Before we move on to developing explanations for the varying occurrence of reluctance in world politics, we need to develop a sound conceptualization of reluctance. So far, this term has been used in a rather casual manner, and such unspecific usage has made the term not particularly useful beyond mere description. By contrast, if appropriately conceptualized, ‘reluctance’ can yield analytical benefits by helping us to make sense of the widespread indecisiveness and muddling through that can frequently be observed in contemporary international politics. Conceptual clarity is indispensable if we want to make sense of this phenomenon and to adequately operationalize it for empirical analysis.

The conceptualization of reluctance builds on and combines different approaches to concept reconstruction and concept building, which are briefly discussed in the next section. The actual conceptualization exercise proceeds as follows. First, based on a qualitative content analysis of selected International Relations (IR) literature that explicitly uses the notion of reluctance, I inductively identify the key issues usually associated with this term. This helps as a first approach to delineating the broader semantic field of reluctance, and thereby contributes to concept reconstruction, as suggested by Sartori (1984: 41–50). Based on this broader semantic field, in a second step I move on to discussing the related but distinct notions of exceptionalism, isolationism, under-aggression, under-balancing, buckpassing and free-riding – and I highlight why we need reluctance as an additional concept to make sense of a distinct set of phenomena. Based on the insights gained from situating the concept of reluctance in the existing IR literature, I proceed with the actual concept-building exercise, which follows the guidelines outlined by Goertz (2006) in his work on social science concepts. I therefore discuss the negative poles of reluctance – that is, what reluctance is not; I develop two core ‘secondary’, constitutive dimensions of reluctance; and I operationalize these two dimensions, developing indicators for empirical analysis. In a nutshell, I conceive of reluctance as a specific way of doing foreign policy that involves a hesitant attitude and a certain recalcitrance about conforming to the expectations articulated by others.