The Soft Power 30 ranks 30 countries by their ability to attract support in international affairs through cultural, commercial and reputational pull. The top three countries in the index are the UK, Germany and the US.

ComRes conducted a 20-country survey across 6 continents and combined it with secondary data such as diplomatic, popular culture, digital and human rights measures to build a regression model. Facebook provided aggregated and anonymised data to help develop a set of digital diplomacy metrics for inclusion in the rankings.

“The addition of ComRes’s international polling has added a new dimension to the existing Index, giving it greater robustness,” said Jonathan McClory, partner at Portland Communications and founder of the Soft Power Index. “Over and above the polling, the ComRes team provided invaluable expertise on the complex analytics used to develop the Soft Power 30.

“As the first index of soft power to combine objective metrics with opinion polling, the Soft Power 30 will prove to be a valuable tool for leaders, policy makers and diplomats.”