Authoritarian Regionalism in The World of International Organizations: Global Perspectives and The Eurasian Enigma Anastassia V. Obydenkova

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A U T H O R I TA RI A N R E GI O N A L I S M I N T H E W O R L D
OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Authoritarian
Regionalism in the
World of International
Organizations
Global Perspectives and the Eurasian Enigma
A N A S T A S S I A V. O B Y D E N K O V A
AND ALEXANDER LIBMAN
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Anastassia V. Obydenkova and Alexander Libman 2019
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Acknowledgments
While working on this book, we have received substantial feedback from a

number of scholars. The authors are very grateful to John Pevehouse, Rawi
Abdelal, Philippe Schmitter, Henry Hale, Alexander Cooley, Christina Davis,
Randall Stone, Mark Beissinger, Leonardo Morlino, Oisín Tansey, Andrew
Moravcsik, John Ikenberry, Grigore Pop-Eleches, Robert Orttung, Elise
Giuliano, Timothy J. Colton, Margarita M. Balmaceda, Vladimir Gel’man,
Steven Levitsky, Neil MacFarlane, Andrew Konitzer, Carlos Closa, Kathryn
Stoner, and Larry Diamond for their comments on various drafts, chapters,
and ideas presented in this book. All mistakes are, of course, the sole respon-
sibility of the authors.
Anastassia V. Obydenkova is especially grateful to Larry Diamond,
Alexander Cooley, Andrew Konitzer, Alexandra Vacroux, Robert Orttung,
Carlos Closa, Randall Stone, and Roy Allison for organization of guest-speaker
events and their invitation to discuss this project at the University of Stanford,
Columbia University of New York, the University of Pittsburgh, Harvard
University, George Washington University, the Institute of Public Goods
and Policies of Spanish National Research Council, University of Rochester,
and Oxford University; and she thanks Elise Giuliano, Neil MacFarlane and
Joshua Tucker, Timothy J. Colton and Francis Fukuyama for being insightful
and very helpful discussants at these events. The authors also presented this
book and benefited from the excellent feedback of participants at a number of
other guest-speaker events at the University of Helsinki, Free University of
Berlin, the Stockholm School of Economics, University of Lyon (France), and
Princeton University.
Anastassia V. Obydenkova is grateful to the Davis Center for Russian and
Eurasian Studies at Harvard University for granting her the position of
Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Senior Research Scholar and to the
research fellows and visitors of 2015–16 for the creative enthusiastic environ-
ment and excellent comments on this book, specifically to Jaclyn A. Kerr,
Lyudmila Petrova, Nadia Boyadjieva, Jillian Porter, Inna Melnykovska, Halit
Dundar Akarca, Alexander Diener, and Brandon Schechter.
The various chapters of the book were presented at the conferences of the
American Political Science Association, the European Consortium of Political
Research, the International Political Science Association, the European Polit-
ical Science Association, the International Studies Association, the German
Association for Political Science, the Association for Slavic, East European,
and Eurasian Studies, Post-Communist Working Group at Faculty of Arts and
vi Acknowledgments
Science of Harvard University, and the Fung Global Seminars at Princeton
University.
The authors are grateful to James Disley and Oxford Academic Editing for
their excellent assistance with the language editing and proofreading of the
manuscript and to three anonymous reviewers of this book for their great
feedback and suggestions. Alexander Libman appreciates the financial support
of the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. Anastassia V. Obydenkova
is grateful for support and funding for this project received from the Davis
Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of Harvard University and from the
Institute for International and Regional Studies of Princeton University.
Contents
List of Figures xi
List of Tables xiii
Acronyms xv
1. Introduction 1
1.1. Authoritarian Regionalism throughout the World and
in Post-Soviet Eurasia 3
1.2. The Contribution of the Book 6
1.3. Sequence of Chapters 9
2. Regionalism and Political Regimes 11
2.1. The Comparative Regionalism Perspective 11
2.1.1. Regional organizations and non-democratic members 11
2.1.2. Globalization, regional organizations, and
non-democracies 14
2.1.3. Imperialism and non-democratic regional organizations 16
2.2. Authoritarian Cooperation Perspective 18
2.2.1. From democratic Kantian peace to a “new” autocratic
peace? 18
2.2.2. The mystery of modern non-democracies: who are they? 20
2.2.3. How do political regimes matter for regionalism
and . . . do they? 24
2.3. External Influences and Political Regimes 26
2.3.1. International dimension of regime transition 26
2.3.2. Autocracy promotion and diffusion perspective 28
3. Authoritarian Regionalism 34
3.1. Definition 35
3.2. Authoritarian Regional Organizations, Political Regimes,
and Membership 36
3.3. Power Distribution 43
3.4. Political Impact of Authoritarian Regionalism 44
3.4.1. Why NDROs? 45
3.4.2. Tools of authoritarian regionalism 47
3.4.3. Limits of authoritarian regionalism 50
3.4.4. Actorness of autocratic regional organizations 53
3.4.5. NDROs and the tenure of autocrats 55
3.5. Heterogeneity of Membership and Governance Structure 59
4. Studying Non-Democratic Regional Organizations:
Methodological Issues 66
4.1. Mixed Methods Strategy: Concurrent versus Sequential Design 66
4.2. Empirical Definitions 70
viii Contents
4.3. The Dataset 73

4.4. Conclusion 74
5. Membership and Governance 76
5.1. Preliminary Analysis 76
5.2. Indicators 81
5.3. Results: Membership 83
5.4. Results: Governance 89
5.5. Conclusion 91
6. Impact on World Politics and Economy 93
6.1. Empirical Approach and Indicators 93
6.2. Empirical Results 94
6.3. Non-Democratic Regional Organizations and Democratization 98
6.4. NDROs and the Survival of Political Leaders 100
6.5. Conclusion 106
7. Past Non-Dependency in the Twenty-first Century 107
7.1. Early Years: Ideological and Colonial Non-democratic Regional
Organizations 108
7.2. Large-N Analysis: NDROs During and After the Cold War 111
7.3. Were DROs and NDROs Always Different? 117
8. The Enigma of Eurasian Regionalism 120
8.1. A Brief History of Eurasian Regionalism 121
8.2. Historical Legacies and Eurasian Regionalism 125
8.3. The Limiting Factor 130
8.4. Frozen Conflicts and Border Disputes 139
8.5. Conclusion 142
9. Political Regionalism: The CIS 144
9.1. Heterogeneity and Power Asymmetry in the CIS 144
9.2. Governance 148
9.3. Effects of the CIS: Economic Area 150
9.4. Effects of the CIS: Security 153
9.5. Effects of the CIS: Politics 155
9.5.1. Methodology of the analysis 155
9.5.2. Results 159
9.5.3. Support for autocratic consolidation and electoral monitoring 162
9.5.4. The case of CIS-EMO 166
9.5.5. Autocratic Self-selection 172
9.6. Conclusion 177
10. Economic Regionalism: The EAEU 179
10.1. Development and Expansion 180
10.2. Governance 184
10.3. Relations to Other Regional Organizations 189
Contents ix
10.4. Heterogeneity of Membership and Hegemony 190

