Identity, rhetoric, and behavior in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine: Testing the applicability of role theory in foreign policy analysis

Since the publication of Holsti's (1970) article in International Studies Quarterly more than thirty years ago, role theory has come to be widely accepted as a legitimate framework in the effort of trying to elucidate state behavior. Traditionally, the research has been premised on the assumption that the national role conceptions expressed by a state's leadership are reflected in the actions the government undertakes in the international system. The perceived stable nature of the role-determining conditions and thus of the national roles themselves, has lead scholars to identify the roles expressed by a state's leadership as an independent variable and use them to explain specific policies or trends. Subsequently, there has been little research done on empirically testing role theory itself. Specifically, few have tried to investigate whether the basic assumptions of role theory are true. The questions that remain to be asked are what happens to national role conceptions when the determining conditions change? Are they altered as role theory implies? More importantly, does a state's foreign policy change to reflect changes in national role conceptions?; Through an examination of the evolution of national role conceptions in post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia and their relationship to the states' foreign policies, this inquiry was able to find support for the usefulness of role theory in the study of state behavior, at least for the two countries examined. In both Russia and Ukraine evidence was found that as the role-determining conditions were altered, the national role conceptions expressed by the governments were modified to reflect the new circumstances. Moreover, the foreign policies of both countries paralleled the changes in the espoused roles.