Abstract

This study tests the proposition that emergent sovereignty is determined not by the arithmetic sum of resources but by a state’s capacity to convert them into a range of practically available strategic options. Fiji and Slovenia exemplify two distinct models of optionality. Fiji possesses a smaller aggregate resource base but has developed experience in shifting among traditional partners, China, India, multilateral banks, and regional organizations. Slovenia is substantially stronger across most underlying dimensions, yet its dependencies are deeply embedded in a single Euro-Atlantic institutional core.

The central finding is that multiple external relationships do not necessarily constitute multiple strategic alternatives. The Fijian model expands choice through balancing among external centers, but its reversibility is constrained by economic vulnerability, debt burdens, and high switching costs. The Slovenian model offers less freedom to shift geopolitical alignment, yet provides a considerably wider range of options within the shared institutional framework of the EU, NATO, the euro area, and the Schengen Area. Slovenia therefore retains greater overall emergent capacity, while Fiji offers a clearer example of generating optionality by diversifying among external centers.

Research Problem

The central research puzzle is whether a small state can increase its sovereign agency not by reducing external dependencies but by maintaining multiple channels among which it can switch. This approach requires distinguishing the formal number of partners from the feasible strategic choice set: the options a state can actually select without unacceptable losses of functionality.

The analysis rests on three propositions. First, optionality becomes a sovereign resource only when external channels can functionally substitute for one another. Second, switching must not be merely legally permissible but also economically, technologically, and politically feasible. Third, diversification generates sovereignty only if no single partner simultaneously controls several critical functions—security, lending, markets, technology, and infrastructure.

Data and Method

The empirical basis consists of the supplied seven-dimensional profiles of sovereign resources. The indices are not treated as direct measures of emergent sovereignty. Rather, they capture initial capabilities that the configuration of dependencies can either reinforce or weaken.

Slovenia outperforms Fiji in all seven dimensions, with the largest gap in technology. This does not, however, automatically establish its superiority across every mechanism of emergent sovereignty: identical resource endowments can generate different sets of options depending on the architecture of relationships.

The comparison examines seven mechanisms:

• Conversion Sovereignty (CS)—the conversion of resources and external relationships into the capacity to act.
• Dependence Architecture Sovereignty (DAS)—the distribution of dependencies across partners and functional domains.
• Alternative Sovereignty (AS)—the availability of genuinely feasible options when one channel closes.
• Reversibility Sovereignty (RS)—the ability to change course without irreversibly losing essential functions.
• Boundary Sovereignty (BS)—the capacity to define acceptable limits on external involvement.
• Second-Order Sovereignty (SOS)—influence over the rules and institutional environment within which choices are made.
• Reproductive Sovereignty (RPS)—the capacity to reproduce competencies, institutions, and alternatives over time.

Two Architectures of Choice

Fiji: Balancing Among External Centers

Fiji maintains diplomatic relations with 182 countries and explicitly links its bilateral, regional, and multilateral relationships to national development priorities. This breadth of contacts provides an institutional foundation for optionality but does not guarantee that every channel has equal value.

A historical test came with Fiji’s external isolation following the 2006 coup. Sanctions imposed by Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the EU, together with Fiji’s suspension from regional institutions, encouraged the Look North policy and stronger relations with China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and countries of the Global South. This episode shows that Fiji’s optionality arose not only from previously accumulated resources but also as an institutional response to the closure of traditional external channels.

The contemporary configuration cannot be reduced to replacing dependence on Australia and New Zealand with dependence on China. Fiji’s imports are distributed among China, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the United States, Japan, India, and other suppliers, although the first three account for substantial shares. Monetary policy also incorporates a risk-distribution mechanism: the Fijian dollar is pegged to a basket of major trading partners’ currencies rather than to a single foreign currency.

Financial dependence is diversified across the domestic market, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Japan, China, and other creditors. By July 2025, domestic debt accounted for most of the public debt portfolio, while external financing came from several sources; debt owed to China’s Export–Import Bank was declining, and the World Bank and ADB remained important. This structure reduces the likelihood of monopolistic pressure from any single creditor, but high overall debt continues to constrain RS: the ability to change funding sources does not imply the ability to dispense with external financing altogether.

Slovenia: Nested Optionality

Slovenia has been integrated into the EU since 2004, has used the euro since 2007, and belongs to the Schengen Area. Membership provides access to the single market, freedom of movement, and shared decision-making institutions. These arrangements limit abrupt geopolitical realignment while simultaneously creating an extensive range of channels within Europe—markets, coalitions, legal procedures, funds, and infrastructure routes.

