Hedging as Sovereignty-Driven Foreign Policy Practice: The Case of Mongolia and Singapore

Abstract Hedging is an important but analytically stretched concept. As both the scholarly and practical significance of understanding secondary state behavior has grown, there is a need for a more thorough analysis of the concept and of small states in general. Against this backdrop, this article makes two key interventions. First, it reconceptualizes hedging as a persistent practice, specifically, as a sovereignty-driven foreign policy practice, challenging the conventional view that treats hedging as a temporary strategy. Second, drawing on Cynthia Weber’s concepts of performative sovereignty and foreign policy as representational trouble, the article explicitly links sovereignty and foreign policy. To do so, the article approaches sovereignty primarily as a social rather than an institutional category. This linkage provides alternative accounts of domestic incentives for hedging, indicating that they may arise from the very ways sovereignty is conceptualized, not just from regime legitimacy noted in earlier studies. A comparative analysis of Mongolia’s Third Neighbor Policy and Singapore’s Total Defense Policy illustrates hedging as a persistent practice. Singapore’s tension between alliance avoidance and entanglement, alongside Mongolia’s debate over permanent membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, highlights “representational trouble,” the incoherence within their hedging practice. Overall, the article advances the broader claim that when a small state’s sovereignty and foreign policy are interlinked, it may be better able to pursue hedging or neutrality as persistent practices.