This paper analyses the extent to which Georgia's pro-Western foreign policy orientation stems from ideas and identity rather than from materialist and systemic factors alone. Finding such narrow ...approaches insufficient for explaining small state behavior, and drawing on liberal and constructivist approaches to international relations theory, the article argues that Georgia's foreign policy orientation has a strong basis in the widespread ideological perception amongst the local political elite that Georgia “belongs” in the West. Based on this theoretical framework, this paper provides a historical overview of Georgia's foreign policy, tracing the evolution of Georgia's identity from seeing itself as “Christian” in contrast to its Islamic neighbors, to identifying as European in contrast to a modern, Russian “other”. As Georgia attempts to construct a collective international identity, the devotion to the idea of Euro-Atlantic integration as a “sacred destiny” amongst the country's elite has significant foreign policy implications. This article overviews the current challenges and dilemmas of self-identification and investigates the roles that national identity and the prevailing “European” identity play in Georgia's quest for “desovietization”.
Georgia’s European identity, often regarded as the basis of its pro-Western foreign policy, has been contested in the domestic arena by alternative agendas. While government changes are usually ...deemed instigators of change in this contestation, no systematic analysis has been conducted on the effect of external developments. Considering that Georgia’s relations with the West and Russia have been evolving and that the debates on European identity inherently relate to foreign policy, this article asks to what extent and how contestation within the European identity discourse changes in response to different external events. To elucidate these questions, the study unpacks European identity discourse in Georgia between 2012 and 2017 in the context of various ongoing foreign policy developments. These include developments in Georgia–European Union (EU) and Georgia–Russia relations, the war in Ukraine, and internal issues of the EU. Moreover, instead of common pro- and anti-European binary positions, identity discourse is analyzed as a combination of three identity categories via media in which each category constructs different degrees of difference with Europe. This article finds that advocates of each category interpret different foreign policy developments to reinforce, rather than challenge, their positions; thus, contestation and division in the discourse persist over time.
While the war in Ukraine undoubtedly boosted Ukrainian national identification and prompted rapid alienation from Russia, another salient identity question prominent since Ukraine's independence has ...been the country's belonging to Europe, often challenged by the alternatives of Eurasian and Slavic supranational identities. This article explores different identity constructions in the Ukrainian national mass media and their interpretation of the war with Russia from the dawn of the conflict in 2014 to 2015. Respectively, the article maps immediate developments in the content and contestation of the European identity discourse as the crisis hits these identity constructions. This study found that the war has dramatically strengthened the influence of the identity construction that fully embraced Europeanness while increasingly muting its alternatives. In contrast, identity content was less prone to change; this significant decrease in contestation evidences the robust effect of 'big-bang' events in identity discourses.
Georgia’s European identity, often regarded as the basis of its pro-Western foreign policy, has been contested in the domestic arena by alternative agendas. While government changes are usually ...deemed instigators of change in this contestation, no systematic analysis has been conducted on the effect of external developments. Considering that Georgia’s relations with the West and Russia have been evolving and that the debates on European identity inherently relate to foreign policy, this article asks to what extent and how contestation within the European identity discourse changes in response to different external events. To elucidate these questions, the study unpacks European identity discourse in Georgia between 2012 and 2017 in the context of various ongoing foreign policy developments. These include developments in Georgia–European Union (EU) and Georgia–Russia relations, the war in Ukraine, and internal issues of the EU. Moreover, instead of common pro- and anti-European binary positions, identity discourse is analyzed as a combination of three identity categories via media in which each category constructs different degrees of difference with Europe. This article finds that advocates of each category interpret different foreign policy developments to reinforce, rather than challenge, their positions; thus, contestation and division in the discourse persist over time.
The 2012 parliamentary elections witnessed Georgia's first peaceful post-independence transfer of power. Under Bidzina Ivanishvili, the government formed by the Georgian Dream Coalition significantly ...softened the harsh anti-Russia rhetoric of Saakashvili's 'National Movement', launching a policy aimed at normalising relations with Russia. Such a shift of a steady, almost decade-long counter-Russian foreign policy resists explanation by structural theories on small states located in relatively stable external environments. Mapping discursive changes and employing a constructivist framework, we argue that distinct foreign policy visions are reflections of the differences between the identities of the two leadership camps.
Since the 1990s, the notion of belonging to Europe has been embedded in a number of the former Soviet states' domestic discourses. These European identity discourses are highly contested, both ...domestically and internationally, and operate beyond the European Union community, giving the European identity concept its peculiar character. At the same time, these states have been through turbulent times and numerous crises since the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, due to a lack of comparative and longitudinal studies on these discourses, not much is known whether and how these reconstructed images of the European Self have been changing. This paper examines the development of European identity discourse based on the case of Ukraine. The posed question is empirically explored by a study of Ukrainian mass media discourse on European identity for the period of 2004-2017. Changes in the discourse are examined in the context of domestic and foreign political developments in order to uncover the conditions that instigate change in identity notions and contesation around them. The paper finds that while the contestation persists over time, it can fluctuate depending on the event. During the given time period, the Orange Revolution and the war with Russia have resulted in the most significant changes when the contestation changes in favor of the pro-European discourse, which becomes dominant at the expense of the anti-European one.
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