| This dissertation examines the Caspian legal dispute in the mid-1990s from the Russian perspective. In particular, it attempts to answer the question of why Russia moved toward cooperation in order to create a new international regime of the Caspian Sea. To do this, I rely on constructivism which emphasizes the role of both structures and agents in explaining foreign policy outcomes.; First, I define the term "structure" in constructivism. Structure includes social practices which are the source of constraints/enablements on actors' behaviors. This definition significantly broadens Kenneth Waltz's definition of structure especially in the sense that the former includes ideational structure constituted by "the subjective and intersubjective meanings held by actors." Second, I operationalize one crucial doctrine of constructivism, structuration theory, by borrowing insights from theories such as neorealist theory, bureaucratic politics, coalition politics, and cognitive psychology.; Relying on this analytical framework, I first explore how two main competing agencies---the Foreign Ministry and the oil industry faction---under varying domestic political and institutional settings interpreted external structures differently. I then investigate how these two agencies acted and interacted with other agencies. Finally, I examine how the structural consequences of these actions and interactions were perceived by the two competing agencies and constrained them over time. What matters here is process: the agencies' interpretations of structures lead to policies that create social reality; this reality will be perceived by the agencies and then constrain/enable them all over again. By tracing this process, the analytical framework attempts to identify a causal mechanism of how Russia's Caspian policy moved toward cooperation, to be more exact, how the position of the oil industry faction won over that of the Foreign Ministry in late 1997. This examination demonstrates that the Foreign Ministry shifted its position because the reality created either intentionally or unintentionally through the interaction of the Foreign Ministry's opponents became increasingly distant from the ministry's ideas between late 1993 and late 1997. |
