Theorizing Hedging: Explaining Shifts and Variations in Alignment Choices

by Cheng-Chwee Kuik

Hedging, not balancing or bandwagoning, is the modal behavior of the non-great powers under uncertainty. Despite its prevalence as a state alignment choice, hedging has remained an undertheorized subject in the study of international relations. This Element presents one of the first theoretical works on strategic hedging in world politics. Tracing the multidisciplinary roots of hedging as an instinctive human behavior, I contend that sovereign actors hedge in ways similar to commodity traders, farmers, fund managers, academic writers, politicians, and individuals in competitive organizations under conditions of high-stakes and high-uncertainties. I then develop a two-level theoretical framework to explain when, how and why states hedge, rather than balance or bandwagon. Using selected Indo-Pacific countries as empirical cases, I conclude that while structural-level conditions largely explain the shifts in alignment decisions (e.g., from non-hedging to hedging, or vice versa), domestic factors explain the variations in hedging choices.

116 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 16, 2026

About the author

Cheng-Chwee Kuik is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Asian Studies, the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies at the National University of Malaysia, and a nonresident Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, SAIS Johns Hopkins. He received the 2009 Michael Leifer Memorial Prize, presented by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, for his essay “The Essence of Hedging.”

Reviews

[Azel Bimarajasa]

It's quite easy to understand, yet it served to reinforce realist thinking.