Slovenia’s foreign policy strategy combines European, Euro-Atlantic, and global dimensions, encompassing the EU, NATO, the UN, and relations with third countries. The state seeks to form flexible coalitions with groups of like-minded countries and treats the Western Balkans as a priority region in which it can act through bilateral ties, EU processes, development cooperation, and regional initiatives.

Slovenia’s economic integration is deep but not confined entirely to the EU. According to Eurostat, intra-EU trade accounted for 45.5% of the country’s trade in 2025, meaning that its foreign trade was more geographically diversified than that of most EU members. This increases market optionality, although common EU rules and euro membership limit its ability to alter its trade and monetary regimes independently.

The energy sector is particularly revealing. Slovenia has no domestic gas resources and relies on imports, but receives gas through interconnections with Austria, Italy, and Croatia. Access to the LNG terminal on Krk (Veglia) Island has added global suppliers, while reverse-flow projects expand the scope for switching routes. Resource dependence thus persists even as the concentration of routes and suppliers declines.

Seven Mechanisms

Conversion Sovereignty

Slovenia has an advantage in conversion because its stronger economic, technological, and cognitive capabilities allow it to transform external integration into production networks, infrastructure opportunities, and diplomatic expertise. Representation across EU institutions gives it formal channels for participating in collective decisions despite asymmetries in size.

Fiji converts its geographic position, regional standing, and competition among external powers into diplomatic attention, assistance, and new partnerships. Yet its weaker technological and economic indicators narrow the range of areas in which diplomatic access can be converted into durable domestic capacity. Fiji is therefore more effective at converting positional advantages, while Slovenia is more effective at converting institutional access and competencies.

Dependence Architecture Sovereignty

Fiji’s architecture spans multiple centers: Australia and New Zealand remain important for trade, mobility, and security; China is an infrastructure and political partner; and Japan, India, the United States, the EU, the ADB, and the World Bank provide additional channels. The official Ocean of Peace strategy explicitly rejects coercion and affirms states’ freedom to determine their own security policies.

Slovenia’s architecture is more institutionally concentrated but diversified within the European framework. The EU, NATO, the euro area, and Schengen are not independent centers: their rules and memberships overlap substantially. Consequently, numerous European channels may amount to correlated dependence, with several relationships becoming unavailable simultaneously in the event of conflict with the common normative core.

Fiji’s advantage lies in the heterogeneity of its external centers; Slovenia’s lies in the quality, predictability, and depth of its channels. DAS must therefore be assessed not only by the number of partners but also by the correlation among dependencies.

Alternative Sovereignty

Fiji has demonstrated its capacity to open alternative channels in response to sanctions: Look North extended its relationships beyond the traditional Australia–New Zealand framework. This is strong evidence of AS because the mechanism was tested by the actual closure of established channels.

Functional substitutability, however, was incomplete. China and other partners could provide diplomatic support, loans, and infrastructure, but could not necessarily fully replace tourism flows, labor mobility, markets, and the geographic proximity of Australia and New Zealand. Fiji’s optionality thus spans multiple centers but varies across sectors.

Slovenia has numerous alternatives among suppliers, routes, and coalitions within the EU. If an individual bilateral channel closes, it can rely on the single market, EU-wide mechanisms, and neighboring infrastructure. In a systemic conflict with the Euro-Atlantic core, however, its external optionality would contract sharply. Its AS is high within the regime but low with respect to changing regimes.

Reversibility Sovereignty

Fiji has experience both in changing its diplomatic orientation and subsequently restoring relations with traditional partners without abandoning its Chinese and South–South relationships. This demonstrates political reversibility. Nevertheless, debt, infrastructure, and trade commitments generate persistent switching costs; public debt stood at 77.1% of GDP in July 2025.

Slovenia enjoys high operational reversibility in energy and trade because of interconnected markets and infrastructure, but low reversibility in its foundational institutional choices. Exiting the euro, the EU, or NATO would entail systemic costs, so a formally available legal option is not necessarily a practically feasible one. In Slovenia’s case, this irreversibility is partly offset by participation in shaping the regime’s own rules.

Boundary Sovereignty

Through the Ocean of Peace concept, Fiji seeks to establish regional limits on acceptable conduct by major powers: rejection of coercion, respect for international law, freedom of navigation, and the right of regional countries to determine their own strategic policies. This is an attempt to translate limited material power into normative constraints on external centers.

Slovenia defines boundaries primarily through EU law, its national positions in the Council, and coalitions of member states. It has delegated some regulatory authority to common institutions but has gained access to a stronger external boundary—the collective rules governing the single market, Schengen, and common policies. Here, BS takes the form of jointly established boundaries rather than autonomous national control.

