The prioritising of bilateral relations between Poland and Ukraine : a study of Poland's attempts to draw Ukraine into a tighter embrace with the western world

Abstract

This study set out to present Poland's self-constructed roles and their possible impact within the international arena. The research was conducted by gathering data of Poland's foreign policy discourse in regards to Ukrainerelated issues in order to investigate Poland's role formation in this particular relation. The method used in the study is partly based on Holsti's role theory and borrows his concept of 'national role conception', which describes a shared understanding among policy makers in regards to the role and purpose of their state in the international arena. Furthermore, role theory was combined with a grounded theory approach in order to generate new theory from the findings. As a result, Poland's established roles, namely the Stabiliser, the Advocate, the Empowerer and the Initiator are presented in a newly generated theoretical framework. In addition, the findings revealed underlying trends in Polish foreign policy decision-making, which were thus evaluated and incorporated into the discussion of the analysis. Despite the fact that it has been impossible to accurately assess Poland's success of its foreign policy making towards Ukraine, the findings revealed interesting insights into the psychology of Poland's decision making. Consequently, the benefit of utilising this study design would be a rich and in-depth analysis of a state's motivations, social concepts and values.