10.5. Official and Unofficial Goals 192
10.6. Outcomes 194
10.6.1. Economic integration 194
10.6.2. Democracy 197
10.6.3. Qualitative evidence: three main mechanisms 201
10.6.4. Qualitative evidence: Russian foreign policy
and political regimes 206
10.7. Conclusion 218
11. Security Regionalism: The SCO 219
11.1. Development and Expansion 219
11.2. Governance Structure 220
11.3. Membership 222
11.4. The Motivations and Goals behind the Collaboration
of India and Pakistan 225
11.5. Hegemony and the SCO 228
11.6. The Official and Unofficial Goals of the SCO 230
11.7. Allies or Rivals? 232
11.8. Cooperation with Other International Organizations 234
11.9. Failed Multilateralism or Successful Bilateralism? 236
11.10. Impact on Political Regimes 239
11.10.1. Large-N evidence 239
11.10.2. Honor among thieves: SCO and trust-building
among autocracies 242
11.11. Conclusion 254
12. Conclusion 256
12.1. Autocratic Regionalism as a Phenomenon and its Impact 256
12.1.1. Non-democratic regional organizations as a new
type of regionalism 256
12.1.2. Democratic vs. non-democratic regional
organizations: how different are they? 257
12.1.3. The importance and implications of the NDRO
as a new type 261
12.2. The Eurasian Enigma 264
12.2.1. Post-Soviet Eurasia as a hub of authoritarian
regionalism 264
12.2.2. Autocracy diffusion in Eurasia 266
12.2.3. What can we learn from post-Soviet Eurasia? 268
12.3. World-wide Implications 269
12.4. Agenda for Future Research 271
Appendices 273
References 287
Index 315
List of Figures
5.1. Distribution of the average Polity IV score of the ROs 77

5.2. Member countries of NDROs according to the average
Polity IV index 78
5.3. Distribution of political regimes of the leading countries
of ROs according to Polity IV 79
5.4. Member countries of NDROs according to the Polity IV index
of the leading country 80
6.1. Political regime of the leader and of the members of the RO
(Polity IV) 99
6.2. Kaplan–Meier survival function for authoritarian leaders
of countries belonging and not belonging to NDROs 103
7.1. Average Polity IV score of a member of a regional organization
and of a country in the world, 1975–2005 113
7.2. Average Polity IV score of the leading country of a
regonal organization, 1975–2005 115
7.3. Share of NDROs according to political regime of an average
country and of the leading country, 1975–2005 115
8.1. Share of respondents supporting the EAEU, 2012–2017 130
8.2. Share of Soviet republics in the total exports and imports of
goods from Russia, 1991 132
8.3. Energy subsidies from Russia to Belarus, bln. US$ 135
8.4. The logic of the limiting factor in the post-Soviet trade 139
8.5. Specific features of the Eurasian regionalism 143
9.1. Economic and political heterogeneity of CIS countries 146
9.2. Number of the CIS decisions accepted by the CIS states,
1991–2010 150
9.3. The causal logic of the link between authoritarianism
and CIS participation 177
10.1. Kernel density of FH scores for the EAEU and
non-EAEU countries 201
10.2. Causal link between the EAEU and the authoritarian
consolidation 217
11.1. Kaplan–Meier survival estimates for the sample of twenty-six
post-Soviet presidents, 2000–2016 241
11.2. Causal mechanisms of the SCO impact on the duration
of tenure of autocrats 247
xii List of Figures

A.1. Distribution of the average Freedom House scores of the ROs 279
A.2. Distribution of political regimes of the leading countries
of ROs according to Freedom House 279
A.3. Share of democratic and non-democratic ROs in our sample 280
A.4. Political regime of the leader and of the members of the RO
(Freedom House) 280
A.5. Average Freedom House score of a member of a regional
organization and of a country in the world, 1975–2005 281
A.6. Average Freedom House and Polity IV score of the leading
country of the RO, 1975–2005 281
A.7. Share of NDROs according to different criteria, 1975–2005 282
List of Tables
2.1. Summary of the key conclusions from the three streams of literature
surveyed 32
3.1. Political impact of authoritarian regionalism: possible mechanisms 59
3.2. Democratic vs. authoritarian regionalism 64
3.3. Main hypotheses 64
5.1. NDROs and the heterogeneity of members 84
5.2. NDROs and the governance of regional organizations 89
6.1. Economic and political effects of NDROs 95
6.2. Effect of NDRO membership on the duration of the rule of authoritarian
leaders, 1950–2015 105
7.1. Changes in the characteristics of the NDRO over time, NDRO defined
through the average democracy score of its member countries 117
7.2. Changes in the characteristics of the NDRO over time, NDRO defined
through the democracy score of its leader 118
8.1. Historical factors and Eurasian regionalism 131
8.2. Dependence of the CIS countries on migration to Russia 136
9.1. Determinants of the number of acts of the CIS unconditionally
accepted by individual member states, 1991–2010, dep.var.: number of
acts accepted, OLS 160
9.2. Activities of the EMO up to 2015 and dynamic of political regimes
in post-Soviet states 169
10.1. Impact of political regimes (FH) on membership in the EAEU,
2000–2015, two-way FE 199
10.2. Impact of political regimes (FH) on membership in the EurAsEC,
2000–2015, two-way FE 200
10.3. Russian foreign policy, autocracy promotion, and the EAEU 214
11.1. Political regimes of member states in 2015 221
11.2. Main religions of actual and potential member states 224
11.3. Military expenditure of the two hegemons, 2014 228
11.4. Technological component of the two leading states, 2014 229
11.5. Economic power of the two hegemons, 2014 229
11.6. Unofficial goals of the two hegemons of the SCO and the issue of their
compatibility 233
11.7. Cox hazard regressions, survival of post-Soviet presidents, 2000–2016 241
11.8. National causes of tenure versus hypothetical international impact 243
xiv List of Tables

