Entina Ekaterina Gennadyevna – ScD in Political Sciences, Professor, National Research University «Higher School of Economics», Head of the Black Sea and Mediterranean Studies Department, IE RAS
Despite the fact that, according to most basic parameters, modern Serbia is a small continental state located within the influence sphere of a major geopolitical project (European and Euro-Atlantic integration), the established liberal and realist academic discourse on Serbian foreign policy does not fully explain the current reality of the Serbian policy agenda. One of the main omissions of these theoretical constructs is that the crucial factor of self-perception of Serbian people and statehood is not typically taken into consideration. Another problem is that, while implementing foreign policy objectives, Belgrade has to take into account a much larger set of factors than the average country of comparable level. These factors include: the presence of an unresolved national issue, ethnoterritorial conflict, a watchful (and sometimes hostile) external environment, challenges of interreligious and intra-confessional dialogue on a regional scale, competition between international actors, etc. On the one hand, this opens up a window of opportunity for Serbia, on the other, it creates excessive interdependence between foreign and domestic policies. This article examines the fundamental aspects of Serbian foreign policy (its multi-vector strategy and the limits of the balancing potential in the region) in close connection with three principal points of the constructivist paradigm: the awareness of blurred national and state boundaries, the perception of the role of the national leader and the understanding of the multi-actor nature of the Serbian political space.
Serbia, foreign policy, constructivism, multi-vector strategy, poly-actor spaces.
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