Chapter 4: Influence Indicators – Macro Level

This section considers influence indicators at the macro scale. This includes actors at the level of national institutions, nation-states, and regional and multilateral bodies, and discusses indicators of the influence these actors might possess, including:

• Assessments of unilateral national power, including tangible measures of economic, demographic, and military assets;
• Assessments of bilateral (two nations influence over each other) and comparative (relative influence of multiple nations over one or many nations);
• Issue-specific and relation-specific assessments of influence; and
• Less tangible elements of influence and sources of power.

Unilateral, bilateral and comparative indicators

Measures and other indicators of the influence of macro level actors typically takes the form of power analysis of national (and sometimes multinational) actors. Power analyses can focus on specific elements of national power (military and economic power analyses are common) or can attempt to outline a more expansive and wholistic view of the elements of national power, including diplomatic networks, cultural influences, diasporic communities, financial clout, and the like.

Power analyses can be unilateral measures of the characteristics and capabilities of nations, expressed as national power indexes, such as the Lowy Institute Asia Power Index (Patton, Sato & Lemahieu, 2023, see also Mazarr, 2022, pp. 358ff.) Other reports offer comparative measures and forecasts of national power, aimed at predicting scenarios that would lead to conflict based on shifts (or ‘shocks’) in the balance of power (Heim & Miller, 2020).

These indexes and analyses list nations’ levels of power by allocating quantitative values to various elements of national power, weighting some elements higher than others, and calculating national power in sum.

Some elements are easily quantified through using standard measures of, for example, economic strength (using gross national product, trading figures) and demographics (using population size, age, education levels).

Some calculations are more complicated, such as assessments of military strength based on numbers of known assets. Such analyses cannot account for potential effectiveness in specific contexts, for example the value of land-based capabilities in maritime environments, or the challenges of asymmetrical warfare.

Other calculations are more speculative, relying on the assignation of power values to proxy indicators. The enumeration of cultural, social, and political elements of national power is prone to such inexact approximations. For example, the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index uses the number of skyscrapers as an indicator of international prestige and percentages of google searches as an indicator for online interest.

The proxy indicators used in the Asia Power Index8, while imperfect, are carefully chosen to meet the needs of the assessment, which relies upon the use of data that is reliable and accessible, and consistently applicable to every nation in the Index. The purpose here is to provide an overview and a ranking of power in the region; it is a large-scale map rather than a detailed topography. To suggest such indicators are perhaps ‘fuzzy’ measures is an acknowledgment of the limits of the possible in such circumstances.

Lastly, expert opinion is solicited to inform assessments of influence. This is done where hard data is unavailable or used to complement data-based indicators. The Lowy Asia Power Index uses such expert surveys support its analysis of military and diplomatic power. The ISEAS State of Southeast Asia (see below) is entirely dependent on surveys of experts and political opinion elites.

Soft power and popular culture

Soft power refers to the power to persuade through example and effective communication of a nation’s desirable attributes. Coined by Joseph Nye (1990), it developed in combination with the idea of nation branding9 to offer an alternative path to international influence that appeared benign, or at least non-violent. Soft power is derived from a nation’s enviable characteristics that, if inspiring to and emulated by others, lead to a world in which those nations with the greatest soft power would influence the rest to be more like them.

Soft power and nation branding was accounted for in products like the Soft Power Index, the Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index and the Futurebrand Country Brand Index. These indexes combine opinion polling with quantitative indicators of, inter alia, cultural power; corruption and governance; and innovation and digital power.

Such indexes provide insight into the perceptions of cultural value of different nations but also understanding of how government and economic factors relate to the desirability of culture, governance, people, exports, tourism, investment and immigration. The role of tourism in these indexes is significant as this provides not only an indicator of the cultural view of place and people, but tourism and travel can be a way in which cultural attachment can be established, enhanced or depleted.

In cultural analysis it is now widely appreciated that raw data on foreign popular culture consumption needs to be interpreted in relation to the different meanings that can be assigned to it, including the broader beliefs and dispositions towards the producer nation. Influential studies on the global popularity of American television soap operas in the 1980s (e.g. Liebes and Katz, 1990) were significant in illustrating that the mere consumption of foreign cultural products does not necessarily equate to hegemonic influence, with ideological opposition by audiences remaining or even being reinforced through the consumption of such popular culture.

