Artem Patalakh

The study delves into the foreign policy plans of Alexei Navalny, the Russian politician who is currently commonly regarded as the most prominent opposition leader and the sole plausible alternative to Vladimir Putin. Drawing on his interviews, public speeches, media publications and electoral manifestos, the author analyses his foreign policy views alongside three topics, that is, Russia’s policies towards disputed lands and states in the post-Soviet area (Crimea, Donbas, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria), the country’s foreign policy orientation and priorities (especially regarding relations with the West) and assessment of the Putin regime’s foreign policy. Following this, the author speculates on the likely foundations of Russia’s foreign policy under Navalny’s possible presidency and their implications for the West.

The article delves into Kazakhstan’s policies vis-à-vis the European Union, focusing on their driving motives and enabling conditions. Drawing upon published papers and, to a lesser degree, primary sources, the author argues that friendship with the EU largely serves the Kazakhstani elite as means of economic modernisation as well regime legitimation, perfectly fitting Kazakhstan’s dominant domestic discourse which portrays the country as Eurasian and its foreign policy—as multi-vector. The study also shows that Astana’s partnership with Brussels is to a large degree possible because the EU holds a simultaneous positive attitude to such partnership regardless Kazakhstan’s authoritarian regime. According to the article, such reflects the great instrumental value collaboration with Astana gives Brussels, the EU’s general inactivity on democracy promotion in Central Asia and Kazakhstan’s looking more pro-European and economically/politically advanced against the background of its post-Soviet and Central Asian autocratic fellows. The paper concludes by reflecting on the configuration of pragmatism and identity in Astana’s approach to the EU and discussing the peculiarities of the bloc’s power over Kazakhstan.

The paper problematizes the national soft power strategies of authoritarian states arguing that many of their features stem from those countries’ political regime. In particular, the author focuses on such features as actors involved in soft power policies, the public media’s international and domestic rhetoric, the presence or absence of ideological commitments, strategies’ proactiveness/reactiveness as well as their long- and short-termness. The author presents his argumentation in a fashion similar to what is called theory-building process tracing: first, he shows causal links between an autocratic political regime and each of those features, and then illustrates them with relevant examples taken from case studies and media publications on the soft power strategies of contemporary Russia and China.

This thesis problematises the bases of soft power, that is, causal mechanisms connecting the agent (A) and the subject (B) of a power relationship. As the literature review reveals, their underspecification by neoliberal IR scholars, the leading proponents of the soft power concept, has caused a great deal of scholarly confusion over such questions as how to clearly differentiate between hard and soft power, how attraction (soft power’s primary mechanism) works and what roles structural and relational forces play in hard/soft power. In an effort to ascertain the bases, I address this issue not from the viewpoint of A’s policies or resources, like do IR neoliberal scholars, but in terms of B’s psychological perception of A. Employing social psychological accounts, I argue that attraction can be produced in three distinct ways, namely 1) through B’s identification with A (“emotional” attraction), 2) via B’s appreciation of A’s competence/knowledge in a particular field (“rational” attraction) and 3) by means of the activation of B’s internalised values which contextually prescribe B to act in A’s favour (“social” attraction). Importantly, depending upon the way attraction is produced, it is peculiar in a number of characteristics, the main of which are power scope, weight and durability. Insights from social psychology also show that unlike soft power, hard power requires not only B’s relevant perception of the A-B relationship (as coercive or rewarding), but also A’s capability to actualise a threat of punishment and/or a promise of reward. I argue this difference can be fairly treated as definitional rather than empirical, which implies that coercion and reward necessarily have both relational and structural dimensions, whereas for attraction, a structural one alone suffices, while a relational one may or may not be present. Having explicated the soft power bases, I illustrate each of them using three “most likely” case studies, namely Serbia’s policies towards Russia (emotional attraction), Kazakhstan’s approach to relations with the EU (rational attraction) and Germany’s policies vis-à-vis Israel (social attraction).

