Study Of Contemporary Russian Foreign Policy Decision-making Mechanism

The foreign policy-making mechanism is a kind of organizational system with certain state political organs, which have the foreign policy-making function, as its core. Being influenced by other important factors in the political system, such mechanism will convert external demands and supports into foreign policy through its own structural operations. Since the Russian Federation declared its independence around ten years ago, an one-way vertical structure, whose fundamental characteristics are highly presidential centralization and president direct leadership over foreign policy-making executive branches, and within which the legislature merely has limited checking power and parallel connections among different foreign policy-making functional organs are loose, has gradually come into being along with the macro evolution of the over-all systems. However, in accordance with the domestic political turbulence and the long-term arduous building towards the rule of law, the dynamic practice of the Russian foreign policy-making appears to be somewhat transitional, contradictory and unstable. The operational rules of the foreign policy-making mechanism and policy-making procedures have also undergone continuous readjustments and improvements. Under the guidance of the scientific world outlook and methodology of the dialectical materialism and historical materialism, this essay critically absorbed some research findings of the West and Russia over the issue of Russian foreign policy-making and utilized the systematic methodology throughout. Starting by examining the general characteristics of the Russian social structure and political system in the transitional period and current Russian laws and regulations on foreign policy and security, the author studied carefully the functions and roles of and relations between concerned state organs, interests groups, think-tanks and mass media regarding foreign/security policy-making in Russia. Then the author summarized the static structure of the Russian foreign/security policy-making and analyzed the features and laws of the dynamic operation of Russian foreign policy-making. In the end, the author concluded three models for the Russian foreign policy-making and scientifically predicted the future development of the Russian foreign policy-making mechanism.