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SCRIPTS Working Paper No. 38 by Adriana Cuppuleri

20 Years of LIO Contestation(s). A Computational Text Analysis of Russia’s Foreign Policy Discourse (2003–2023)

News from Apr 03, 2024

How has Russia‘s contestation of the Liberal International Order (LIO) shifted over time? To answer this question, one must first gain an understanding of how the architecture of the concept of „world order“ has changed over time, according to Russian policymakers. With this aim, I refer to a matrix combining two dimensions: posture (revisionist vs traditionalist) and source (ideas vs interests) of LIO contestations. This framework identifies four ideal-type categories of LIO contestations pursued by Russia: Eurasianism, Westphalianism, Security Concerns, and Multipolarity. I employ computational text-as-data methods in an original corpus (6‘649 documents including speeches, addresses, interviews, and statements) from the President of Russia (2003–2023) and the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs (2004–2023). Preliminary results reveal that Russian political discourse has been accompanied by increasing intensity in the expression of ideological positions (Eurasianism and Westphalianism) over interest- driven strategies (Security Concerns and Multipolarity).

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