Soft Security and Its Importance

There are various ways and tools for providing security which are affected by three types of power: military, economic, and attraction. Soft security is a kind of security that can be created through attraction power in the society. The basic research question is that which factors have been effective in the emergence of this tendency among governments. To answer this question, the concepts of power, soft and hard security, and intellectual principles of soft security are briefly described here. In the next sections, factors affecting soft security in international and domestic levels are expressed. Among these factors, undermining the realism paradigm in politics, security concept transformation and its developing domain, globalization and its consequences on security, development of democratic values and systems in the world, development of new social movements, characteristics and advantages of soft security, expectation revolution and accountable governments, and the fundamental characteristics of Islamic Republic of Iran that is more compatible with soft security than hard security or hard power, are more prominent.