The report discusses the role of think tanks in Russian foreign policymaking. It presents the diverse landscape of think tanks and analyzes their foreign policy narratives. Part 1 distinguishes three basic institutional forms: academic and university-based think tanks, private think tanks, and state-sponsored think tanks. Highlighting the diversity of organizations, Alexander Graef and Anton Barbashin focus on four state-sponsored think tanks that represent different ideological angles of a broad, yet also comparatively volatile mainstream. Parts 2 follows this selection by looking at Russian foreign policy debates since 2014. Graef and Barbashin consider how experts writing for these four organizations have approached three major themes, including the evolution of the concept of Greater Europe and EU-Russia relations, the establishment of the Greater Eurasia narrative and the concepts of multipolarity and the liberal world order.
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