Examining the geopolitical threat theory by comparing New Zealand’s and Finland’s soft power use

ABSTRACT

Employing a most-similar case design, the study examines Finland’s and New Zealand’s soft power actions to answer the question, why did Finland use more soft power than New Zealand during 1995–2010? The article focuses on geopolitical threat to reveal why Finland is such a high soft power user, and New Zealand is not, when these two countries should have exhibited similar levels of soft power use. The qualitative analysis finds that a strong perception of a geopolitical threat boosted Finland’s soft power use, while the absence of a similar threat for New Zealand led to a low soft power use.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft power
• New zealand
• Finland
• geopolitics
• foreign policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. While private soft power resources are also part of a country’s soft power resources, this study focuses on the government soft power actions.

2. Also important to note that slightly before the time-frame of this article, based on COW data, Finland has only signed one military agreement, and that was a non-aggression agreement with Russia in 1992. This agreement allowed Finland to proceed towards its E.U. membership. It can also be seen as a great foreign policy win for Finland as she was able to influence Russia to sign such as non-aggression agreement.

3. There are also short-term programs such as Neighbouring Area Cooperation, Cooperation with Central and Eastern European, Russia and CIS Countries, Commercial- Industrial Cooperation. These programs were only created for a few years and then were discontinued.

4. The reason the detailed budget analysis does not start at 1995, is that program level data was not available until 1998.

5. The original Finnish budget data was also received in Finish so using google translate, we translated each budget item into English.

6. The Unit for Public Diplomacy receives its funding through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2008 and it is included under the Other Expenditure item.

7. Online budget information was only available from 1998. The Treasury of New Zealand scanned in their budget books and emailed them to me. While ministry level data was retrieved, but program level data could not be before 1998.

8. In addition, the creation of programs under the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment fit the descriptions of Nye’s soft power, but this specific ministry was not created until 2012 by merging the Ministry of Economic Development, Ministry of Science and Innovation, Department of Labor and the Department of Building and Housing (New Zealand Treasury). While the time-frame of this article ends in 2010, New Zealand shows promising budget trends and programs that indicate an increase in its soft power use in the future.

9. CDIP’s first budget allocation was created in 2006 so it can be fully operational by 2007. Budget data for this program has been collected from 2006–2010.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Judit Trunkos

Judit Trunkos, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Robert Morris University, she has been researching why countries use soft power. Dr. Trunkos has created a new soft power dataset that is able to measure countries’ soft power reliance. Her recent publications include Testing the Impact of Geopolitics on European Democratic Countries’ Soft Power Use (2022), Comparing Russian, Chinese and American Soft Power Use: A New Approach (2020), a co-authored Afterword with Phillip G. Cerny in Alexandre Bohas’ edited volume The Attack of Culture (2019), and two co-authored book chapters; A Primer on Using Sport for Diplomatic Purposes (with Bob Heere) (2017).

Robert H. Cox

Robert Henry Cox is Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. He has published extensively on public policy issues in Europe.