Authoritarian Regionalism and Its' Impact: Eurasian Enigma

• In Event: International Cooperation and Democratic Backsliding

Abstract

The post-Cold War world has witnessed the extensive development of regional international organizations world-wide. The interconnection between their membership and democratization remains a topic of intensive scholarly debate. The paper opens up a new aspect of it, by explicitly looking at regional organization set up by autocracies (e.g., the CIS, the EEU, and the SCO) – it refers to them as “non-democratic regional organizations”. How do these newly emerged organizations influence the democratization process in their own member states and beyond their borders? The paper looks into causal mechanisms of the impact of these three international organizations and identifies different tools of regime boosting: rhetorical support, electoral monitoring, economic strategy, and security programs among others. The paper argues that authoritarian regionalism is a new phenomenon in world politics and its influence has radically increased in terms of geographic scope and intensity in the last few years. As such, authoritarian regionalism is an important addition to the studies of comparative regionalism and the international dimension of authoritarianism.

Author

• Anastassia V. Obydenkova, IBEI - Institut Barcelona D'Estudis Internacionals