic intellectual in support of such a neoliberal agenda right away (He fits perfectly! It snagged him a great job, and even some globetrotting gigs with Bono)...throw Bono in there, too--the guy goes between Louis Vuitton glossy ads and yapping about the misery of the inhabitants of the third world)--but not Nye.

But...I'm trying to keep an open mind about all of this. I am continually intrigued by what Gramsci has been intrigued about--how a privileged social class stays in power without being coercive, and, as Zahran and Ramos assert in their article, how those in power manage hegemony over the underprivileged by presenting their ideas as "universal." I also like the way they took the discussion outside of the boundaries of states and into the global sphere. Maybe they're onto something on a number of points, but I'm skeptical. The argument sounds like a dependentista conspiracy theory to me.

I would've like to have known more about the ideas of Gramsci before tackling this one. Would love to hear other's views on this article.