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THE NORWEGIAN PARAMOUNTCY

  “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” These were the exact words of Abraham Lincoln on August 1, 1858. In lucid terms, democracy can be described as “of the people, by the people, for the people.”   According to 'Our World in Data', in 1900, the world had only 1 democratic nation. In 2018, 99 countries in the world were democracies.   Democracy, although not universally, is widely believed to be lucrative. However, many of both its proponents and disparagers insist that examples of absolute democracy are hard to find. There have been estimations of it, but often the rule of a particular section of the people is superior to ‘rule of the people’, or is a front for the power of absolute economic interests.   In an attempt to measure the state of democracy in various countries, the Economist Intelligence Unit, a UK based company produced the Democr
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THE GOOD COUNTRY

  I f you Google the term ‘nation branding’, it is described as applying corporate branding techniques to a country. This is precisely what every country does. Nations care about their image more than anything else. It is not just used to attract tourists. Countries also use catchy slogans to attract FDIs.   Simon Anholt, an independent policy advisor who helps countries develop strategies to strength economy and enrich political engagement with other countries gets requests every week from countries to discuss about branding campaigns. Nation branding is a million-dollar industry. Tourism branding is dominating nation branding efforts especially in countries like Australia where tourism generates a lot of revenue.   Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index was introduced by Anholt and Ipsos Mori wherein they collect data from millions of people and rank countries according to their brand value on the basis of tourism, exposure, governance, people, culture and heritage, investment and

SOFT POWER-THE SOUTH KOREAN WAY OF ASCENDANCY

Recently, I came across this YouTube video on Korean skincare industry. Lately, I have been fascinated with skincare and have been doing a lot of research on it. In the video, I came across a terminology that was very alien to me as it might be for you too. Soft power. The Youtuber stated that South Korea uses soft resources. I found it really intriguing so I decided to read a bit about it. In his book ‘Soft power’, Joseph Nye, an American political scientist, has described soft power as “getting others want the outcomes you want, by co-opting them rather than coercing them”. In his paper ‘A theory of soft power and Korea’s soft power strategy’, Guen Lee from Seoul National University has mentioned that “when soft resources or what we can call as intangible resources are used to exert an influence on others, it is called soft power”.  Soft power influences the thinking process of others. Soft resources can be classified as any intangible asset such as brand, knowledge, skills etc. When