The Nexus of Russian Foreign and Domestic Politics Through Diversionary Warfare Against Ukraine
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By Rusudan Zabakhidze
July 15, 2019
Introduction
Even though international relations scholarship has acknowledged the intersection of domestic and foreign policy areas, structural theories with emphasis on power distribution in the international system still dominate the discussions to explain the past or contemporary conflicts. Mansfield and Snyder’s work “Democratization and Danger of the War†is one of the prominent articles to study the domestic factors influencing foreign policy. Mansfield and Snyder argue that democratizing states are more war-prone because threatened elite groups develop parochial interests in war and tend to mobilize masses through nationalist appeals. To avoid the political cleavage, leaders often resort to using prestige strategies, understood as shoring up domestic prestige by seeking victories abroad.[1] The authors note that prestige strategies are simple and effective; however, they are a risky choice as they make the state hypersensitive to slights to its reputation.[2] War can produce great fears in the beginning, but national sentiment will soon “banish the domestic fright, emphasizing the heroic times and will reunite the parties under the mantle of glory.â€[3] In their 1995 article, Mansfield and Snyder suggest theory’s applicability to big democratizing states such as Russia and China, however not much corresponding research has followed. This essay attempts to contribute to the scholarly agenda on the interrelation of domestic and foreign politics by applying the theory to contemporary Russia and its strategy towards the conflict in Ukraine.
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