Discourse Power

The term discourse power derives from the Chinese expression (话语权), referring to the power to influence international discourse in forums and institutions that shape the rules and norms of international relations.

In the context of Chinese influence efforts, analyses have focussed on strategies and practices designed to promulgate narratives supporting foreign policy goals through shaping public discourse and public opinion, a form of ‘mediated public diplomacy’ (Entman, 2008) practiced by most nations. It is aligned with, but distinct from, discourse power as practiced in Chinese diplomacy.

Discourse power includes public diplomacy but is more sophisticated. Notions of discourse as power are pivotal to a constructivist worldview that foregrounds the role of ideas and knowledge in shaping rules and norms. Dominant discourses shape how the world is seen and nations are judged, and the normative values instantiated in the institutions and regulations of the international order.

Tangible indicators of discourse power include analysis of activities undertaken (through case study analysis), and the consequential impacts on discourse (through discourse analysis) and opinion (through opinion surveys). Some reports characterise Chinese efforts at discourse power as having achieved mixed, modest results (Kurlantzick, 2023; Zhang, 2022) but these analyses may be overly focussed on Chinese information activities, neglecting efforts across economic, diplomatic and global governance domains (Thibaut, 2024).

Bilateral / dyadic influence

Power analyses also seek to represent relative influence in bilateral (or dyadic) relationships, such as the Foreign Bilateral Influence Capacity Index (FIBC) (Moyer et al, 2021). The FIBC aims to represent the influence between two countries, either in the form of the volume of the transactions between them (described as bandwidth) or the levels of economic and security dependency between them. High bandwidths suggest higher levels of opportunities to exert influence over one another; high dependencies indicate where one nation has more influence over the other.

Comparative power analyses include those that focus on rivalries between major powers as well as those that compare multiple nations and multinational entities. The FIBC database, for example, is used to assess the comparative influence of 12 nations (the ASEAN nations plus China and the US) in Southeast regionally, and in each ASEAN nation, and contextualises this analysis within the framework of “China-US competition” (Moyer, et.al., 2021).

The indicators used in the FIBC are all measurable variables, calculated according to equations outlined in the Relative National Power Codebook (Moyer et.al., 2024).

Comparing multiple actors, the State of Southeast Asia reports produced annually by the ISEAS (2023) addresses the comparative influence of seven nations (Australia, China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea (South Korea], The United States, and The United Kingdom) and two regional organisations (ASEAN and the EU).

The State of Southeast Asia reports are based on a survey of experts (mostly Southeast Asian) from academia, business, government, civil society, the media, and regional organisations. The survey includes a series of questions about their perceptions of the amount of influence of the aforementioned nations/30

organisations, and whether this influence is welcome or a cause for concern. The questions cover categories including: economic influence; political and strategic influence; support for global trade; and leadership regarding the rules-based international order.

Asymmetrical and contextual indicators of influence

Numerous assessments note that influence can vary according to the element of national power: strategic influence may be higher for some, economic influence for others, and so on. Long’s (2022) schema for analysis of the influence goes into finer detail, suggesting that influence can vary according to (1) specific policy goals and (2) specific relationships.

In Long’s reckoning, smaller states in particular may have asymmetric influence advantages on certain issues, for example access to strategically important resources or being located in a strategically important position or having localised influence over regional neighbours.

Moreover, Long suggests three indicators that can be used to assess how influential a smaller state might be. The first indicator is policy divergence: the degree to which the small nation’s goals differ from the larger one. The second is issue salience: the level of importance the issue has for the larger power. The third is preference cohesion: the degree to which there are levels of consensus on the issue within decision-making elites in the larger power.

What measures can be used to identify and assess policy divergence, issue salience and preference cohesion? These are imprecise but not impossible to evaluate, using empirical and interpretive methods associated with the disciplines of political science and international relations, focussing on the analysis of foreign policy statements and actions to infer interests and intentions, as well as assessments of domestic politics to identify key issues, key decision makers and the networks they are located within, and the dynamics of political systems.

Using these three indicators, it is possible to construct a typology of potential asymmetrical influence (see Table 1) and from there analyse the likelihood of a smaller power influencing a larger power on a specific issue.