Defiance, diversification or deference? A neoclassical realist reading of Maldivian foreign policy erraticism and tergiversations in the context of South Asian geopolitics : 1978-2025

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the low-key geopolitical rivalry pitting India and China in South Asia, Maldives has customarily been portrayed as a typical example of a small state whose foreign policy choices are restricted to band wagoning, hedging and external balancing. Although these typologies of state behaviour each hold some degree of truth, they struggle to comprehensively reconcile swings in Maldivian foreign policy preferences; and the erratic and apparently irrational nature of these swings goes against neorealist precepts of small state responses to system-level prompts. Exclusively unit-level studies do help much to provide domestic context to this erraticism and irrationality; but they fall short themselves when overlooking systemic dynamics. This study instead adopts a neoclassical realist model to holistically bridge the gap between the system and the unit in order to rationalise Maldivian foreign policy tergiversations. It does so by transposing system-level prompts through the intervening variables of regime (in-)security, elite fragmentation and state-society relations.