The concept of hedging has been recently introduced and has been gaining traction in International Relations (IR) literature. So far, the notion has been mainly employed to make sense of the strategic behaviour of some south-east Asian secondary states amid growing Sino-American great power competition. Hedging can be understood as a strategy through which a minor state avoids clearly aligning vis-à-vis two powerful vying actors, maintaining instead an in-between and balanced position. As such, hedging can be interpreted as a peculiar form of neutrality. Yet such a paralleling has not been spelled out clearly from a theoretical standpoint in the existing literature. Moreover, no attempt has been made to precisely position hedging among the different categories of neutrality. This is a major gap, as it deprives the hedging concept of much of its theoretical and analytical usefulness in informing scholarly analyses. By precisely locating hedging within the neutrality family and by identifying its main analytical features, this paper aims to clarify theoretically the ‘nature’ of the phenomenon. At the same time, such operation aims to move the hedging literature beyond its current overwhelming focus on contemporary south-east Asia, opening up interesting empirical perspectives for the study of hedging across time.

What strategies will states pursue in managing their relations with more powerful neighbours? International Relations scholarship identifies a wide range of policy options open to “secondary states,” including soft balancing, bandwagoning and institutional binding. We provide a conceptual framework to distinguish between these similar and often conflated institutional strategies on the basis of two dimensions: threat perception and inclusiveness. We then apply this framework to the inter-American system. Analyzing original data on treaty action between 1946 and 2015, we find that secondary states’ adherence to multilateral agreements increases when the United States participates and when states do not perceive the hegemon to be a threat. These findings suggest that institutional binding captures the dynamics of inter-American cooperation more adequately than either soft balancing or bandwagoning: states balance against perceived threats but bind their friends.