Bringing agency back in: neighbourhood countries' perceptions of their hegemonic power relation with the EU and Russia

Russia's current war against Ukraine takes place in the wider context of geopolitical competition in the region. The EU and Russia promoted integration projects that have, in fact, become conflicting for the "in-between" countries. Existing scholarship put forward power-based explanations for these countries' behaviour that ignored their agency. This paper brings agency back in by developing a conceptual framework that highlights the relational nature of hegemony and that includes the perceptions of the small state in the analysis of power. To illustrate the applicability of this framework, two neighbourhood countries' (Moldova and Armenia) power relations with the EU and Russia are analysed. The focus is on how the structural aspects were acted out and shaped by the two aspiring regional hegemons to understand how small state actors perceived EU and Russian hegemonic power. The findings show the different expressions the phenomenon of hegemonic power can take in practice and how these were perceived in Moldova and Armenia.