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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Theorizing Hedging

Theorizing Hedging

Kuik, Cheng-Chwee

Paperback

Series: Elements in Indo-Pacific Security

International Relations

ISBN10: 1009589415
ISBN13: 9781009589413
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: Jul 16 2026
Pages: 75
Weight: 0.37
Height: 0.25 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Hedging, not balancing or bandwagoning, is the modal behavior of the non-great powers under uncertainty. Despite its prevalence as a state alignment choice, hedging has remained an undertheorized subject in the study of international relations. This Element presents one of the first theoretical works on strategic hedging in world politics. Tracing the multidisciplinary roots of hedging as an instinctive human behavior, I contend that sovereign actors hedge in ways similar to commodity traders, farmers, fund managers, academic writers, politicians, and individuals in competitive organizations under conditions of high-stakes and high-uncertainties. I then develop a two-level theoretical framework to explain when, how and why states hedge, rather than balance or bandwagon. Using selected Indo-Pacific countries as empirical cases, I conclude that while structural-level conditions largely explain the shifts in alignment decisions (e.g., from non-hedging to hedging, or vice versa), domestic factors explain the variations in hedging choices.

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