CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Kosovic, Nikola |
|---|---|
| Title | What Makes Russia so Popular in Serbia? Origins of Russian Soft Power |
| Summary | This thesis tests a new methodological approach to investigating and measuring the capacities for soft power, i.e. a country’s ability to get the desired outcomes not through coercion or payment, but through attractiveness of its culture, domestic values and foreign policies. The main theoretical argument of this work is that the hallmark of soft power is not uniformity of application, but its variation. This means that globally and even regionally generalized conclusions about soft power have very little practical utility. Therefore, this thesis suggests switching the focal point of research from countries eliciting attraction, to those subjected to it. I argue that this type of research has higher practical utility, while at the same time it overcomes various problems of index-based measurements of soft power used to-date. Two main research questions are answered in this work. Primarily, which elements of foreign countries’ soft power people in Serbia consider most important when formulating an opinion about them, and, secondly, which elements of Russian soft power contribute most to this country’s image among the Serbian population. An online survey of 442 people in Serbia shows that Serbs tend to be most strongly attracted to countries whose population is linguistically and religiously similar to Serbian, whose athletes are quite successful, and military power globally respected. On the other hand, Russia most strongly attracts those Serbs who regard important the attractiveness of a foreign country’s art, cuisine, education and touristic offer, while, on the contrary, it repels those who deem important the geopolitical relevance of a country when formulating an opinion about it. |
| Supervisor | Fumagalli, Matteo |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/kosovic_nikola.pdf |
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