Russia's Foreign Policy: The Role of Ideology

Jordan Murray* and Boris Barkanov
Political Science Department, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26505

Presentation No.: 122

Assigned Category (Presentation Format): Social & Behavioral Sciences (Poster Presentations)

Student’s Major: International Studies and Political Science

Russia is a large, powerful state that has taken a more aggressive approach in international relations recently (eg. the annexation of Crimea) so it is important to understand their foreign policy process. The current government in Russia is comprised of many prominent individuals with different ideologies. We hypothesize that these ideologies influence Russia’s foreign policy and are interested in how these ideological effects work. In this first stage of our new project, we are interested in identifying influential organizations and individuals so that we can understand the effects of ideas on foreign policy and the decision making  process. Our work focuses on finding these organizations/individuals in the secondary literature using databases such as JSTOR. Since this is a new research project, we do not have any definitive conclusions yet. 

Funding:

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: WVU's SURE program (Rita Rio & Michelle Richards-Babb)