12.1. Impact of regionalism 261
12.2. Political impact of Eurasian NDROs 266
A.1. Impact of the type of RO on regime heterogeneity, OLS 273
A.2. Impact of the type of RO on religious heterogeneity, OLS 273
A.3. Impact of the type of RO on income heterogeneity, OLS 274
A.4. Impact of the type of RO on power asymmetry, OLS 274
A.5. Effect of the type of RO on governance structure, logit 275
A.6. Impact of the type of RO on trade integration, OLS 276
A.7. Impact of the type of RO on integration in the area of FDI, OLS 276
A.8. Impact of the type of RO on integration in the area of migration, OLS 277
A.9. Impact of the type of RO on the likelihood of conflicts, logit 277
A.10. Determinants of the number of acts of the CIS unconditionally
accepted by individual member states, 1991–2010, dep.var.: number
of acts accepted, negative binomial estimations 278
Acronyms
AIIB Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

ALBA Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America—Peoples’ Trade
Treaty
APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
BSEC Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation
CAEC Central Asian Economic Cooperation
CARICOM Caribbean Community
CBSS Council of the Baltic Sea States
CEMAC Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa
CES Common Economic Space
CINC composite index of national capabilities
CIS Commonwealth of Independent States
COMECON Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organization
DCFTA Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement
DR-CAFTA Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement
DRO democratic regional organization
EAEU Eurasian Economic Union
ECCAS Economic Community of Central African States
ECO Economic Cooperation Organization
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
EDB Eurasian Development Bank
EEC European Economic Communities
EFSD Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EMO Electoral Monitoring Organization
EU European Union
EurAsEC Eurasian Economic Community
FDI foreign direct investments
FH Freedom House
FIGO formal intergovernmental organization
xvi Acronyms
GAFTA Greater Arab Free Trade Agreement
GCC Gulf Cooperation Council
GUAM regional organization including Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and
Moldova
IAC International Aviation Committee
IGAD Intergovernmental Authority on Development
IIMDD International Institute for Monitoring Democracy Development,
Parliamentarism and Suffrage Protection of Citizens
IMF International Monetary Fund
IO international organization
IPA Interparliamentary Assembly
LAIA Latin American Integration Association
LAS League of Arab States
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NDRO non-democratic regional organization
NGO non-governmental organization
OAPEC Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries
OAS Organization of American States
ODA official development aid
OLS ordinary least squares
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
RO regional organization
SAARC South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation
SACU Southern African Customs Union
SADC Southern African Development Community
SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization
TACIS Technical Assistance for the Commonwealth of Independent States
US United States
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WRD World Religions Database
WTO World Trade Organization
Introduction
In December 2007, the Russian Federation elected the State Duma—for the
second time after Vladimir Putin became president of the country. The
elections, far from being free and fair, were characterized by a further import-
ant feature previously unknown to Russia—substantial restrictions on the
access of international observers. Having ignored most of the recommenda-
tions made by observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe (OSCE) after their monitoring of the previous election campaign,
Russia decided to eliminate the possibility of a new wave of criticism by simply
preventing the observers from participating in Russian elections. While the
OSCE rules require an invitation to observers to be issued three months before
election day, Russia sent out the invitation only a month before the elections,
and also imposed restrictions on the number of observers. As a result, the
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE refused to
send its monitors to Russia. The lack of international observers was heavily
criticized by both international actors and the Russian opposition.
There were, however, those who wholeheartedly approved of the decision of
the Russian government. Mikhail Krotov, the Secretary General of the Inter-
parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS),
an organization at that time consisting of twelve former Soviet Union repub-
lics (all the former Soviet republics, except the Baltic states), declared in an
interview in November 2007 that the Western reaction was caused not by
the violation of international norms by Russia, but by the fact that Russia
“again claimed to be a sovereign country, which has to be treated as equal, also
in the area of international [electoral] monitoring. And it turned out to be an
unpleasant surprise for the West.” Krotov went on to declare the monitoring
standards of the OSCE obsolete, claiming that they were based on double
standards and direct political pressure, in contrast to those of the CIS.¹
The CIS Interparliamentary Assembly did send its observers to the Russian
¹ http://iacis.ru/pressroom/news/tavricheskiy_dvorets/zaokeanskie_kritiki_propoveduyut_
ustarevshie_vzglyadyi_na_monitoring_vyiborov__intervyu_generalnogo_sekretarya_soveta_
mpa_sng_mihaila_krotova/, accessed July 24, 2018.
2 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

elections and published its conclusion on 2 December 2007 (before the vote
count was concluded). The Assembly found no problems with the implemen-
tation of the elections and gave Russian electoral law high praise. This was
at odds with the conclusions of the representatives of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe, who issued a statement strongly criticizing
the Russian elections.²
This difference in how the Russian elections were treated is but one example
of an important trend that has to be taken into account when analyzing the
democratization process in various parts of the world. Over the last two
decades, political science scholarship has accumulated substantial evidence
on the ability of international organizations (IOs) and regional organizations
(ROs) to strengthen the democratization process in their member states and
even to do so among non-members. Regional organizations can provide
incentives to comply with democratic norms (e.g. if the latter are required in
order to obtain membership or if their absence can lead to temporary or
permanent suspension of membership) and offer democratic countries aid,
support, and advice. However, they can also function as commitment devices
for countries that are resolutely pursuing the goal of democratization, and
even in some cases use military force in cases of coups threatening democracy
in their member states. The European Union’s (EU) external democracy
promotion has been acknowledged as the major example of this logic; yet
some other regional organizations also play an important role in this respect
(Pevehouse 2005).
Our book’s main argument is that this evidence was primarily generated by
studying regional organizations mostly consisting of democratic member
states and with democratic leading countries. At the same time, a large
number of regional organizations world-wide were either established by
non-democracies or are at least centered around a non-democratic leading
state. Research on these organizations has been rather limited so far. This is
primarily the case because the literature has focused on organizations which
evidently achieve a high level of economic and political integration and policy
coordination. Regional organizations of democratic states meet this require-
ment much more often than those of non-democratic states (Mansfield et al.
2002). However, even if an organization does not achieve the goals officially
declared in its mandate, it may have a profound impact on regime consolida-
tion. This is the reason why this book engages the new phenomenon of
authoritarian regionalism. As Cooley (2005, p. 56) remarks om this topic:
Across Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, new regional organ-
izations are flourishing. Yet their political agendas seem to be drifting away from
² http://www.vibory.ru/Regs/GD/part-11.htm, accessed July 24, 2018; http://kommersant.ru/

doc/817834, accessed July 24, 2018.
Introduction 3
reaffirming democratic principles, and may even be veering toward new practices
that serve to shield their authoritarian members from outside criticism of what
they do at home.
Yet there are numerous gaps in our knowledge of how these new organizations
work and what their impacts of their policy are. We show that non-democratic
regional organizations (NDROs) differ substantially from the democratic regional
organizations (DROs) in their modus of operation. We also show that NDROs
are capable of exercising an impact on regime transition among their member
states, even if they fail to achieve the goal of economic or political integration, and
because of that they deserve scholarly attention.
1.1. AUTHORITARIAN REGIONALISM THROUGHOUT

