Compelled to hedge: Explaining Algerian foreign policy in a fragmented international order

This article reconceptualises strategic hedging as a structural constraint rather than a discretionary foreign policy choice for middle powers in an increasingly fragmented international order. While existing scholarship-concentrated predominantly in East and Southeast Asian contexts-treats hedging as an instrument of strategic flexibility, it undertheorizes the systemic conditions that render hedging a near-necessity rather than a preference. Drawing on structured interpretive case analysis of Algeria’s foreign policy across security, economic, and diplomatic domains, this article advances a probabilistic-structural argument: that the intersection of multipolar fragmentation, resource dependency, and institutionalised non-alignment generates cross-domain constraints that most parsimoniously explain Algeria’s persistent hedging posture, irrespective of leadership preferences or conjunctural variation. The analysis identifies two theoretically significant findings: an autonomy-resource paradox, in which hydrocarbon revenues simultaneously enable and constrain strategic flexibility, and a domain interdependency dynamic, in which hedging gains in one domain systematically generate constraints in another, which existing behavioural frameworks have not adequately captured. By extending structural hedging theory to a North African, Global South middle power, the article contributes to ongoing debates on middle power adaptation and the evolving architecture of a fragmented international order.