Anglo-American Relations and Soft Power: Transitioning the Special Relationship

Abstract

This article argues that British soft power is a hitherto under-recognised factor in explaining the survival and changing character of the Anglo-American special relationship during the so-called long-1970s. First, the long-term interpenetration of UK and US soft power became a shared resource that British and American governments used to cohere their bilateral relations and provided for a ‘common cast of mind’ that facilitated high levels of policy congruence. Second, the particular international and domestic political changes that occurred during the long 1970s elevated the relative importance of soft power and thereby gave the British, within American calculations of mutual utility, a means of offsetting, in part at least, the relative decline of their hard power capabilities.