Contribution to UK soft power

 

WHAT IS SOFT POWER?

A country’s soft power is its ability to make friends and influence people not through military might, but through its most attractive assets, notably culture, education, language and values.

In short, it’s the things that make people love a country rather than fear it, things that are often the products of people, institutions and brands rather than governments.

 

Contribution to UK soft power

1. The British Council has been building long-term trust, people-to-people connections and international opportunities for the UK for more than 75 years.

2. Our work builds the UK’s international reputation and attractiveness, contributing to the UK’s soft power.

 

People-to-people connections and trust

•             A 24 hour networked world means that huge numbers of important international connections take place outside traditional state-to-state relations.

•             Our research shows that people trust people more than they trust governments, so connections between people often make a more significant contribution to soft power than government-led activities.

•             We connect UK teachers, learners, artists, sportspeople, scientists and policy makers with their counterparts around the world, building trust between people, whatever the state of relations between governments.

•             The trust we build creates opportunities for UK businesses, artists, and cultural and educational institutions to engage with new opportunities and global markets.

 

Reputation and ‘soft power’

•             The UK’s language, arts, education system and civil society are the reasons for our international attractiveness. They also strengthen the UK’s reputation across the world as an open, vibrant country, with a thriving cultural scene and a world-class education sector.

•             The British Council makes a major contribution to the UK’s soft power by creating international opportunities in education, the arts and society, thereby building trust between people around the world.

 

 

FACTS

•             Our entrepreneurial public-service model combined with our operational independence from UK government is widely respected by other countries. The British Council model showcases the UK’s entrepreneurial ‘mixed economy’ approach to education and culture and advances the UK’s cultural relations at no additional cost to the UK taxpayer.

•             Research by Chatham House recently placed the English language, education and culture as the top three factors in supporting the UK’s overseas reputation.

•             Each year, our work directly involves more than 12.5 million people worldwide and reaches 580 million people through digital media, radio and television.

•             Research has shown a clear correlation between increased levels of trust in a country and an increase in a person’s inclination to do business with, study in or visit that country.

•             Soft power is being prioritised as a foreign-policy tool in other countries. China has opened 300 Confucius Institutes since 2004 and aims to have 1,000 institutes in operation by 2020.

•             Many of the challenges facing today’s governments are transnational. Networks of people across nation states can build a platform on which collective action can be taken more effectively.

•             The UK is recognised as one of the world’s most adept soft-power states. In a recent global ranking of soft power by the Institute for Government, the UK came top and the British Council was singled out as ‘a tremendous source of British soft power’.

•             Our work targets international leaders, influencers and aspirants. Their participation in British Council programmes gives them an instinctive understanding of the UK’s position on particular issues, and creates useful contacts, as well as a space for persuasion and influence.

 

The British Council and soft power

William Hague, Foreign Secretary, says ‘Building stronger cultural and education links between nations has never been more important for our security and prosperity in a networked world. Britain has immense advantages: the English language, connecting us to billions of people; links to every nation on earth through our history and diverse society; skills in financial services, engineering, science and technology that are second to none. The British Council is doing excellent work worldwide to project and promote Britain’s strengths and our democratic values.’

Explaining the importance of soft power, the late Sir Anthony Parsons, British Diplomat, said: ‘It is really dazzlingly obvious … [i]f you are thoroughly familiar with someone else’s language and literature, if you know and love his country, its cities, its arts, its people, you will be instinctively disposed … to support him actively when you consider him right and to avoid punishing him too fiercely when you regard him as being wrong.’

Joseph Nye University Distinguished Service Professor at Havard University, in his seminal book Soft Powerwrote: ‘The concept is not new. It is human behaviour. … [T]he British Council discovered it and has been practising it effectively since 1934.’

Philip Seib, Director of Center on Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California, called the British Council ‘probably the world’s best cultural diplomacy agency’