The Regional Foreign Policies of Black Sea “New Populist” Leaders

Abstract

This article compares the regional foreign policies of the four Black Sea non-great power post-communist states. It is argued that the prominent roles played for a time by Georgia and Romania and their unprecedented influence on Black Sea political and security developments were due to foreign policy options stemming from the “new populist” character of national leaders. The latter took advantage of post-9/11 US regional involvement in order to enhance their international profile and thus increase their domestic mass support. Bulgarian and Ukrainian “new populist” leaders failed to conduct similarly visible regional policies mainly due to domestic factors.

Keywords:

• Black Sea
• new populism
• Georgia
• Romania
• Bulgaria
• Ukraine

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to Mélissa E. Bryant (Durham University) and to an anonymous reviewer for their helpful suggestions.