Dangerous dyads in the post-Soviet space: explaining Russia's military escalation decisions, 1992–2010

Abstract

This paper analyses the military behaviour of Russia from 1992 to 2010. The method used is a combination of the dyad analysis introduced by Stuart Bremer in 1992 and the analysis of unit-level variables, which is distinctive of foreign policy analysis. We empirically test a set of hypotheses about the determinants of Russia's military behaviour in the post-Cold War period by considering the impact of changes of international variables – relative power, the presence of military alliance pacts, the territorial salience of the dispute – and state-level variables – the degree of democracy/autocracy and regime vulnerability. A bivariate and a multivariate analysis are carried out to explain the separate and joint impacts of independent variables.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis

“…To be sure, such an undertaking would require a tremendous data effort and sequential analytical steps, hence this may best be pursued collaboratively as part of a larger project. Second, due to its emphasis on theoretical integration and the combination of systemic and domestic-level variables, neoclassical realism appears to be a promising theoretical framework for set-theoretic applications in FPA (Davidson 2011;Meibauer 2021;Rosa and Cuppuleri 2021). At the time of writing, there is only a single study that embraces the combination of neoclassical realism and QCA (Dall'Agnol 2022), but with their inherent synergy such integrative approaches are bound to see wider application in future years.…”