The BBC and the making of British Public Diplomacy - The case of the Corporation's Arabic

Service

In politics (and particularly in international politics), soft power is the ability to attract and co-opt,
rather than coerce (contrast hard power). In other words, soft power involves shaping the
preferences of others through appeal and attraction. A defining feature of soft power is that it is non-
coercive; the currency of soft power includes culture, political values, and foreign policies. In 2012
Joseph Nye of Harvard University explained that with soft power, "the best propaganda is not
propaganda", further explaining that during the Information Age, "credibility is the scarcest
resource".

Nye popularised the term in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American
Power. In this book he wrote: "when one country gets other countries to want what it wants might
be called co-optive or soft power in contrast with the hard or command power of ordering others to
do what it wants"

Intellectually, Tallents' ideas found their fullest expression in his pamphlet The Projection of
England (1933), which argued for the creation of a school for 'national projection' - a propaganda
body that would defend the British 'sense of fair play' from the challenges of America, fascist
Europe and the Soviet Union. However, while Tallents' notion of cultural diplomacy led to the
creation of the British Council (1934), the body was ineffective during the interwar years,
hamstrung by political turf wars and poor funding.

Tallents' later career took him to the BBC, (where he was Deputy Director General under Lord
Reith) and the second Ministry of Information (where Tallents' soft-edged conception of
propaganda proved spectacularly ineffective). After the Second World War he became founder
President of The Institute of Public Relations