THE WORLD AND IN POST-SOVIET EURASIA
The phenomenon of authoritarian regionalism is a global one: one finds

NDROs in different parts of the world. At the same time, in some regions
the presence of NDROs is more pronounced than in others. The aim of this
book is thus to provide evidence on the features characterizing NDROs
worldwide and differentiating them from DROs, but also to unpack the specific
mechanisms through which NDROs exercise their influence. The last goal will
be achieved by looking at a particular region—post-Soviet Eurasia. This region
is comprised of twelve former Soviet republics, which became independent
in 1991 (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Russia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan).
The focus on Eurasia is important from both a scientific and a policy
perspective. From a scientific perspective, Eurasia is the part of the world
where, as we will show in what follows, NDROs are particularly prolific in
number and differentiated in scope and objectives; a large number of NDROs
provides ample opportunity for comparative analysis. The region features a
large number of regional organizations, each with a different membership,
design, and performance record. There are two major international authori-
tarian actors in this region (Russia is the core actor, with China an important
outsider³), along with a number of important democratic actors (most not-
ably, the EU). This makes it possible to perform a comparative analysis of how
different NDROs affect the regime transition trajectories in their member
states (or fail to do so) and discuss the reasons for these differences.
³ China is defined as an “outsider” because of the particular definition of Eurasia we use, i.e.,
as a region composed of all the former Soviet Union states (with the exceptions of Latvia,
Lithuania, and Estonia). China does not belong to this set, but it plays an important role in the
region.

Furthermore, Eurasia provides an important example of how democratic
development has been inverted and turned into autocratic consolidation.
While in the early 1990s there were hopes for democratic development in
the post-Soviet world, over time, only a few countries managed to pass the
threshold to weak and unstable democracies. The majority of the Eurasian
countries turned into consolidated autocracies, regressing from the (some-
times rather modest) achievements they demonstrated in the 1990s. For
instance, Russia transitioned from a hybrid regime (possibly even a weak
non-consolidated democracy) in the 1990s to a consolidated autocracy in
the 2010s. This phenomenon was unexpected after the wave of democratiza-
tion in the 1990s, and it requires careful analysis. Thus, the region allows us to
test an interesting dynamic aspect of the evolution of the NDROs.
From the policy perspective, the resurgence of Russian foreign policy
activism and even imperialism in the 2010s, going hand in hand with the
development of NDROs such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), makes an understanding of
the functioning and role of these NDROs crucial. This important insight will,
first, lead to an understanding of Russian influence on the development of
post-Soviet Eurasian countries and, second, enable the US and the EU to
devise an appropriate response. The discussion in the EU on the possibility of
cooperation between the EU and the EAEU, which started almost immediately
after the Crimean crisis in 2014 and continued well into 2017–18, or different
views on the EU and US ability to interact with SCO in Central Asia demon-
strate how important the topic is for decision-makers. Eurasia attracts con-
siderable attention due to its ongoing international crises (such as the conflict
around Ukraine), which are unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future.
In sum, Eurasia appears to be a suitable laboratory for our investigation and
will allow us to obtain results that will be relevant outside this particular group
of countries.
At the same time (and it is important to stress this), Eurasia is not the only
part of the world where NDROs are present. Therefore, the aim of the book is
to combine broad (quantitative) analysis of a large sample of NDROs from
different world regions with our in-depth study of three Eurasian NDROs. The
latter analysis is aimed at unpacking the causal mechanisms allowing NDROs
to affect the regime transition trajectories of their members (to the extent that
they are indeed able to do so). We have selected three NDROs in Eurasia for
more detailed study, and we evaluate differences in their design and outcomes:
the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Unions,
and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Here, however, we believe it is important to briefly mention other examples
of NDROs, which also call for detailed analysis (for which, possibly, the
insights into the NDROs studied closely in this book could also be of value).
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) can be seen to be one of these cases.
Introduction 5
The organization comprises six conservative Arab monarchies (Saudi Arabia,
Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar) and officially
pursues the goal of deeper economic integration of its member countries.
However, economic affairs are but one aspect of the GCC’s functions. For us,
the most important example of its role is its position during the Arab Spring in
2011. For example, after mass protests started in Bahrain in February, the
GCC began a military intervention, which eventually helped the incumbent
to stabilize his position. The GCC also provided various forms of economic
assistance and support to some of the autocracies in the region (and even
invited Jordan to join the organization during the Arab Spring). The extent of
cooperation of the GCC countries changes considerably over time and, in fact,
as of 2017 is much weaker than previously because of the conflict between
Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, this organization has shown that in some
cases NDROs use drastic measures (including military power) to support
other autocracies.⁴
Yet another example of an important NDRO is the Bolivarian Alliance for
the People’s of Our America (ALBA). It was founded in 2004 by Cuba and
Venezuela and now includes eleven states of Latin America. ALBA belongs to
(as we will show in what follows) a relatively rare group of NDROs in the
modern world which have a very strong ideological foundation. Being based
on the idea of Bolivarian Socialism, ALBA claims to reject each and every
element of what typically constitutes a regional integration initiative. The
common economic space of the People’s Trade Agreement (Tratado de
Comercio de los Pueblos), established by ALBA members in 2006, ought to
be an alternative to a free trade area (e.g. the agreement envisages that the
member countries provide specific support to their domestic companies, limit
dependence on food supply from other countries, protect their most import-
ant economic sectors, and replace multinationals by state-led national pro-
jects, etc.). Practically, the organization supports authoritarian tendencies in
the region through two mechanisms: redistribution of resources (in particular,
oil at subsidized prices from Venezuela to other countries of the region) and
rhetoric providing legitimacy to autocrats. Again, ALBA’s performance
changes over time: the decline of oil prices and the catastrophic economic
policy of Venezuela make it less able to provide aid to other countries.
Nevertheless, ALBA should not be seen as a unique phenomenon: it stands
in a long tradition of Latin American regional organizations with a strong
⁴ While for the GCC, it would be impossible without very careful analysis of the empirical
evidence accumulated by the literature devoted to Middle East regionalism and authoritarianism,
which we only touch upon in this book. On the role of the GCC as a regime-boosting institution see
Colombo 2012a; Kamrava 2012; Haimerl 2013; Steinberg 2014; Fawcett 2015, 2016; Odinius and
Kuntz 2015. Yom (2018) offers a detailed analysis of the limits of the GCC as a case of authoritarian
regionalism. Colombo (2012b) confronts GCC activities aiming to support authoritarian regimes
in some countries and undermine the incumbents in others.

