Greek and Cypriot foreign policy in the Middle East: small states and the limits of neoclassical realism

Zachariades, Alexandros (2023) Greek and Cypriot foreign policy in the Middle East: small states and the limits of neoclassical realism. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

The thesis seeks to answer the question, “What are the explanatory limits of Neoclassical Realism (NcR) when applied to small states?.” The aim is to test NcR's top-down methodology on small states, an important universe of cases, and to account for the relationship between international and domestic politics in the foreign policies of small states. An NcR-inspired theoretical framework fit for explaining small-state foreign policy is developed. The framework is built by interrogating the interconnection between NcR and the literature on small states' foreign policies and political economies. The main argument is that small states prioritise security threats in their immediate geographic environment. Domestic variables – the perception of the leadership and the state's political economy – act as complementary or moderating factors but are not drivers of foreign policy in this immediate geographic space. However, when a small state's foreign policy targets areas outside its near geographic environment, the domestic level variables become the main drivers of foreign policy, transforming into independent variables, given the lack of threats from the international system. The testing ground of the theoretical framework is the foreign policies of Cyprus and Greece in the Middle East in the period 2004-2022. The case studies focus on two sub-regions of the Middle East: The Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf. In the Eastern Mediterranean, the security threat of Türkiye becomes the key driver of the foreign policy of both states, influenced, nonetheless, by the perception of the executive and economic and political considerations at the domestic level. In this case, NcR's top-down methodology works. In the Gulf, however, NcR's top-down methodology is not useful because no regional state fulfils the threat threshold. Here the intervening variables become the main foreign policy drivers.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2023 Alexandros Zachariades
Library of Congress subject classification:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General) J Political Science > JZ International relations
Sets:	Departments > International Relations
Supervisor:	Economides, Spyros
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4604

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