Description
The process of drafting official strategic documents in democratic states involves numerous consultations, rounds of feedback loops, and input from various actors before the final product is finalized and issued publicly. Among these actors are mostly local stakeholders, academics, and civil society actors, but representatives of allied/partner states can also be involved either in a transparent form or a rather implicit fashion. Since official strategic documents should reflect the national interest of the issuing state, the presence of foreign actors in the drafting process can be questioned. Distinguishing between benign and malign interference, this research project aims to trace the processes of the drafting and formulation of Indo-Pacific strategies in two small Central and Eastern European states – the Czech Republic and Lithuania. The empirics will be collected through interviews with elites, civil society representatives, and other stakeholders involved in the drafting processes. We want to focus on the direct (i.e., being part of consultations, intervening in the drafted language, etc.) and the indirect (i.e., self-censorship, policy adaptation) ways that foreign actors’ positions are taken into consideration by stakeholders of the drafting state.
