Date of Award
2016
Degree Name
Political Science
College
College of Liberal Arts
Type of Degree
M.A.
Document Type
Thesis
First Advisor
George Davis
Second Advisor
Jason Morrissette
Third Advisor
Shawn Schulenberg
Abstract
This is a political science thesis that traces a transition in the foreign policy of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia from reliance on soft power to reliance on hard power in cases where the Saudi state is in confrontation with Iran. In theory, the research contextualizes this transition based on Joseph Nye’s concepts of soft and hard power. The thesis uses case analysis approach to manifest the transition in reading and analyzing six cases based on one major hypothesis that measures Iran threat as prominent in those cases. It concludes that since 2010, Saudi Arabia foreign policy began to shift toward using hard power to confront Iran at different states using two different forms of hard power.
Subject(s)
Saudi Arabia -- Foreign relations -- Iran.
Iran -- Foreign relations -- Saudi Arabia.
Recommended Citation
Asiri, Abdullah Ali, "The decisive kingdom from soft to hard power" (2016). Theses, Dissertations and Capstones. 1025.
https://mds.marshall.edu/etd/1025
