Higher Education as a Resource of Russia’s “Soft Power” under the New Geopolitical Conditions. Part 1: Literature Review and Problem Statement
Abstract
The increasing employment of military force and the decline of the culture of dialog between states have increased the focus on non-military ways of problem solving, i. e., the use of “soft power” in international relations. The first section of the paper deals with the analysis of academic sources on the issue of utilizing higher education as a resource of “soft power” in international relations. The author presents an overview of the existing academic works on the functional essence of higher education in international relations, and provides a concise analysis of scholarly papers on the issue of using the educational sphere as the resource of “soft power” on the example of Russia. The results of empirical analysis will be highlighted in the next section of the article.
As an underlying theory of the study, the author relies on Joseph Nye’s concept of “soft power”. The author analyzes two types of sources: academic papers and the textbooks by Russian (Lebedeva M., Rustamova L., Ageeva V., Schmidt S., etc.) and foreign authors (Atkinson C., Carr E., Crowley-Vigneau A. et al., Lomer S., etc.) on the issues of “soft power” in general, and “soft power” of higher education specifically.
Two main conclusions have been drawn building on the research findings. Firstly, the major tool for the implementation of soft power in higher education is international student mobility. Secondly, the main functional essence of higher education in international relations consists in shaping and changing students’ political and ideological attitudes via the transfer of culture, ideas and values of the host country.
Keywords
student mobility,
higher education,
soft power,
internationalisation of higher education,
Russia,
humanitarian cooperation
Supporting agencies: The article was prepared on the basis of a research paper, the results of which were tested during participation in the Max Weber competition of student papers in political science of the RANEPA in 2022-2023 academic year, according to which the author took 1st place in the section “International Relations” (April 28, 2023). This article will be published in two parts: in the first In the second part, the author analyzes literary sources and poses a problem, in turn, in the second part, the author will present the main results and conclusions of the empirical analysis on the example of the Russian case
About the Author
L. A. Savelchev
North-Western Institute of Management, Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Leonid A. Savelchev - Faculty of International Relations and Politics, MA student.
Saint Petersburg
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Review
For citations:
Savelchev L.A. Higher Education as a Resource of Russia’s “Soft Power” under the New Geopolitical Conditions. Part 1: Literature Review and Problem Statement. Novelty. Experiment. Traditions (N.Ex.T). 2023;9(3 (23)):48-55. (In Russ.)
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