Indonesia’s National Role Conceptions: Continuity Amidst Regional Change

<p>This thesis analyses Indonesia's foreign policy in view of role conceptions held by the country's policy and intellectual community and their impact on policy behaviour at the ASEAN level. These role conceptions capture the ways decision-makers perceive Indonesia’s standing and influence in the region and beyond and include the country’s ‘independent and active’ foreign policy doctrine as well as widely held views of the country being a model democracy, a mediator and – increasingly – key actor in regional and global affairs. The research draws attention to how these notions shape Jakarta’s role in ASEAN Community-building and security regionalism. It focuses on a range of initiatives that emphasise ASEAN’s ‘liberal agenda’, including the ASEAN Charter and ASEAN’s approach to conflict resolution and the promotion and protection of human rights. In so doing, it critically reflects on Indonesia’s domestic performance, which stands in at times stark contrast to its agenda on the international stage. I argue that Indonesia’s commitment to promoting liberal norms and values in regional affairs is predominantly instrumental as it aims at consolidating ASEAN cohesion vis-à-vis the influence of external powers in order to advance the country’s regional leadership ambitions and desire to play a more active role at the global level.</p>

Indonesia’s National Role Conceptions: Continuity Amidst Regional Change

<p>This thesis analyses Indonesia's foreign policy in view of role conceptions held by the country's policy and intellectual community and their impact on policy behaviour at the ASEAN level. These role conceptions capture the ways decision-makers perceive Indonesia’s standing and influence in the region and beyond and include the country’s ‘independent and active’ foreign policy doctrine as well as widely held views of the country being a model democracy, a mediator and – increasingly – key actor in regional and global affairs. The research draws attention to how these notions shape Jakarta’s role in ASEAN Community-building and security regionalism. It focuses on a range of initiatives that emphasise ASEAN’s ‘liberal agenda’, including the ASEAN Charter and ASEAN’s approach to conflict resolution and the promotion and protection of human rights. In so doing, it critically reflects on Indonesia’s domestic performance, which stands in at times stark contrast to its agenda on the international stage. I argue that Indonesia’s commitment to promoting liberal norms and values in regional affairs is predominantly instrumental as it aims at consolidating ASEAN cohesion vis-à-vis the influence of external powers in order to advance the country’s regional leadership ambitions and desire to play a more active role at the global level.</p>

Confronting Russia

Russia has become increasingly assertive in its foreign relations with surrounding states—especially toward those states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. Although much attention has been paid to the Russian reassertion in the near abroad, very little work has been done on how the citizens of former Soviet states see their state’s place in the world, particularly relative to Russia. Although Russia may view the former Soviet states as its potential “clients,” there is considerable variation in how the citizens of these states view their role in the world and, by definition, their relationship to Russia. Role theory provides a useful framework for evaluating the reaction of these states to Russia’s reassertion of power. These countries represent opportune cases to examine the evolution of national role conceptions in new states, and how these conceptions are affected by these countries’ relationships with Russia, China, and the West. This article provides an explanation as to why citizens of some states differ from others in their role conceptions. We offer a novel theoretical explanation that accounts for variation in roles, based on each country’s historic relationship with Russia, its emerging relationship with the West and China, and domestic ethnopolitical conditions.

Far-right populism and foreign policy identity: Jair Bolsonaro's ultra-conservatism and the new politics of alignment

In the last two decades, far-right populists have formed governments all over the world. However, systematic analyses on how far-right leaders recreate their countries' foreign policy identity are still underdeveloped. In this article, we analyse how far-right populist leaders use their conservative identity-set to align with other right-wing governments and how they use the same conservative repertoire to deal with ideological rivals. More precisely, we argue that these leaders tend to overemphasize a deep conservative identity-set towards other far-right populist governments, something we call ‘thick conservative identity’. This profoundly conservative identity-set is composed of three national role conceptions: anti-globalism, nationalism and anti-foe. However, they do not repeat this identity-set towards ideological rivals, preferring to use a more nuanced and contradictory one, something we call ‘thin conservative identity’. The trigger of such difference is the anticipated mutual expectation of conservatism between Ego and Alter, in which Ego mimics Alter's deep conservatism. We use Jair Bolsonaro's alignment with Donald Trump and Bolsonaro's relationship with China as illustrative cases. We use the main concepts of role theory to understand both how conservative alignments are created and how far-right governments deal with ideological rivals.

Why do we need a multi-level approach to the analysis of Russian foreign policy? Role theory and the Ukraine crisis?

This article presents the main theoretical approaches to the analysis of Russian foreign policy and assesses their contributions. I argue that although Russia’s international behaviour has been broadly analysed, realism, liberalism, and constructivism leave much unexplained and do not pay enough attention to the understanding of Russia’s perceptions and interactions between domestic and foreign factors. As such, the application of multi- level frameworks is advocated and role theory is proposed as an alternative approach which unites individual and state levels through a focus on state’s top leadership. Furthermore, it is uniquely positioned to examine the interplay between foreign policy makers and the constraints imposed by domestic and international environment. In second part of the article role theory is applied to the Russian annexation of Crimea. The analysis shows that the leadership mainly saw Russia as an advocate of states’ sovereignty and defender of compatriots living abroad. The close examination of sources of these national role conceptions demonstrates that the combination of various external and internal as well as ideational and material factors influenced leaders’ perceptions of Russia’s duties and responsibilities and determined Russian foreign policy decisions during the Ukraine crisis.