Designing a model measuring the soft power of the countries of the world

If in a general sense soft power is considered as the ability to shape the preferences and behavior of the audiences using attractiveness; One of the important issues related to this concept is soft power measurement. In this context, Joseph Nye is the first person to discuss the possibility of measuring this power at the same time as proposing the concept of soft power. According to him, soft power and its availability can be assessed through public opinion polls, interviews with elites, and case studies. However, soft power is a concept that Gives a different measure to assess the international position of a country; For this reason, since the beginning of the term soft power, the discussion of measuring this power, besides other theoretical literature, has enjoyed widespread progress and success among thinkers; Despite the short history of soft power measurement research, various models have been designed by researchers and study centers. But Despite the many efforts, these models were attacked and criticized from different angles. Accordingly, this study tried to design a new model, while measuring the status of the soft power of countries, to draw the geopolitical structure of the world with a focus on soft power.

The first question of this research is what are the most important sources and indicators of the soft power of countries? And the second question, What is the geopolitical structure of the world with a focus on soft power? However, given that these questions were exploratory, no hypothesis has been put forward; In this regard, the method of this research has been descriptive-analytical and the method of collecting information has been library and field

In this study, there was a hypothesis that the geopolitical structure of the world has undergone changes due to the emergence of the concept of soft power. Due to this necessity, understanding the global geopolitical structure with a focus on soft power became relevant. Therefore, in the first step, due to the weakness of current models of soft power measurement, the conceptual model of soft power measurement in the form of six components (political, cultural, economic, science and technology, military and geographical), 48 conceptual indicators and 260 operational variables were designed. Then, the importance of each of the capacities and conceptual indicators of soft
power was determined using an online questionnaire by 194 soft power experts opinion from 33 countries. In the next step, among the common methods of measuring power, the matrix measurement method was chosen. Then, based on a number of preconditions,  160 countries were selected. In the next step, referring to databases and valid documents, etc., the amount of data of each of the 260 variables for 160 countries was extracted; At this stage, 57 countries were excluded due to a lack of valid data in some indicators and variables; Also, 15 variables were excluded due to lack of universality. Therefore, the number of countries under study was reduced to 103 countries and the number of variables to 245. In the next step, with the help of four standard methods,  The values of the variables were converted into score; Then the scores obtained for all variables were placed in the same range using the minimum-maximum method. After going through the above steps, the soft power of the countries was calculated based on the matrix method. In the final stage, Richard Muir's model and the writer's creative approach were used to drawing the geopolitical structure of the world with a focus on soft power. Therefore, for the soft power of countries, five levels were considered. Then, the soft power classification of countries was analyzed by six statistical methods. In the next step, among the different methods, the natural failure method was selected based on the number of advantages, and the soft power of the countries based on this method was divided into five levels. In this regard, the results showed that the United States, Germany, Britain, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, South Korea, etc. at the first level, or other words in the highest level; Italy, Singapore, Poland, China, UAE, Israel, Malaysia, etc. in the second level; Russia, India, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, etc. at the third level; Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Ghana, Senegal, Tunisia, Ecuador, Colombia, etc. in the fourth level and Egypt, Iran, Algeria, Mali, Tanzania, Nigeria, Pakistan, etc in the fifth level or other words, in the lowest levels of soft power are located.

In this study, with the knowledge of the true nature of soft power and the limitations of measuring the elements of this power, an attempt was made to design a soft power measurement model with a focus on countries. In this regard, the results of measuring the soft power of countries showed that despite all the ups and downs of US policy, especially during the Trump administration, the country has relied on the position first of soft power in the world. However, with Biden taking office and revising some of its previous policies, including resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis through multilateral diplomacy, trying to return to the Paris Climate Treaty, Laying the groundwork for the United States to rejoin the World Health Organization, increasing refugee reception in the United States, and so on. The new team is expected to work more than Trump to repair the mental image of the United States and strengthen its soft power.At the same time, it should not be overlooked that the United States's position at the top of the global soft power pyramid is shaky; Because near it is a selection of European countries that can occupy the position of this country by setting and adopting a suitable strategy. The United States, on the other hand, does not have a significant advantage in all aspects of soft power; it has a decisive position only in economic capacities and science and technology, and in cultural capacity, despite occupying the first place, the countries of Britain and France are with a relatively small difference after it. And it is far from the first place in political, geographical, and military capacities. With these interpretations, one can expect this scenario; If the members of the European Union, especially Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Finland, increase their cohesion and solidarity on a variety of issues in such a way as to present a single picture of Europe's soft power; In the post-Corona, the geopolitical structure of soft power will be shifted towards the EU.