ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the operation of the main foreign policy institutions of post-communist Russia and their interaction with each other, paying particular attention to the influence of the wider political environment. It emphasizes how difficult the USSR legacy was to Russian foreign policy-makers. After two and a half years of Russian statehood, a stable foreign policy-making system had still to emerge in Moscow. The chapter provides an analysis of the Soviet legacy in foreign policy. Franklyn Holzman and Robert Legvold listed three important features that distinguished the Soviet policy-making system: centralization (concentration of decision-making power), differentiation (role specialization of institutions and individuals), and participation (access to the decision-making process). The Russian legislature has provided a forum in which disgruntled members of the executive can indirectly express their dissatisfaction with existing policy and mobilizes opposition to it. The chapter ends with some tentative conclusions concerning the direction of change.