anti-American stance (Sabatini 2014), which in some cases also provided a
high level of support to authoritarian tendencies in its member states.⁵
The cases of post-Soviet Eurasia, as well as of the GCC and of the ALBA,
show that authoritarian regionalism is indeed a welcome instrument for
authoritarian powers (such as Russia, Venezuela, or Saudi Arabia) either to
explicitly support authoritarian consolidation or at least to counteract external
democratic influences (see also Kneuer et al. 2018). Yet the argument of our
book goes beyond saying that authoritarian leading countries use NDROs for
supporting authoritarian regimes. We argue that for smaller authoritarian
states (such as Belarus or Tajikistan in post-Soviet Eurasia) NDROs can be
even more important, and thus in many cases it is precisely these smaller
countries that are the driving force behind the establishment of authoritarian
clubs. Again, this matter requires close investigation.
1.2. THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE BOOK
While the importance of these NDROs seems evident, their actual functioning
and their internal and external implications have not yet been explicitly
and systematically addressed. Furthermore, the dissonance between regional
organizations established by democracies and those established by autocracies,
although empirically obvious, has not been approached theoretically. Trad-
itional theories of regionalism were designed to analyze regional organizations
composed of democracies (e.g. the EU). Such theories, therefore, could po-
tentially fail to explain “authoritarian regionalism,” that is, the phenomenon of
regional organizations set up by non-democracies.
Analysis of non-democratic regional organizations world-wide, including
their internal and external implications, is therefore relevant from both scien-
tific and policy perspectives. How do these new organizations interrelate and
interact with the outside world? How do they counteract and confront the
danger of democratization in their own member states and in neighboring
states? How and why do the political regimes, the economic development, and
the cultures of their member states matter in the foundation and development
of these organizations?
This book aims to address these questions by developing a new theory of
NDROs and by using a mixed methods strategy, combining both quantitative
and qualitative analysis, to test it. The quantitative analysis uses a large dataset
of all regional organizations world-wide, for the post-World War II period,
with the aim of defining historical trends in the development and modification
⁵ Similarly to the GCC, for more detailed analysis of ALBA we refer to D’Anieri (2014) and
De la Torre (2017).
Introduction 7
of regionalism over the last seven decades (1940s–2010s). Qualitative analysis
refines and develops the argument by looking at the case of post-Soviet
Eurasia. Regional organizations are defined as international organizations
that include only countries located in geographic proximity to one another
(typically, those sharing common borders); such organizations do not aspire
to expand their membership beyond a self-defined “region” (e.g. Europe, post-
Soviet Eurasia, the Arab Middle East).⁶ In the empirical research, we exclude
military alliances, which are typically studied in a different strand of the
literature, and focus on multi-purpose and economic organizations. This is
because, first, most active recent NDROs present themselves as economic or
multi-purpose organizations, though they may actually serve a different set of
goals (such as the GCC, the ALBA, or the CIS), and second, because we are
particularly interested in the non-coercive tools with which NDROs affect
their members’ politics and societies. These tools are, again, especially import-
ant today, when the use of coercion has become less popular (although not
impossible, as the actions of the GCC in Bahrain show).
After performing the large-N analysis of a world-wide sample of regional
organizations, the book proceeds with detailed investigations of selected case
studies from Eurasia. The case studies also follow a mixed methods design:
they include both in-depth investigation of particular causal mechanisms and
econometric analysis, and were designed to capture the specifics of the insti-
tutional design of each of the regional organizations. In the world-wide
analysis, our main focus is on cross-sectional variation: we look at a large
sample of regional organizations and investigate how the membership, gov-
ernance, and policy outcomes of democratic international organizations differ
from non-democratic ones. We repeat this exercise for several time periods,
looking at how the differences between democratic and non-democratic
organizations have changed over time. In the case study analysis, we use
panel data analysis and survival analysis, focusing on how the political regimes
of individual countries or the length of the rule of leaders are correlated with
these countries’ membership in the organizations we investigate and the extent
of their involvement in the regional organizations’ activity.
The world-wide large-N analysis is based on a hand-picked dataset devel-
oped by a research team including one of the co-authors of the study (Vinokurov
et al. 2014); this dataset includes detailed information on numerous regional
organizations. The dataset is particularly relevant here as it includes numerous
quantitative indicators on each of the international organizations derived
from official statistical records (such as those of the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF)) and analysis of the documents of the
⁶ The standard way of defining regional organizations is based on (a) geographic proximity
and (b) reference to particular regions in the founding documents of the international organ-
izations. Geographic proximity refers to common borders and the absence of large distances.

