Moral Power Games in Foreign Policy: Making Russia Traditional and Sweden Feminist

This thesis investigates how gendered foreign policy practices reproduce national identity and enable enhanced moral power in international relations. It argues that the gendered foreign policy practices of nation-states are shaped by values pertaining to gender. The study demonstrates how moral power games take place in the international realm as contending national values and gendered foreign policy practices collide. These gendered international practices are analysed through the relational cases of Russia and Sweden operating on a binary moral logic of ‘traditional’/‘feminist’. Using Ukraine as a concrete locale, the thesis interrogates how Russian and Swedish national identities constructed through gendered foreign policy practices are implicated in moral power games.