ABSTRACT
Through an analysis of parliamentary debates concerning naturalization procedures for stateless children in Estonia and Latvia from independence through 2015, this article explores how Russia has influenced policymaking toward Russian-speakers. By shifting the focus from policy outcomes to the policymaking process, operationalizing policymakers as their own field of contestation within the “quadratic nexus” framework, and treating external pressures as strategic opportunities for domestic policymakers, I find that Russia has been utilized as both a motor and a brake on reform in these cases. Nationalizers in both states have used Russia’s activism to 50discredit European recommendations and to deflect responsibility for Russian-speakers, explaining the delays, controversies and suboptimal outcomes surrounding the passage of simplified procedures in 1998, despite the use of EU conditionality. While Russia’s kin-state activism has been used primarily to justify exclusionary preferences in post-accession Latvia, it has been harnessed as a motor for reform in Estonia, contributing to the passage of an amendment granting citizenship to stateless children at birth in 2015.
