Regime Security and Kyrgyz Foreign Policy

Abstract

This thesis presents a comprehensive study of Kyrgyz foreign policy from the early 1990s to 2011. It seeks to answer the following research question: how and to what extent does regime security affect Kyrgyz foreign policymaking? In so doing, this work aims to contribute to the understanding of Central Asian politics and the foreign policy sources of weak states across the post-Soviet space.

The underlying theme of this dissertation is centred on the question whether neorealist or constructivist traditions provide a more in-depth account of the erratic Kyrgyz foreign policymaking. Notwithstanding a myriad of studies on weak states, the analysis of their foreign policies is limited and mostly characterised by idiosyncratic, reductionist and great power approaches. In this respect, an interpretive and inductive framework integrative of both internal and external variables and with properly contextualised causal mechanisms may explain the international behaviour of weak states in broader and more genuine terms. Thus, the puzzle to be resolved is whether the concepts of rent-seeking and virtual politics can either substitute for or complement the New Great Game narratives in the context of weak states in general and Kyrgyzstan in particular.