DOI: 10.7256/2409-8647.2017.2.22834

Abstract: The article is devoted to the role of The Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Asia-Pacific region (APR). In her article Vladimirova explains the political discourse term 'Asean centrality' that is used to express the idae of the regional leadership of ASEAN. The fact that the author has chosen to study this particular topic contributes to her choosing the network analysis as the main research method providing that it allows to calculate centrality ratios fo the region's states and to compare them. The author of the article analyzes drawbacks and benefits of existing network ASEAN models and offers her own calculation model. Even though her hypothesis about Asean centrality in APR's trade networks hasn't been proved, the analysis has demonstrated that ASEAN states play a highly important role in the region. In addition, the author fixes and verifies the growth trend in Vietnam's centrality which has never been mentioned in previous models. The research is based on international trade data for the period since 1996 till 2015 published by The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). 

DOI: 10.7256/2409-8671.2016.3.19555

Abstract: The Soft power theory is popular among scholars and politicians, however, the nature of this phenomenon can complicate its evaluation, especially in the research, based on quantitative methods. At present, we are facing a trend of rising violence in the world, and soft power indexes, created by consulting agencies, are not enough. They are important indeed, partially because these reports remind us of the alternatives to coercion. But their authors often put emphasis on the states possessing significant political power resources. Probably, it leads to the misperception that countries, which din't have significant hard power resources, are unable to accumulate enough soft power to implement it as a foreign policy tool.The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that this assumption is not always correct. We use the linear regression model to show that Asian and African countries can use soft power in the United Nations even if their hard power is small. The research contains the information on the resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations and 124 countries-submitters and co-submitters of resolution drafts in 2001-2015. As we fully admit that soft power indexes are difficult to create and apply, this paper also covers soft power limits and critique.