US–China competition and small liberal democracies: New Zealand and the limits of hegemony

ABSTRACT Increasing strategic competition between the United States (US) and China creates challenges for small liberal democracies like New Zealand because competing powers place competing demands on foreign policy preferences. This article asks how ‘the less powerful states’ are responding to US-China great power competition and employs a liberal analysis of state preferences to ascertain that response. It finds that great power demands are mediated by national identity, interests and institutional settings that shape the formation of state preferences in a small liberal democracy. It concludes the cognitive dissonance brought on by competing powers vying to shape New Zealand preferences has forced a more acute competition between domestic interest groups leading to a clearer articulation of New Zealand foreign policy preferences. This has edged the country away from the comfortable strategic ambiguity that characterised much of its post-Cold War era and questions whether New Zealand can maintain an independent foreign policy or will be dragged into a broader strategic competition.