The Foreign Policies of Small States: Challenging Neorealism in Its Own Backyard
@article{Elman1995TheFP, title={The Foreign Policies of Small States: Challenging Neorealism in Its Own Backyard}, author={Miriam Fendius Elman}, journal={British Journal of Political Science}, year={1995}, volume={25}, pages={171 - 217} }
The received wisdom in international relations suggests that we can best account for the foreign policies of small states by examining structural/systemic rather than domestic level factors. This article challenges this scholarly consensus. The distribution of power and the balance of threat do influence domestic institutional formation and change in emerging states. However, the subsequent military strategies of these weak states are likely to reflect such domestic institutional choices in a…
179 Citations
Small State Constraint: International System or Domestic Politics? A Case of Nepal and Fiji
- Political Science
- 2020
Available literature on the role of small states in international relations has focused on the international system’s impact on the maneuverability of small states. The influence of domestic politics…
The Effect of Domestic and Foreign Pressure on Israeli Decisions To Use Limited Military Force
- Political Science
- 2003
The influence of domestic politics on international relations is a very popular theme in US foreign policy analysis. Numerous studies have demonstrated that presidents sometimes tried to improve…
Agency and perceptions of smallness: understanding Georgia’s foreign policy behaviour
- Political Science
- 2021
ABSTRACT The conventional wisdom says that material and structural constraints push small states into a more or less predictable foreign and security policy. Georgia’s case shows that, together with…
The GCC States’ Foreign and Security Policies after the Arab Spring
- Political Science
- 2013
This workshop examines the transformation of the GC C states’ foreign and security policies prior to and after the Arab Spring. In par ticular, it seeks to discuss theoretically the drivers of small…
Between the West and Russia: Explaining Individual Foreign Policy Preferences in the Small States
- Political ScienceForeign Policy Analysis
- 2023
This paper examines mass public opinion in three small states of the South Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, to understand why some individuals in these states prefer a pro-Western…
Drivers of the Foreign Policies of Southern African Small States
- Political Science
- 2017
ABSTRACT In international relations small states are either discarded as irrelevant, unimportant, or weak; held in high regard as potential movers and shakers in especially smart or niche diplomacy…
Neorealism and International Subsystems of Small States: Insights from Sub-Saharan African Countries’ Interactions
- Economics
- 2011
The prevailing wisdom in IR debates finds that neorealism is "the powerful tool" predicting weak states' behaviour. It has been argued that systemic factors are more likely to explain foreign policy…
The Balance Strikes Back: Power, Perceptions, and Ideology in Georgian Foreign Policy, 1992–2014
- Political Science
- 2016
Tbilisi’s recent foreign policy presents analysts working from a balance-of-power perspective with something of a puzzle: with Russia very much the regionally dominant power, against the predictions…
Draft ) Symmetric-Asymmetric Dyadic Relations and Foreign Policy
- Political Science
- 2007
The goal of this article is to distinguish small states’ foreign policy decisions from those of major states’ by differently applying non-compensatory criteria of poliheuristic theory to each. Is the…
The political economy of Syrian foreign policy 1949-1963
- Political Science
- 2013
This study examines Syria’s foreign policy in the post-colonial period and presents Syria as a state that exhibited the basic characteristics of the states of the global South that came to…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 99 REFERENCES
Politics, Security and Development in Small States
- Political ScienceAmerican Political Science Review
- 1989
terdependence. The China and USSR chapters stress domestic economic change as well as political trends. Moon and Pirages consider political changes only after extensively documenting global economic…
The second image reversed: the international sources of domestic politics
- Political ScienceInternational Organization
- 1978
The international system is not only an expression of domestic structures, but a cause of them. Two schools of analysis exploring the impact of the international system upon domestic politics (regime…
Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy
- Political Science
- 1978
Stephen Krasner's assumption of a distinction between state and society is the root of his argument for the superiority of a statist interpretation of American foreign policy. Here he challenges the…
Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?
- Political ScienceWorld Politics
- 1992
Realists have long viewed uneven rates of growth among states as a major cause of wars. According to strict logic of realpolitik, a declining dominant power should launch a preventive war against a…
Resisting Protectionism: Global Industries and the Politics of International Trade
- Economics
- 1988
Why didn't the protectionist spiral of the 1920s reappear in the 1970s in light of similar economic and political realities? In "Resisting Protectionism," Helen Milner analyzes the growth of…
The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis
- Philosophy
- 1992
The starting point of this article is the argument that scholars of foreign policy—in contrast to international relations theorists—have not sufficiently faced up to the explanatory implications of…
Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games
- Political Science, EconomicsInternational Organization
- 1988
Domestic politics and international relations are often inextricably entangled, but existing theories (particularly “state-centric” theories) do not adequately account for these linkages. When…
The Small States in the International System, 1919–1969
- Political Science
- 1969
Reviewing yet another book on small states, Hedley Bull wonders "whether, however viable the small state might be in international politics, it really presents a viable subject of study" 1 I also…
The International–National Connection
- EconomicsBritish Journal of Political Science
- 1989
One of the positive contributions attributed to the 'dependency' movement by its defenders as well as many of its critics is its stress on the importance of the international context in the…
Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries Arend Lijphart New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984, pp. xv, 229
- Political ScienceCanadian Journal of Political Science
- 1985
solely motivated by the spoils of office. Cynicism increased, a gulf grew between the public and the politicians and "indicators of political efficacy... declined over the period since the mid-1960s…