Lithuania’s foreign policy under Grybauskaite: change or continuity?

This article forms part of a special issue Opportunities missed: Turkey-EU accession since 2005

Abstract:

In 2009, Lithuania’s incoming president was signaling that the country’s foreign policy priorities were about to change. Under what circumstances and to what extent can a high-ranking political leader change a state’s foreign policy singlehandedly?

This study, drawing on insights from foreign policy analysis literature, integrates individual decision-makers profiling to offer explanations of initiated changes in Lithuania’s foreign policy. We argue that personal preferences, worldviews, and leadership style allowed Grybauskaite to become the main initiator of foreign policy changes, but that personality-driven foreign policy changes were temporary and were eventually subdued by domestic and international structural factors.