Under what conditions do small states change their foreign policy orientation? Existing alignment theories emphasize the distribution of power, the balance of threat, or domestic regime survival, yet underemphasize ideological drivers, particularly for small states, which face higher sovereignty costs from alignment and therefore prefer nonalignment. I argue that stigmatization by major democratic powers for authoritarian behavior creates a normative threat to the regime’s ideological self-conception and to its standing in international society, necessitating external endorsement from ideologically proximate great powers – what I call “ideological shelter.” Drawing on a multi-case design that combines a pathway analysis of Uzbekistan with an external validity probe of Hungary and a shadow negative case of Turkmenistan, the article demonstrates that small states adopt one of three foreign policy strategies – alliance, hedging, or nonalignment – depending on the intensity of stigmatization and the institutional constraints on realignment. The findings specify the conditions under which ideology generates alignment in small states and the variation in strategic choice across cases.
