Role Hedging and Regional Cooperation: Serbia’s Discourse on the Berlin Process and the Open Balkan Initiative (opens in new tab)

AbstractAlthough the prevalent IR and FPA literature, drawing on neoclassical realism (NCR), focuses on the material aspects of hedging, it largely overlooks identity-driven dynamics, thereby falling short of offering a more wholesome understanding of states’ hedging behaviour. By leveraging an affinity between NCR and role theory in FP research, we argue that identity needs are so deeply intertwined with material considerations that they can themselves constitute primary drivers of hedging m...