Soft power in times of the plague:the winners and losers of first wave of COVID-19 (winter–summer 2020)
Soft power in times of the plague:the winners and losers of first wave of COVID-19 (winter–summer 2020)

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to identify the soft power winners and losers of the first wave of the global health crisis caused by covid-19 (Winter–Summer 2020); to analyse the factors which have contributed to such outcome; and finally, to extract examples of the best practices, which can serve other states in the next stages of the pandemic. The article argues that there is a correlation between the quality of a country’s response to the global health crisis (both domestically and abroad) and a change in international public perceptions of that state. More-over, the states that gained the most soft power in 2020, have not done so based solely on their political system or past performance. Instead, a key factor was the existing domestic and foreign policy collaborative culture, which resulted in the ability to get everyone behind a common response to the crisis at home, but also to promote global solutions to the crisis abroad.

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