In her 1995 article “The Foreign Policies of Small States” Miriam Elman debunked one of the most popular assumptions in political science and international relations on the politics and the foreign policies of weak states; that their foreign policies are largely influenced and ultimately controlled by external factors. The crux of the argument Elman makes is that in weak states foreign policy behavior is influenced more by internal variables, particularly institutional structure, than by external variables. Despite the widespread popularity of Elman’s argument the problem is that her work focuses purely on democratic weak states. Yet, the vast majority of the weak states in the world today are not fully-fledged liberal democracies nor can it be certain that this is the path they are progressing along. Therefore, it is necessary that the academic literature be expanded to understand the role of internal and external factors in the foreign policy behavior of non-liberal democratic weak states. This paper will address this matter by analyzing the role of government structure in shaping the foreign policies of post-Soviet Belarus and Ukraine. It will assess the impact of five variables, national security, perceptions of balance of power and threat, societal cleavages, economic dependence, and administrative security, on the foreign policies of these two states and how their impact has been affected by the structure of government institutions. Understanding which factors are most influential in Belarusian and Ukrainian foreign policy and how the particular government structure in these states has prioritized or demoted the influence of certain factors will provide researchers and policy makers alike with a more robust picture of foreign policy formation in these critical states. While, on a broader level, helping form a better understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of post-Soviet foreign policy behavior and foreign policy behavior in weak states.
