Political Utilization of Scholarly ideas: "The Clash of Civilizations" vs. "Soft Power" in US Foreign Policy.

This paper discusses how and under what conditions ideas coming from International Relations (IR) scholarship are used in foreign policy. We argue that the focus on policy relevance, which dominates the IR literature on the research-policy interface, is limited. Focusing instead on political utilization highlights types and mechanisms of political impact, which are overlooked in studies on policy relevance. The fruitfulness of this change in focus is showed in an analysis of how Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" and Joseph Nye's "soft power" concept have been used in US foreign policy. George W. Bush's explicit critique of "the clash" thesis should not be interpreted as absence of impact, but as a significant symbolic utilization, which has helped legitimate US foreign policy. The notion of "soft power" has very rarely been used explicitly in foreign policy statements, although the liberal optimism underlying this concept is expressed in other ways by the US government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]