State Textbook Campaigns as Soft Power

Authoritarian regimes are increasingly weaponizing university‑level textbooks and mandatory patriotic classes to reshape students’ economic and political worldviews, not just to teach facts but to cultivate long‑term ideological legitimacy. These campaigns are a form of domestic soft power with international spillovers when exported or when they alter the training of foreign students. — If states systematically control tertiary curricula, they change the next generation’s priors about governance and economics, affecting geopolitics, academic exchange, and the durability of liberal norms.