World’s top 10 soft power ambassadors for 2013

Who else but Monocle, which in its latest issue did a survey of top “Soft Power” countries, and describes it as such: “No longer the purview of foreign policy wonks, soft power is now firmly embedded in the dispatches, speeches, and discourse of senior diplomats, world leaders, and news editors across the globe.” This new push on soft power worldwide has effects not just in diplomacy, but countries as brands, with repercussions in the larger travel and leisure space.

Besides the survey (a video on it here), the magazine came up with a list of very interesting soft power ambassadors (some would call them country stereotypes) for 2013, which we’ve extracted below. Some of these we are following closely, like the Korean pop power and its effect worldwide. Who would be on your list for next year?