Identity and its Effect on Yemen's Foreign Policy in the Post-Unification Era (1990)

After the 1990 unification in Yemen, the country’s officials made efforts to adopt a new turn of behaviors in various areas, especially their foreign policy, in accordance to the created changes to prove themselves to their peripheral and international environments. Based thereupon, they did their best to define a new identity for the unified Yemen and identify their foreign policy and behavior in proportion thereto, although they did not succeed and their ambitious ideas were quickly wilted before getting united. According to this chaos, one can realize the Yemen’s foreign policy, with the lack of well-established framework during the post-unification years, as a product of identity crisis stemming from various roots. Before bearing witness to a coherent national identity in Yemen, it is the subnational identities that separately exert diverse effects on the various aspects of the country, including its foreign policy. The absence of a state-nation has practically caused the formation of a level of identity conflict in Yemen and this identity crisis has influenced the all aspects of policy-making in this country, including the foreign behavior and foreign policy. Proposing the theoretical framework of constructivism, the present study investigates the foreign behavior and foreign policy of Yemen as well as the factors influencing them based on this approach.