It is the country of India that has the highest potential for soft power deployment in emerging markets, specifically in Africa for the following reasons...

Growing up in a diverse community in California, I enjoyed home-cooked Indian dishes, courtesy of my mother’s friends. I remember learning about India’s history and subsequently falling in love with its diverse culture and folklore, all during dinner. In retrospect, that was gastrodiplomacy at work.

An individualistic, heterogeneous, novelty-seeking American culture, strengthened by a critical mass of interdisciplinary American research universities that draw the world's best minds, represents a considerable edge in social and economic innovation.

It's a country where Shah Rukh Khan remains hugely popular. If you walk around the streets of Bali, inevitably someone will ask you if you have seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The soft power of Bollywood is tangible in nooks and crannies of this vast country.

The award’s sponsors are professors and academics who say they are independent of the government. While the government has enthusiastically embraced the need for more robust cultural links to enhance China’s “soft power,” it wants that charm campaign to stay under the firm direction of the ruling Communist Party.

Turkey now has a chance to promote democracy in the Middle East, build ties with its neighboring peoples, and rise to leadership in the region, all at the same time.Turkey’s time to become a Middle East power seems to have arrived. Challenges remain...including the future of Turkish-Israeli ties and Iran’s hostile attitude to Ankara’s rising influence in the region.

The tough times have seen Irish business rediscover Germany as an important trade partner. It is a given here to have access to and interest in Irish culture, thus cultural diplomacy can have a great reach. Ireland’s cultural chief...sees a need to give Germans a sense of Ireland’s contemporary cultural landscape, particularly as the debate over the future of Europe draws us closer together.