Explaining the Change in India’s Foreign Policies Towards Russia (1947-2013): Constructing the Theory of Potential Ally’s Reliability and External Threat

Abstract

The relations of medium-sized countries and hegemons are very complex. A typical example is India-Russia bilateral relationship, which has been fluctuating during the period from 1947 to 2013. This paper is aiming at exploring the determinants of India's ever-changing foreign policy to Russia. This paper uses the case study method to achieve this aim. To be more specific, through the case study of India-Russia, the research hopes to have broader lessons of exploring the relationship between medium-sized countries and hegemons. The research reveals that external threats and reliability of potential allies can explain such fluctuation. This paper will use the words reliability and credibility interchangeably. Moreover, the theoretical and practical significance of this research is as follows. Theoretical significance is two-fold: firstly, it simplifies the existing theory of level of analysis--reducing the variables. Secondly, by setting only two variables, this research successfully avoids the overlapping of variables thus procure a relevantly clear logical chain. As for practical significance, the essay is useful to provide policy recommendations to the national government about how to sensibly deal with the relationship of India and predict India's interest and policy--India is profit-oriented, so the key is to seek the common interest. Last but not least, this paper still leaves much to explore. First, the paper is limited in the way that apart from the variables discussed in our essay, there may be other variables that might have contributed to the India-Russia relationship which are not taken into account. Additionally, the adaptability of theory is limiting. In other words, it may not fully apply to other cases. In response to this, further studies can look into other variables, such as economic ties, energy.