The Politics of Foreign Policy

Abstract

One of the reasons why the West seeks to promote democratisation in Russia is the widely-held belief that democracies tend to have peaceful relations with the outside world. At its strongest this argument contends that democracies do not go to war with one another. If political elites become used to reaching compromises at home, they apply them in their external dealings. Governments relying on popular legitimacy and electoral support may find it more difficult to use violence abroad. More plausible than the contention that democracies are inherently peaceful is the general line of reasoning that associates them simply with more transparent, flexible and pragmatic foreign policies. The fact that the West hopes democratisation will make Russia a more ‘normal’ foreign policy actor, one more acceptable to the international community, is appreciated by most Russian officials. Andrei Kozyrev, the Russian Foreign Minister, has defined his goal as being ‘to create a normal state with a normal policy and a normal diplomacy’. He defines ‘normality’ in terms of democracy and laments that achieving this ‘has turned out to be the most difficult task, apparently because we have become used to living in abnormal conditions’. Those conditions have made the achievement of normality (democracy) an elusive goal in a politics of foreign policy, as in all spheres of Russian public life.