The paper argues that while the Serbian society and political elite are known for treating their country’s accession to the EU in terms of pragmatic utility maximisation, they generally conceive of Serbian relations with Russia, contrariwise, as an identity-laden issue. To prove it, the author analyses Serbia’s behaviour toward Russia along the features of emotion-driven cooperation, found in the literature on identity and emotions in foreign policy. In particular, the paper focuses on Serbians’ especially strong friendliness vis-à-vis Russia, the parallel existence of the Other (the West) in their identity and the particularly strong intensity of their attraction to Russia during Serbia-West conflicts, the reinforcement of their affection to Russia by national traumas, the endurance of the affection’s strength despite conflicting rational interests and negative experiences in bilateral interaction, the frequent occurrence of references to Russia in Serbia’s domestic discourse and decisional justifications and a large use of historical analogies concerning Russia. Finally, the author ponders over the implications of the existent configuration of emotional and pragmatic forces in Serbian politics for the country’s current and future conduct toward Russia and the EU.

The article aims to assess a change in the EU’s soft power in the Western Balkan and Eastern Partnership states in the light of the crises the bloc has undergone in recent years. Generally agreeing with the common argument that the EU’s attractiveness for those countries has decreased, the author challenges the popular wisdom that such a decrease is likely to reverse those states’ pro-EU foreign policy orientations. To prove it, the author applies Joseph Nye’s and Alexander Vuving’s “power currencies” approach to operationalize soft power, considering the bloc’s attraction as a combination of “brilliance” (the actor’s relationship with its work), “benignity” (the actor’s relationship with other actors) and “beauty” (the actor’s relationship with values and ideas). Elaborating on the crises’ influence on each of these currencies, the author shows that their lessening, first, has mainly taken place in absolute rather than relative terms, so the EU’s attractiveness remains strong compared to that of its competitors, and second, it has primarily affected the bloc’s soft power potential rather than its actual behavior towards the target countries.

O presente artigo problematiza a incorporação da promoção dos direitos LGBTI nas políticas externas dos EUA e da UE. Em primeiro lugar, examina os principais documentos, discursos e políticas dos dois atores sobre à promoção dos direitos LGBTI no estrangeiro, e as semelhanças e diferenças entre as abordagens de ambos, atendendo às tendências da sua evolução e desenvolvimento contínuo. Em segundo lugar, o artigo analisa as condições internas nos países alvo que são propícias ao sucesso e ao fracasso do apoio internacional aos direitos LGBTI. Finalmente, o estudo apresenta uma visão crítica das medidas que são consideradas necessárias para aumentar a eficiência da promoção dos direitos LGBTI em países com tendências atuais mais negativas e/ou com historiais mais pobres sobre os direitos LGBTI.

The essay problematizes the incorporation of LGBTI rights promotion into the US and EU foreign policies. First, the paper examines the two actors’ key documents, speeches, and policies devoted to the promotion of LGBTI rights abroad, the similarities and differences between the two actors’ approaches, attending to the tendencies of their evolution and the ongoing development. Second, the article discusses the internal conditions in target countries that are conducive to the success and failure of international support of LGBTI rights. Finally, the study makes a critical overview of the measures that are argued to be necessary to increase the efficiency of LGBTI rights promotion in countries with most negative current trends in and/or poorest records on LGBTI rights.

The paper advances a realist analytical model for case studies of national soft power policies. First, it argues that for the purposes of realist analysis, a soft power policy must be considered as a rational strategy pursued under the conditions of competition. Furthermore, it emphasises the importance of taking into account the specificities of the recipient state as well as the fact that a soft power strategy is targeted at both its elite and its public. In addition, the article substantiates the necessity to draw a clear-cut distinction between soft power sources and instruments and shows possible shortcomings that research can have should this distinction fail to be made. Finally, the paper discusses the impact of a competitor’s presence on a soft power strategy and specifies the terms under which disregarding this impact may engender a wrong conclusion.