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This article pushes beyond hard power and soft power to insist on smart power, defined as the capacity of an actor to combine elements of hard power and soft power in ways that are mutually reinforcing such that the actor's purposes are advanced effectively and efficiently. It argues that advancing smart power has become a national security imperative, driven both by long-term structural changes in international conditions and by short-term failures of the current administration. The current debates over public diplomacy and soft power suffer from failures to address conceptual, institutional, and political dimensions of the challenge, three dimensions the author addresses in this article. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2008 The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

This article pushes beyond hard power and soft power to insist on smart power, defined as the capacity of an actor to combine elements of hard power and soft power in ways that are mutually reinforcing such that the actor's purposes are advanced effectively and efficiently. It argues that advancing smart power has become a national security imperative, driven both by long-term structural changes in international conditions and by short-term failures of the current administration. The current debates over public diplomacy and soft power suffer from failures to address conceptual, institutional, and political dimensions of the challenge, three dimensions the author addresses in this article.

There are two rival conceptions of power in modern sociopolitical thought. According to one, all social power reduces to power-over-others. According to another, the core notion is power-to-effect-outcomes, to which even power-over reduces. This article defends seven theses. First, agential social power consists in a relation between agent and outcomes (power-to). Second, not all social power reduces to power-over and, third, the contrary view stems from conflating power-over with a distinct notion: power-despite-resistance. Fourth, the widespread assumption that social power presupposes the capacity to overcome resistance is false: social power includes the capacity to effect outcomes with others' assistance. Fifth, power-with can be exercised via joint intentional action, strategic coordination and non-strategic coordination. Sixth, agential social power is best analysed as a capacity to effect outcomes, with the assistance of others, despite the resistance of yet others. Seventh, power-over and power-with are not mutually exclusive: each can ground the other.

Western nations are willing participants in the eastward shift of international power. Businesses and consumers benefit from the investment opportunities and low-labour costs. But industralising countries need to be aware of western sensitivities to the power shift, respecting international norms during their ascent. Adapted from the source document.

We join the debate on trade interdependence and conflict with a reexamination of Barbieri's (1996) intriguing empirical results showing that under certain circumstances, trade interdependence causes conflict. We argue that these findings resulted from a specification that was missing a variable. We return to Barbieri's models and introduce two independent power measures for countries within each dyad. When a correctly specified trade-conflict regression model incorporating the new power variables is performed, the constraining effect of interdependence becomes evident, and the results obtained are the reverse of Barbieri's. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2007.]

Women's empowerment is good for, among many other things, economic development, global health, and the advancement of human rights. Now research shows that it's also good for medal counts. A study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, due out in early 2015, looks at the connection between gender equality and how well a country's athletes -- both male and female -- have fared in the Olympics. Equality in education was an especially good predictor of performance by a country's athletes. Adapted from the source document.

Women's empowerment is good for, among many other things, economic development, global health, and the advancement of human rights. Now research shows that it's also good for medal counts. A study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, due out in early 2015, looks at the connection between gender equality and how well a country's athletes -- both male and female -- have fared in the Olympics. Equality in education was an especially good predictor of performance by a country's athletes. Adapted from the source document.