A little more than a decade ago, after the euphoria of the color revolutions dissipated, interest and research on the rise of authoritarianism began to make notable inroads into the fields of both comparative politics and international relations. This move was associated with a growing pessimism that Chinese autocracy would somehow be tamed through globalization, the return of Russia to the world stage, and the newfound resilience of autocratic regimes against democratic pressures. Now this research is firmly established at the center of debates over the future of the international system, focusing our attention on evidence of greater cooperation between autocracies, the retreat of democracy in some places, and the rise of populism. However, there is still much that needs to be investigated.
Anastassia Obydenkova and Alexander Libman’s latest work on nondemocratic regional organizations (NDROs) in the former Soviet Union is a welcome contribution to these debates because of the way in which it seeks to go beyond earlier research on regionalism and international organizations, which has come primarily from the experiences of democratic regional organizations (DROs). It includes a solid and comprehensive literature review that brings together three primary strands of research—comparative regionalism, international cooperation of autocracies, and autocracy promotion/diffusion—as well as sub-branches of these literatures, into a coherent and complementary research agenda. It blends quantitative analysis of the world’s NDROs with detailed case studies of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), guided by clear hypotheses and systematic analysis.
This work is driven by two primary questions: Why do states choose to join NDROs, and what is their impact on member states? Three additional issues also receive significant attention from the authors: how NDROs differ in governance from DROs, their impact on intraorganizational economic trade, and a comparison between Cold War and post–Cold War NDROs. Although this may make the book seem both heavy and scattered at first glance, it in fact exhibits an admirable desire for completeness. This book will not be the final word on NDROs, but it raises important issues that need to be explored further.
As for the first main question, the authors argue that the motivation to join NDROs is sometimes imposed from the top down and is driven by a powerful state in service to its geopolitical goals; in other cases, joining is a mechanism to restrain powerful states. In this way NDROs have striking similarities to DROs, whose membership patterns appear to be similar. In terms of the question on impact, the authors claim to show “that NDROs are capable of exercising an impact on regime transition among member states”; they demonstrate this primarily through an investigation into the length of regime tenure (p. 3). Although the authors provide convincing reasons as to why NDROs affect regime transition by outlining several mechanisms that could yield this result, there is often scant evidence of a direct impact, and NDROs’ actual impact on the regimes themselves is left an open question. The first of these difficulties can be easily forgiven, given the notable difficulties of unpacking what Robert Barros referred to as “the ’black box’ within the ‘black box’” (“On the Outside Looking In: Secrecy and the Study of Authoritarian Regimes,” Social Science Quarterly, 97(4), 2016). However, the latter is more problematic. Certainly, regime consolidation of already authoritarian regimes is facilitated by NDROs, but is there evidence that membership in an NDRO actually makes a country qualitatively more authoritarian? To put it another way, does membership cause a regime to move from one type of political system to another, such as from free to partly free or from partly free to not free, to use the Freedom House formulation? Furthermore, despite evidence that NDROs can play a role in shaping the normative environment for its member states in a nondemocratic manner, it remains an open question whether NDROs can have an effect on nonmembers within the region. In other words, can they serve as “authoritarian gravity centers” by pulling hybrid or democratic states closer toward authoritarianism, as Marianne Kneuer and Thomas Demmelhuber explore in Authoritarian Gravity Centers: A Cross-Regional Study of Authoritarian Promotion and Diffusion (2020)?
These concerns are extremely pressing, because they not only reinforce the differences between NDROs and DRO but, more importantly, also speak to the possible dangers that NDROs pose to the democratic world. It would have been helpful to see whether there is a correlation between the length of time in an NDRO and a substantive strengthening of authoritarianism—possibly using nuanced statistical modeling. In fact, there seems to be evidence that, at least in the case of the EAEU, NDROs have had the opposite effect, in that these international institutions may actually undermine autocracy (p. 216). As the authors themselves make clear, NDROs are not always a force for the promotion of autocracy and actually have been leveraged for geopolitical purposes to counter it, as was seen in the case of Russia’s role in the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko (p. 51). In one conspicuous case from the region, that of Kyrgyzstan in 2010, the decidedly authoritarian SCO failed to come to the defense of a semi-authoritarian regime (p. 51). Although the defensive nature of NDROs clearly comes through in this analysis—in that they are far more committed to the protection of their members from the forces of democratization than to actively spreading autocracy—this issue likely should have been explored further, given that it speaks directly to the potentially unique qualities of NDROs and their broader influence on the balance between democracy and autocracy. If NDROs do less than expected against the forces of democratization, is their authoritarian nature actually that impactful on their member states and the broader international system? Alternatively, should the democratic world be concerned about the rise of NDROs, as some commentators have posited? These are questions for further research spurred by the book under review.
Obviously, not everything can be included in any one volume, and these are relatively minor criticisms that should not detract from the important work these authors have done, the questions that they raise, and the considerable contribution that this work represents to the field. They do themselves a disservice by commenting several times that their conclusions might not travel well outside the former Soviet Union, given the unique nature of regionalism and the international organizations in this post-imperial space that also includes a clear regional hegemon. For students of the current authoritarian wave, this study will likely serve as the foundation for future research into the domestic, regional, and global implications of NDROs throughout the world for the foreseeable future. It is an important and groundbreaking work that elevates each of the literatures that it addresses to the next level. Many will be inspired by this book, which comes highly recommended. For this, Obydenkova and Libman should be congratulated.
