 Assessing Cultural and Regime-Based Explanations of Russia's Foreign Policy. ‘Authoritarian at Heart and Expansionist by Habit’?Andrei Tsygankov Europe-Asia Studies, 2012, vol. 64, issue 4, 695-713 Abstract: Scholars disagree on how to interpret Russia's assertive foreign policy. According to some observers, Russia's authoritarian culture and political system have historically required the Kremlin to depend on the Western threat image at home and to engage in revisionist behaviour abroad. These observers recommend that Western nations abstain from engaging Russia as an equal contributor to shaping the global system. This article assesses the validity of the authoritarian expansionism theory by comparing it to other prominent perspectives on foreign policy, realism and constructivism. The article argues that, by perceiving Russia's historical and institutional distinctness as fundamentally threatening to the West, the theory overlooks important sources of foreign policy contestation at home and potentially varying directions abroad. The article selects the historically important cases of the Crimean War, the Cold War and the Russia–Georgia War to demonstrate the theory's flaws and to highlight the role of factors other than Russia's authoritarianism in the nation's foreign policy. Date: 2012 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ceasxx:v:64:y:2012:i:4:p:695-713 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2012.671568 Access Statistics for this article Europe-Asia Studies is currently edited by Terry Cox More articles in Europe-Asia Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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