international organizations. As such, the dataset is unique in its coverage and
level of detail. The large-N component of the case study analysis is based on
various databases that the authors have collected: they combine standard
sources (IMF, the World Bank, Polity IV, Freedom House, etc.) with the unique
databases of particular regional organizations (e.g. the CIS Legal Acts Database).
The analysis of NDROs will be conducted from two perspectives: the
regional organizations’ origins and their policy consequences. The first per-
spective aims to explain (through analyses of the goals/objectives of the
foundation of international organizations) why this type of organization was
founded. The second perspective is related to literature on the diffusion of the
regimes; it looks at regional organizations as an independent variable and
explains their impact on the regimes of its member states and of the states
beyond their borders. The second perspective also looks at the governance
structure and admission criteria of the NDROs, as opposed to the decision-
making of DROs. Therefore, a further contribution of the book is to demon-
strate the potential dual nature of NDROs, related to their economic and
political dimensions. In the economic arena, they create new rent-seeking
opportunities for their member states and neighboring states. In the political
arena, they strengthen authoritarian regimes.
In summary, the book investigates the role of NDROs and builds on the
international relations, international security, and comparative politics litera-
tures. The book engages in this interdisciplinary dialog and aims to contribute to
studies of regionalism, political regimes, and regional organizations world-wide.
There are two main findings of the book. First, NDROs indeed differ from
DROs in several important respects concerning both their governance and
membership. We find that NDROs more often use governance mechanisms
that allow informal interaction among the leaders rather than rely on bureau-
cratic institutions. We also find that NDROs are more heterogeneous in terms
of their membership than DROs: they include both rich and poor countries,
countries of different cultures, and even are more likely to include countries
with different (in this case, democratic) regimes. The second major difference
is that NDROs do have an impact on the political development of their
members. In the book’s novel analysis of the effect of NDRO membership
on the survival of autocratic rulers, we find that autocrats running countries
which belong to at least one NDRO, in the last seventy years, have systemat-
ically managed to stay in power for longer periods of time than authoritarian
leaders of countries which did not belong to an NDRO. The small-N analysis
illustrates the particular tools and mechanisms NDROs use to support
authoritarian regimes among their members.⁷
⁷ We have to point out that not all NDROs promote or diffuse autocracy. In Eurasia, we find
much stronger evidence of the autocracy promotion exercised by the CIS or the SCO than by the
EAEU, where it appears to be indirect at best.
Introduction 9
Therefore, NDROs are characterized by an interesting combination of
features. On the one hand, to extract economic and security benefits, they
need to enlarge their membership. This makes them behave pragmatically and
accept more politically, economically, and culturally heterogeneous countries
than DROs would do (DROs have to take into account the preferences of the
population dissatisfied with strong heterogeneity and the higher costs of
consensus-finding, which will be even higher in cases of high heterogeneity).
On the other hand, non-democratic regimes use NDROs to strengthen the
regimes of the member states or at least prevent democratization (fearing the
diffusion of the democratization processes into their own domestic politics).
Thus, NDROs try to become more heterogeneous (to increase rents) and less
heterogeneous (to stabilize regimes) at the same time. We also show that
NDROs are not necessarily created by a single strong state: in fact, while some
NDROs are more likely to be established by a powerful hegemon, others are
groups of states of roughly similar power.
1.3. SEQUENCE OF CHAPTERS
The book has twelve chapters, organized in accordance with our research goals
and objectives. This first chapter is the introduction. The second chapter
reviews the existing literature that is relevant for our analysis. It shows how
the book fits into several strands of extant research, which potentially enrich
each other, but still leave important lacunae for further analysis. Chapter 3
develops the key elements of the theory, which will then be tested throughout
the book. Chapter 4 presents our methodological approach. The next three
chapters focus on large-N world-wide analysis. Chapters 5 and 6 look at the
contemporary development of NDROs; these two chapters investigate
whether NDROs differ from DROs in terms of membership, governance,
and policy outcomes, both economic and political. Chapter 7 provides a
historical overview of the evolution of NDROs since World War II.
The next four chapters focus on particular cases of NDROs in Eurasia and
serve a double purpose. First, as is customary in mixed methods research, they
specify the causal mechanisms explaining the large-N observations of
Chapters 5 and 6. Second, and even more importantly, they look at a particu-
larly crucial topic that is difficult to study using large-N data—the link
between NDROs and autocratic consolidation in their member countries. In
the world-wide large-N analysis, one of our key goals was to identify the
universe of NDROs empirically, through the characteristics of their members
(rather than by working with a preselected and possibly biased set of organ-
izations ex ante referred to as non-democratic or illiberal). However, precisely
because of this empirical definition, the question of whether NDROs affect the

political regimes of their members becomes circular: most members of
NDROs are non-democracies according to the definition of NDROs. In the
case study chapters, however, we follow a different approach: we look at three
notable regional organizations and study how the regimes of the members of
these bodies changed over time. By combining quantitative analysis (panel
data, survival analysis) with qualitative investigation of the causal mechan-
isms of autocratic consolidation, we are able to provide numerous novel
insights into the effect of NDROs on the political regimes of their members.
Specifically, Chapter 8 looks at the development of regionalism in Eurasia
and provides background information for understanding its evolution and
logic. Chapters 9 through 11 discuss one Eurasian organization each. Finally,
the last chapter summarizes the results of the investigation.
Three Eurasian NDROs we study have distinct objectives—politics (CIS),
economy (EAEU), and security (SCO). This variation in goals and institution-
al designs, along with these NDROs’ very similar (to a large extent, overlap-
ping) memberships, is instrumental in tracing the causal links between the
NDROs’ functioning and the regime transition trajectories of their members
and of other countries they influence, as it reduces the omitted heterogeneity
(always problematic if NDROs from different parts of the world are being
compared). Moreover, some of the NDROs of the region (especially the CIS)
allow us, by their institutional design, to implement original and unusual
large-N research strategies (in the case of the CIS, one can distinguish between
different levels of participation in this regional organization rather than treat
the membership as a binary variable). For Eurasia, data availability is much
better than for most other regions with NDRO proliferation (the Middle East
and Africa); this is an outcome of the Soviet legacy, which created relatively
strong and well-functioning statistical services in the member countries. This
is yet another reason for us to focus on this part of the world.
Some of the analysis of the book builds upon the previous work of the
co-authors (Libman and Obydenkova 2013a, 2018a, 2018b); however, in each
case, the findings reported in individual journal articles were substantially
revised and adjusted before inclusion in this book. More generally, the manu-
script can be seen as a logical continuation of previous work by the co-authors
studying both regional organizations in post-Soviet Eurasia and the external
influences on regime transition, both autocratic and democratic. At the same
time, this volume offers the first book-length treatment of the phenomenon of
the authoritarian regionalism; we therefore hope that it might trigger further
scholarly debate on this important topic.
Regionalism and Political Regimes
The focus of this book—the origin, the functioning, and the effects of
non-democratic regional organizations (NDROs)—draws from a number of
theoretical perspectives. First, the book relates to the growing literature on
comparative regionalism, singling out a specific sub-type of regional organiza-
tion, which, so far, has received insufficient attention in the extant research.
Second, the book builds on yet another literature on the international cooper-
ation of autocracies, which we augment by studying the role NDROs play in
this context. Third, our book speaks to the literature concerning the external
impacts on political regimes (the international dimension of democratization),
including insights from studies on autocracy promotion and diffusion which
have attracted substantial attention in the recent decade.
2.1. THE COMPARATIVE REGIONALISM PERSPECTIVE
2.1.1. Regional organizations and non-democratic members
The 2000s and the 2010s have witnessed a surge of empirical and theoretical
research in the area of comparative regionalism. Unlike previous work, which
either focused on the rather unique experience of the EU (see also discussion
in Closa and Casini 2016; Closa and Kochenov 2016) or investigated regional
organizations as part of area studies research programs, contemporary
research explicitly aims to compare varieties of regionalism emerging in
different parts of the world and to understand the driving forces behind
their similarities and divergences (Garnaut and Drysdale 1994; Fawcet and
Hurrell 1995; Hettne and Söderbaum 2000; Obydenkova 2006; Telo 2007;
Cooley and Spruyt 2009; Shaw et al. 2011; Van Langenhove 2011; Obydenkova
and Swenden 2013; Söderbaum, 2015; Börzel and Risse 2016). In particular,
the existing research highlights two important features. On the one hand,
regionalisms in Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, or Europe are
indeed strikingly different (Fawn 2009). First, there are differences in the

