INFLUENCE OF THE POLITICAL REGIME TYPE ON FOREIGN POLICY: THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Keywords:
political regime, regime, democratic regime, democracy, authoritarian regime, autocracy, hybrid regime, foreign policy, conflictsAbstract
The article is focused on the existing theoretical and empirical approaches towards studying the influence of the political regime type (democratic, authoritarian and hybrid ones) on foreign policy. Among other things, the author makes an attempt to find a theoretical explanation for the extent to which a certain type of regime influences the state’s involvement into interstate conflicts. Foreign policy of hybrid regimes, which is hypothetically believed to be the most unpredictable and aggressive, is of particular interest. The article analyzes such theories and approaches as democratic peace theory (including the research concerrning the regime type influence on the character and duration of wars, their reasons and outcomes) studies on foreign policy of states with a hybrid regime, interpretation of a state’s foreign policy via institutional analysis of its political regime (‘unpacking regime type’).Based on the analysis of literature, the author concludes that the influence of political regime on foreign policy remains insufficiently explored, especially within international relations theory, which touches upon the factor of political regime but mostly studies the influence of internal policy on foreign policy as a whole. Moreover, most studies focus on the foreign policy behavior of democratic and authoritarian regimes in order to prove or disprove Immanuel Kant's democratic peace theory, ignoring the behavior of hybrid regimes. A small number of studies concerning foreign policy of hybrid regimes concentrate on states in democratic transit, paying little attention to states that are in the process of autocratization, or to stable hybrid regimes. These studies also do not take into account the situations when hybrid regimes initiate international conflicts. DOI: 10.17072/2218-1067-2019-2-27-37References
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