%0 Conference Paper
%A Morales Hernández, Javier
%T The influence of identities on national interests: the case of Russia's security policy
%D 2006
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/54088
%X The purpose of this paper is to assess the ability of a systemic approach like socialconstructivism to explain security policy, in comparison to theories at the state or individuallevel like those in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). Here I focus on one of the basic tenets ofconstructivism, the constitutive relation between identities and interests, taking the analysis ofRussian security policy as a case of study. After reviewing some of the main works on thissubject, I conclude that progress has been hindered by the constructivist dismissal of agency infavour of structure as well as by the ambiguity of the concept of identity. Therefore, I propose totake the role conceptions of decision-makers as the base for a convergence betweenconstructivism and FPA’s more “traditional” approaches.
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