Do domestic institutional actors matter in Georgian foreign policy? Unpacking national role conceptions of bureaucracies and political parties in Georgia

ABSTRACT

How do national role conceptions (NRCs) of domestic institutional actors change in response to external and internal shocks? Using role theory in foreign policy analysis, this article explores how bureaucratic agencies and political parties in Georgia respond to shocks, such as the 2008 Russo-Georgian War and changes in political leadership. Content analysis of 18 hand-coded documents, including all security, military, and foreign policy strategies as well as ten party manifestos of three ruling parties of Georgia, shows that NRCs are modified in response to shocks. While bureaucracies are more stable, party responses have varied between radicalisation and compensation strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Role theory
• foreign policy analysis
• Georgia
• political parties
• bureaucratic politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Norges Forskningsråd: [grant number 287815].

Notes on contributors

Levan Kakhishvili

Levan Kakhishvili is a doctoral fellow in political science at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS) at the University of Bamberg in Germany and a visiting fellow at the Center for East European Studies (CEES) at the University of Zurich. He is also a non-resident policy analyst at Tbilisi-based Georgian Institute of Politics. His previous works have appeared in Post-Soviet Affairs and Europe-Asia Studies.