Studying Non-Democratic Regional Organizations: Methodological Issues

The chapter describes the methodology of this book’s analysis. In particular, it presents details on our mixed methods research strategy and how the insights from the small-N studies contribute to the large-N research. In particular, it describes the benefits of using a concurrent instead of a sequential research design for our research question; it shows how we integrate the findings from the world-wide (large-N) analysis with the analysis of three regional organizations in post-Soviet Eurasia (combining large-N and small-N approaches). It also shows how the theoretical concept of non-democratic regional organizations can be operationalized empirically and presents details on the data that are used.

Conclusion

The final chapter systematizes the empirical lessons derived from the detailed analyses of the various chapters. It generalizes the theoretical results of the empirical analyses and reconsiders these issues within the theories of regionalism and autocracies. It sums up the findings for post-Soviet Eurasia, but also makes generalizations beyond the specific regions, presenting implications for the world-wide experience of the failure or success of democratization and opening up new lines of investigation at an international level. The conclusion discusses implications for the further development of a theory of regionalism, autocracies, and for policy making. It also describes an agenda for future research, which can be derived from our investigation.

Security Regionalism

Unlike the EAEU and the CIS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization includes two key actors—Russia and China. The chapter reviews the specifics of the organization and the functioning of the SCO, and also develops an argument about how SCO could contribute to the longevity of autocratic rulers. It tests whether autocracies which belong to the SCO are characterized by longer tenure of the rulers than those which do not belong to the SCO. Through the trust building between nations, the SCO enables more intensive economic cooperation of authoritarian regimes. Apart from economic support through the SCO, the chapter investigates another potential explanation of autocracy consolidation of the region related to the SCO’s role.

Economic Regionalism

Unlike the CIS, the Eurasian Economic Union, which was set up in 2015, but follows a long line of regional organizations which existed since 1995, focuses exclusively on economic affairs. The chapter discusses the governance and the membership of the EAEU, as well as its economic and political implications. It analyzes possible influences of the EAEU on the political regimes of the member countries, and concludes that the EAEU itself does not seem to exercise autocracy-promoting influences. However, the chapter shows that, by studying the EAEU, it is important to take into account an indirect effect: the existence of the EAEU triggers changes in Russian foreign policy, which in turn can contribute to the stabilization of authoritarian regimes.

Past Non-Dependency in the Twenty-first Century

This chapter aims to provide a different approach to the development of regional IOs since World War II, by singling out non-democratic tendencies in regionalism from a historical perspective. It explores differences between the functioning of DROs and NDROs over the last 70 years—from coerced organizations such as COMECON to modern alliances of autocrats. The chapter argues that the twenty-first-century NDROs (e.g. SCO) are different from those of the last half of the twentieth century (e.g. COMECON) in terms of membership composition, governance structure, and the characteristics discussed in earlier chapters. While historical NDROs were driven by ideologies such as Communism, in the main modern NDROs lack an ideological foundation (with the exception of ALBA and the Islamic world). The ideological foundation of Islamic ROs has changed—from pan-Arabism in the 1940s and 1950s to the dominance of various forms of political Islam and a focus on specific political institutions (e.g. the conservative rule of Gulf monarchies in the GCC).

Impact on World Politics and Economy

This chapter studies the different impacts of DROs and NDROs on economic and political development, finding that NDROs are less successful than DROs at liberalizing foreign trade among member states. The chapter focus on actual trade ties and trade flows is in line with the existing literature. In terms of the impact on migration, NDROs exhibit larger within-region migration flows than DROs (with some caveats concerning the statistical analysis). To consider impact of NDRO on political regimes, the chapter looks at whether membership in an NDRO affects the duration of tenure of authoritarian leaders. The analysis shows that the tenure of leaders of NDRO member states was significantly longer than that of leaders whose countries did not belong to an NDRO. The findings indicate that membership of an NDRO has a significant political impact; in the subsequent case studies we trace the particular mechanisms explaining this effect.

Authoritarian Regionalism

The goal of this chapter is to present the main elements of our theoretical argument. Departing from existing studies, the chapter introduces a new theory called “authoritarian regionalism” and derives hypotheses from this. The chapter provides a definition of the NDROs (authoritarian regionalism) and then identifies several areas where these organizations should be different from their democratic counterparts: heterogeneity of membership, power distribution, and governance. This chapter also discusses the most important argument of the book: authoritarian regionalisms’ ability to contribute to the consolidation of autocracies. The chapter presents the main mechanisms which can be used for this purpose, discusses whether NDROs possess their own actorness, and analyzes the limits for autocracy promotion by authoritarian regional organizations.

Regionalism and Political Regimes

This chapter contributes to these ongoing debates and critically re-examines existing literature on regional integration and modern autocracies. In particular, it addresses some of the streams of the literature: theoretical studies looking at regionalism world-wide; studies on whether autocracies can cooperate; and studies on autocracy diffusion and cooperation. The chapter identifies the research gaps in the literature and raises theoretical and empirical questions, which are addressed in the book. This chapter provides an overview of the existing literature on democratic peace and the emerging studies on dictatorial peace; on the external dimension of authoritarianism; and on the international cooperation of autocracies.

Introduction

The introductory chapter provides an overview of the issues discussed in the book and sets the framework and logic of analysis presented in the subsequent chapters. It summarizes the importance of the topics discussed, as well as the book’s motivation and its contribution to the literature and methodology. It formulates the two main research questions of the book: whether non-democratic regional organizations are different from democratic ones in terms of governance and membership and whether non-democratic regional organizations contribute to authoritarian consolidation at the national level. It outlines the structure of the book and sketches the main ideas of each chapter. It then sets out the terminology and vocabulary used throughout the book as well as the definition of the key terms.

Political Regionalism

This chapter is the first to study a particular Eurasian regional organization. It looks at the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)—the oldest regional organization in Eurasia set up in 1991. It discusses its membership and governance, official and unofficial goals (and how they fit the theoretical predictions of the book). More importantly, it analyzes a specific mechanism used by the CIS to support authoritarian consolidation: electoral monitoring by the CIS Mission of Observers and several related organizations, such as the NGO CIS-EMO. The chapter describes how electoral monitoring became a tool of authoritarian consolidation, which features of electoral monitoring the CIS displays, and how it affects the development of the authoritarian regimes in the region.