Abstract
Recent studies on regionalism tend to view regions and regional organisations as distinct actors in global affairs. This paper seeks to contribute to these discussions of regions’ actorship capabilities by exploring the regionalisation process among post-Soviet states driven by the Eurasian regionalism project. The progress in regional integration among post-Soviet states, including the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union among Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia with the Eurasian Economic Commission as its supranational body, and the developments within the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, provides rich empirical data for the approaches in contemporary regionalism studies to assess whether or not we are witnessing the emergence of a region with actorship capabilities.
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Notes
The term Eurasian Integration Space can be found in Qoraboyev (2010) and its Russian equivalent is often used in IR literature in Russia to denote the Russia-centered regional integration processes.
Hettne (2005) acknowledges that the evolution of regionalism might not follow this five-stage model and that the model serves mainly a heuristic purpose.
The word GUAM is made up of the first letters of the member states Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova.
The English version of the SES Concept is available at http://www.kmu.gov.ua/control/en/publish/printable_article?art_id=2831293.
Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan signed an Agreement on the Establishment of the Common Customs Territory and the Customs Union in 2007; however, this agreement did not have specific dates. The dates of the establishment of the BKR CU were clear only in 2009.
The text of the EEU treaty in Russian is available on the official website of the EAEC at http://eurasiancommission.org.
The SEEC meets at the level of heads of state of the BKR member states once a year and at the level of prime ministers twice a year.
Putin proposed the Eurasian Union with political and value dimensions in his 2011 article on Eurasian integration (Press Service 2011). Other Russian officials have also showed their disappointment that integration happens only in the economic dimension and proposed coverage of other dimensions, including the establishment of Eurasian parliament (Naryshkin Calls for Establishment of Eurasian Parliament 2012; Shuvalov 2012). After Izvestia published Putin’s article on Eurasian integration, Hillary Clinton identified the project as a re-Sovietisation of the region (Gearan 2013).
The classification of economic systems of post-Soviet states is available in Charman (2007) and Korosteleva (2007).
The CSTO structure is available at http://odkb-csto.org (last accessed on 28 May, 2014).
None of the post-Soviet countries, including Belarus and Kazakhstan, have supported Russia in recognising the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have also shown lack of support for the change in the status of Crimea by abstaining in the vote on the UN Resolution calling upon states not to recognise the changes in the status of the Crimea Region.
In Russia, the term ‘near abroad’ refers to post-Soviet countries.
Available in Russian at http://odkb-csto.org (last accessed on 28 May, 2014).
The Joint Statements of the CSTO are available in Russian at http://www.odkb-csto.org/documents/.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge gratefully the Central European University Summer School programme Comparative Regionalisms: Changing Forms of Governance in Asia, Africa and the Americas and the Effects on the World Order — 2012 and the UNU CRIS — CISS conference Cooperation, Integration and Alliances: Regional and Global Perspectives, Challenges and Solutions, 19–21 June, 2013, which provided wonderful opportunity to meet experts in the field and receive comments on this paper. Special thanks to Dr. Andrew Grant from Queen’s University, Dr. Mikhail Molchanov from St Thomas University, Dr. Galym Zhussipbek from Suleyman Demirel University, Almaty, and Dr. Alex Grigorescu from Loyola University, Chicago, for careful reading and providing valuable feedback on the drafts of this article. The scholarships by the Centre of International Programmes — ‘Bolashak’ and the Malaysian Ministry of Education helped to concentrate efforts on research and to write this article. The authors also appreciate the insightful comments provided by three anonymous reviewers at JIRD and the help of Rosemi Mederos and Jon Harrison in editing the article.
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Moldashev, K., Gulam Hassan, M. The Eurasian union: actor in the making?. J Int Relat Dev 20, 215–237 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2015.6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2015.6