THE INVERSION OF SOFT POWER: NARRATIVE AUTHORITY, CIVILIZATIONISM AND THE CRISIS OF THE LIBERAL INTERNATIONAL ORDER

Dominant readings of the crisis of the international order have privileged material and institutional explanations. This article argues instead that its deepest core is the erosion of the narrative authority that allowed Western powers to define what counts as legitimate, modern and desirable on a global scale. Through a conceptual-analysis design, it revisits Joseph NyeÂ’s soft power and rearticulates it with Gramscian cultural hegemony and with the narrative turn in International Relations, characterising it not as attractive power but as a technology of order aimed at naturalising particular preferences in the guise of universality. The argument is examined through Chinese and Indian civilizationism and set against recent international perception data showing a partial decoupling between material capabilities and narrative authority. The article proposes three notions: the inversion of soft power, whereby narratives that once generated attraction come to produce rejection; conflictual narrative coexistence as the form of the emerging order; and a post-hegemonic soft power that may persuade episodically but can hardly found an order. The outcome of this transition will determine the very possibility of international cooperation.