extent to which governmental actors play a role in the development of
regionalism. The New Regionalism approach in particular highlights the
crucial role of non-governmental actors in the emergence of regions (Hettne
and Söderbaum 1998). Second, even if one limits the scope of research only to
formal intergovernmental regional organizations (Vogly et al. 2008), one still
has to acknowledge a multitude of goals and the functions they implement
(Obydenkova 2010; Vinokurov and Libman 2017). On the other hand, how-
ever, variations in the formal design of regional organizations are much
smaller than the variations in their actual impact and implications. Since the
1960s, the majority of regional organizations have “download[ed] the global
script” and imitated the EU to some extent (Jupille et al. 2013).¹ Beyond the
façade of EU-like structures, there are numerous functions that regional
organizations can actually perform.
One of the most important findings of the existing comparative regionalism
literature is that these functions are in many cases affected by the political
regimes of the member states, because of the changing preferences of domestic
coalitions and incentives for decision-makers (Solingen 2015). While the
literature, to our knowledge, has not yet examined NDROs as a specific sub-
type of regional organizations, numerous studies on regionalism in different
parts of the world have highlighted how authoritarianism shaped the tasks
of the regional organizations there. Acharya’s (2001) seminal work on the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) provides important insights
from this point of view. Generally, Acharya (2016) argues that for many
developing countries, having recently obtained independence, membership
in a regional organization could be a tool to raise their status in the inter-
national community. Regionalism is thus not about constraining sovereignty
(as is the case with the EU) but about strengthening it. The case of the ASEAN,
which until the 1990s was dominated by non-democratic countries, indicates
two important features of this organization: strict adherence to the norm of
non-interference in the affairs of others (an element of what sometimes is
referred to as the ASEAN Way, see Acharya 1997; Almonte 1997) and primarily
elite-level interaction and socialization.² Acharya shows that ASEAN contrib-
uted to the emergence of a security community in Southeast Asia with a
particular set of norms and values; thus, it enhanced regional stability, at the
same time stabilizing political regimes in the member countries. Acharya (2003)
shows that democratization in the main ASEAN countries became a factor in
the transformation of the organization to a more inclusive one.
¹ Before that, however, there was more variation in the formal design of the regional
organizations.
² Acharya and Johnston (2009) point out that the formal institutions in the ASEAN hid a
highly elaborated and basically informal set of interactions at the elite level; and Acharya (2011)
highlights the issue of the “entrapment” of epistemic communities unable to offer criticism or
dissenting opinion on regionalism in the autocratic ASEAN states.
Regionalism and Political Regimes 13

In a similar way, Söderbaum (2004a) examines different functions
performed by regional organizations in Africa which strikingly deviate from
their formal mandates. On the one hand, weak states with authoritarian rule in
Africa use regional organizations (such as the Southern African Development
Community, SADC) with “highly formalized and to some extent ritualized”
decision making (Söderbaum 2004a, p. 427) to improve the status of their
governments. Formalization is necessary, on the one hand, to ensure that the
organizations are perceived as functioning and important (and thus can
contribute to the status of their members) and, on the other hand, to prevent
the organizations actually exercising any policy influence, thereby keeping the
sovereignty of their members fully intact. Söderbaum (2004b, 2007) shows that
from this point of view regional organizations in Africa frequently become tools
of “regime-boosting,” even allowing their member states to escape, to some
extent, the pressure of international (democratizing) forces. In addition to that,
however, one needs to consider a further important dimension of regionalism:
that of rent-seeking. Regionalist projects can be created primarily to ensure
the access of politicians to attractive rents (e.g. through large infrastructural
projects).³ In the case of Africa, formal organizations coexist with what
Söderbaum (2004a) refers to as “shadow regionalism”: informal networks
spanning the borders of the formal states. These networks are also involved
in the generation and redistribution of rents (see also Grant and Söderbaum
2003). Research on Latin America also echoes the idea of a “ceremonial
regionalism” (Montecinos 1996) pursued by the member countries. In Latin
America, however, this combines the regional integration rhetoric with
strong criticism of the US, which then becomes essential for the identity-
building of regionalist projects (Sabatini 2014).
Another important aspect highlighted in the comparative regionalism stud-
ies is the role of the external environment (including the general organization
of the world politics), which favors certain types of regional organization and
discourages others (Telo 2012). Telo (2017), for instance, discusses several
generations of regionalism affected by the global history context, and specif-
ically identifies “authoritarian / hierarchical” regionalism as the main form of
regional arrangement in the 1930s–1940s. Telo’s main focus is not on the
political regimes of the member states (although some hierarchical regional-
ism projects have been pioneered by the authoritarian countries such as Japan
and Germany during World War II or the USSR, others are created by
democracies in their colonial empires) but rather on the fundamental inequal-
ity of power and the highly protectionist and discriminatory nature of these
³ The importance of regionalism for rent-seeking is a central point in the research of Gray
(2018), who studies regional organizations with limited or no policy impact and suggests that
these structures’ existence is due to the ability of the bureaucrats of national governments and
secretariats to extract personal benefits from the regional organizations.

projects. Hancock (2009) uses the concept of “plutocratic regionalism” to
describe these highly asymmetric arrangements and finds some examples in
the post-World War II world (e.g. the Southern African Customs Union
(SACU) until the end of apartheid). She points out that the creation of
plutocratic regionalist organizations depends on whether the elites of the
leading state perceive them as acceptable (which was the case for the SACU
until the end of the 1980s and was not the case for the same organization after
South Africa’s democratization, see Chapter 7); it seems plausible that these
perceptions also depend on the nature of political regimes (and in particular
the difference between autocracies and democracies).
From this point of view, there are several insights in the comparative
regionalism literature which are important for our subsequent investigation.
First, analyzing regional organizations requires going beyond their official
mandates and looking at the heterogeneity of functions they can perform.
For us, a crucial function of the NDROs will be associated with the consoli-
dation of authoritarian regimes, which we will explore in what follows.
Second, the available evidence indicates that the political regimes of the
member states are a relevant factor determining the functioning and tasks of
a regional organization. In particular, non-democratic regimes seem to benefit
from the ability of regional organizations to increase their international status,
as it was the case for ASEAN before the democratization of its key members in
the 1990s or for African regime-boosting regionalism. At the same time, the
extant research on comparative regionalism points out two possible designs
that regional organizations with non-democratic members could prefer: struc-
tures based on strict non-interference and informal interaction among the
elites (ASEAN, SADC) or structures based on hierarchy and major power
asymmetry (hierarchical regionalism). Both of these insights will matter for
the formulation of hypotheses, which we will present in what follows.
2.1.2. Globalization, regional organizations,

