From: Andrei P Tsygankov <andrei@sfsu.edu>
Subject: New book: Is Russia's foreign policy authoritarian & expansionist?
Date: Fri, 18 May 2012
Assessing Cultural and Regime-Based Explanations of Russia's Foreign Policy. 'Authoritarian at Heart and Expansionist by Habit'?, Europe-Asia Studies, 64:4, 695-713
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 behavior 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 RussiaGeorgia 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.
The pre-published version is available here: http://bss.sfsu.edu/tsygankov/Research/Articles.htm
Andrei P. Tsygankov
Professor
International Relations/Political Science
San Francisco State University
My new book is Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin (Cambridge, July 2012)
http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item6796414/?site_locale=en_GB
Keywords: Russia, Foreign Policy, Security - Russian News - Russia
From: Andrei P Tsygankov <andrei@sfsu.edu>
Subject: New book: Is Russia's foreign policy authoritarian & expansionist?
Date: Fri, 18 May 2012
Assessing Cultural and Regime-Based Explanations of Russia's Foreign Policy. 'Authoritarian at Heart and Expansionist by Habit'?, Europe-Asia Studies, 64:4, 695-713
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 behavior 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 RussiaGeorgia 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.
The pre-published version is available here: http://bss.sfsu.edu/tsygankov/Research/Articles.htm
Andrei P. Tsygankov
Professor
International Relations/Political Science
San Francisco State University
My new book is Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin (Cambridge, July 2012)
http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item6796414/?site_locale=en_GB