Second-Order Sovereignty

Fiji uses regional leadership to influence the rules governing interactions among major powers. The Pacific Islands Forum adopts a broad understanding of security, encompassing climate, economic, cyber, and humanitarian threats, and identifies climate change as the region’s principal threat. By advancing Ocean of Peace, Fiji seeks not merely to choose among external centers but to shape the principles governing their conduct in the Pacific.

Slovenia influences rules through EU, NATO, and UN institutions. As a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council in 2024–2025, it promoted multilateralism, international law, peaceful dispute settlement, and UN reform. Its SOS is stronger in terms of the density of institutional channels, whereas Fiji’s influence is more pronounced in the regional agenda and climate diplomacy.

Reproductive Sovereignty

Slovenia has a stronger capacity to reproduce sovereign agency because of its advantages in the economic, technological, informational, and cognitive dimensions. Participation in stable European institutions reduces the costs of personnel training, regulatory adaptation, and crisis management. Yet this reproduction depends on the continued existence of the European regime itself, creating a systemic risk of highly correlated dependencies.

Fiji reproduces optionality through diplomatic outreach, regional organizations, and a balance among partners. Its 13 overseas missions and diplomatic relations with 182 countries sustain this network. However, a limited administrative and technological base, climate risks, and debt burdens make reproduction costly. Without domestic accumulation of competencies, diversification may remain a recurring search for external financing rather than an autonomous capacity.

Systemic Comparison

Slovenia’s aggregate score of 513.2 points, compared with Fiji’s 376.9, is consistent with Slovenia’s greater overall emergent capacity, but does not exhaust the comparison. Fiji demonstrates a mechanism that the aggregate index captures only weakly: the capacity to establish a new external channel after a previous one has been politically closed. Slovenia illustrates another mechanism: the capacity to turn deep attachment to a single institutional core into multiple internal options and channels for influencing rules.

Testable Hypotheses

1. Functional substitutability hypothesis: the number of partners increases AS only when alternative partners can replace the critical functions of a closed channel.
2. Correlated dependence hypothesis: multiple relationships do not increase DAS if they are subject to a single normative, monetary, or defense center and can be restricted simultaneously.
3. Switching-cost hypothesis: the positive effect of optionality diminishes as the infrastructure, debt, and legal costs of changing partners rise.
4. Demonstrated-alternative hypothesis: successful switching in response to an external shock is a more reliable indicator of AS than the number of agreements in force.
5. Nested-autonomy hypothesis: participation in a deeply integrated regime can enhance sovereign agency if a state gains access to internal alternatives and participates in shaping common rules.
6. Regime-asymmetry hypothesis: high operational reversibility within an integration bloc may coexist with low reversibility of membership in the bloc itself.
7. Normative-conversion hypothesis: a small state can partly offset material weakness by converting regional leadership into rules governing the conduct of external centers.
8. Domestic-foundation hypothesis: external diversification can be reproduced over time only if diplomatic, technological, and analytical competencies are maintained domestically.

Additional Indicators

To test the model empirically, the seven-dimensional index should be supplemented with the following indicators:

• the largest partner’s share of trade, lending, investment, digital infrastructure, and security;
• an index of dependence correlation—the probability that several channels will close simultaneously;
• the time and cost required to switch to a second supplier or lender; the availability of technically compatible alternative infrastructure;
• the number of crises in which the state actually changed partners without a critical loss of functionality;
• the share of external agreements providing for revision, termination, or arbitration; the number of state initiatives incorporated into decisions by regional and global organizations;
• domestic human and financial resources required to maintain the network of partnerships.

Conclusion

The study supports the central proposition of the emergent model: optionality can indeed become a sovereign resource in its own right, but only where channels are functionally substitutable and switching costs remain acceptable. Fiji shows how a smaller power can create optionality across external centers through regional diplomacy and relations with competing partners. Slovenia shows how deep integration with a single institutional core can generate a substantial range of options within that core.

Slovenia retains greater overall sovereign agency because of its stronger resource base, institutional conversion, influence over rules, and reproduction of competencies. Fiji does not surpass Slovenia in aggregate capacity, but demonstrates a more pronounced ability to shift geopolitically among external centers. This distinction illustrates the model’s non-additivity: a smaller aggregate resource base can produce a relative advantage in an individual mechanism without conferring superiority on the system as a whole.

The paradox of choice is thus resolved as follows: a state becomes more sovereign not simply because it has more partners, but because it retains a practically feasible option to replace one channel with another, establishes boundaries on external influence, and reproduces this capacity over time. Optionality is not a list of diplomatic contacts; it is the institutionally sustained capacity to withstand the closure of a critical channel and continue to act autonomously.