Role Hedging and Regional Cooperation: Serbia’s Discourse on the Berlin Process and the Open Balkan Initiative

Although the prevalent IR and FPA literature, drawing on neoclassical realism (NCR), focuses on the material aspects of hedging, it largely overlooks identity-driven dynamics, thereby falling short of offering a more wholesome understanding of states’ hedging behaviour. By leveraging an affinity between NCR and role theory in FP research, we argue that identity needs are so deeply intertwined with material considerations that they can themselves constitute primary drivers of hedging moves. The paper introduces the concept of role hedging, capturing how states seek to retain, rather than abandon, their various and often conflicting roles, by managing them either through distribution across different stages (global, regional, subregional), or by strategically shifting between those stages. By focusing on Serbia’s engagement with two regional cooperation frameworks, the Berlin Process and the Open Balkan Initiative, from 2014 to 2024, we illustrate the complexities and tensions in Serbia’s discursive positioning that underpin its precarious hedging repertoire.