Amended Role Theory as a Tool to Understand Personalist Regimes: the Case of Russia

Research on personalist regimes, such as Russia, is usually reduced to the analysis of the perceptions/motivations of the leader. It is misleading, even though the regime is personalist, elite members are playing their role. They compete for the influence and preferential decisions (Elias Gotz, 2017, Luke March, 2012, Andrei P. Tsygankov, 2013). For comprehensive analysis of personalist regimes it is necessary to look into perceptions/motivations of elite members as well. The paper proposes a research of Russian foreign policy in the EU Eastern Partnership (EaP) region applying an amended role theory. According to role theorists, state acts regarding its National role conception (NRC). NRC includes the policymakers’ perception of the decisions suitable to their state, and of the functions their state should perform (K. J. Holsti, 1970). However, role theorists have usually used an aggregated type of research, in which NRC is compiled summing up the discourses of policy makers. Thus, disagreements between particular policy makers/elite members fade out. Such strategy works in democracies, but not in personalist regime. Cristian Cantir, Juliet Kaarbo (2012) have suggested enhancing the role theory with additional level of analysis by exploring inta-elite conflicts over national roles. Based on amended role theory, the main assumption of proposed case study - Russian foreign policy towards EaP states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) since the launch of EaP initiative in 2009 - is the following: even though Russia is personalist regime, Russian elite is not monolithic, elite members compete for their NRCs’ and it leads to Russian foreign policy inconsistencies and application of different foreign policy toolkit towards EaP states in particular cases. The research is based on intra-elite level and analyses the discourses of particular elite members. It helps to explain Russian foreign policy, its inconsistencies and changes in the EaP region.