and non-democracies
Our discussion so far has focused on the ability of regional organizations to

contribute to region-building and regional cooperation among their member
countries. Understanding NDROs, however, requires an extension of this
perspective: we need to take into account that regional organizations are
frequently created for the purpose of affecting the global governance and the
global political economy rather than to enhance cooperation among countries.
Here, several perspectives are possible. On one hand, regional organizations can
be seen as “a means to help achieve the globalist project” (Gamble and Payne
1996, p. 252, see also Hook and Kearns 1999). On the other hand (and for our
book this perspective appears to be more important), regional organizations can

be seen as means of actively re-shaping the global economy and politics.
Authoritarian states could be particularly interested in designing regional (as
well as global) organizations for this purpose: in this case, they act as revisionist
powers to the post-Cold War political order. Eurasian regionalism, which is at
the center of this book, has actually been studied from this point of view, though
with different normative conclusions (Lane 2016; Johnson and Köstem 2016).
Are regional organizations indeed an effective tool for the goal of redesign-
ing the global order? As we will show in what follows, in Russia at least there
seems to be a firm belief among both politicians and epistemic communities
that this is actually the case. However, to accept this argument we need to
understand a specific mechanism through which regionalism can provide a
global appeal to the ambitions of authoritarian countries. This mechanism can
be related to what Davis and Pratt (2017) frame as the “forces of attraction”
argument.⁴ According to this approach, strong states, while making decisions
about which countries to admit to their regional organizations, often focus not
on economic cooperation benefits, but on purely geopolitical concerns, even
though the goal of the organization is an economic one. The reasons for this
are that, first, economic organizations allow the pooling of forces and of
resources, making the bargaining coalition led by the strong state more
powerful and, second, economic organizations serve as redistribution mech-
anisms, where hegemons provide side-payments to smaller states in exchange
for remaining part of the geopolitical coalition. Essentially, regionalism serves
as a tool to stabilize a coalition in global bargaining: we will show how this
logic matters in the Eurasia case as well.
Alternatively regionalism can appeal to the ambitions of authoritarian
countries because regional organizations can serve as tools for legitimacy
provision: not only by increasing the status of non-democratic regimes (as
discussed in sub-section 2.1.1) but also by presenting the international agenda
promoted by these regimes as generally more acceptable. Thus, one of the
main gains from the existence of the ALBA for the Venezuelan government
under Chavez was that the organization legitimized the idea of “Bolivarian
socialism” in Latin America (Gürkan 2010; De La Torre 2017). In the same
way, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (with the accompanying institutions
such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), see Vieira 2018)
functions as a tool legitimizing Chinese foreign (economic) policy as a multi-
lateral project (Godehardt 2016) (we acknowledge that the Belt and Road
Initiative is not a regional organization and thus should be discussed in the
context of this book only with substantial caveats). Multilateralism allows the
initiatives of autocrats to be presented as having received broader popular
support and augments the status of hegemonic power.
⁴ See also Davis (2009); Davis and Wilf (2017).


For us, therefore, it is important to acknowledge that by creating an NDRO,
powerful authoritarian states may focus on geopolitical security concerns, that
is, on a global rather than a domestic agenda; the changes in their involvement
in global politics (like those experienced by Russia since the start of the
twenty-first century) will therefore substantially influence their interest to
the NDROs and the tasks NDROs actually undertake.
2.1.3. Imperialism and non-democratic regional organizations
While the existing literature on regionalism does acknowledge the possibility

that regional organizations emerge as a result of coercion and external
pressure (Telo 2017), most of it concentrates on regionalism as an outcome
of bargaining between countries. In fact, even international hierarchy can be
seen as the result of interaction among rational actors and as a tool that
maintains peace and security (Lake 2009a, 2009b).⁵ Yet in many cases what
appears to be a regional organization is in fact the outcome of brute force (or
at least of economic pressure) pulling countries together in a vastly unequal
arrangement. We will discuss some of the most pronounced examples of this
type of regionalism (e.g. the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance,
COMECON, which will be discussed in Chapter 7) in the subsequent ana-
lysis. From this point of view, we need to take into account yet another
branch of the literature which could be relevant for our studies: that on
empires and imperialism. Tavares (2004) explicitly links empires to the
contemporary regionalism research (dubbing them “military regionalism”)
because of their ability to ensure the economic integration of vast spaces.
What can we learn for our project from the extremely diverse and broad
literature on this topic?
To start with, imperialism should not necessarily be equated to authoritar-
ianism. European colonial empires were in many cases established by coun-
tries that were relatively advanced in terms of democratization for that era or
were even consolidated democracies in the modern sense of the word, such as
France or the UK: the collapse of colonialism was not an outcome of democ-
ratization in the metropolitan center. Yet the existence of a democratic regime
in the center did not translate into democratization in the colonies (though
some countries, like France, occasionally embraced this rhetoric, e.g. during
the French Union era of 1946–56). On the contrary, in many cases it was
democratic European states that directly established brutal oppressive regimes
in their colonies or at least tolerated the existence of these regimes for example
⁵ On hierarchy in international relations see also Cooley (2003, 2005).


as Belgium did in case of the Congo Free State in the mid-nineteenth century).
However, there does exist literature which argues that at least some forms of
colonialism were conducive for the establishment of consolidated democratic
regimes after the collapse of colonial empires (Olsson 2009; Paine 2018),
although in the newly independent states democracy turned out to be par-
ticularly fragile (Denk and Anckar 2014). Different colonial empires had
different effects on the subsequent democratization (Bernhard et al. 2004;
Lankina and Getachew 2012).
The extent to which empires are able to shape the political development of
their subordinated territories is of course much greater than for any NDRO we
will investigate in this book. While NDROs, and regional organizations in
general, also engage in the transfer of governance institutions (Börzel and van
Hüllen 2015), they are much more constrained than empires were. Empires
could shape the governance systems of the territories subordinated to them
and support mass resettlement of the population (even the COMECON had
less leeway in dealing with the domestic affairs of its members than the
empires had). One case, which is potentially more interesting for us, is that
of empires which relied heavily on indirect rule, that is, which kept some level
of local autonomy in the subordinated territories (the British colonial empire
was frequently seen as an example of this form; on indirect rule see Gerring
et al. 2011). Hypothetically, one could claim that indirect rule could have
provided more opportunity for the development of democratic traditions.⁶
Cappelen and Sorens (2018) argue that it is indirect rule combined with the
pre-colonial traditions of centralized government that increases the state
capacity of post-colonial polities—one of the most crucial issues they face.
At the same time, the survival of pre-colonial statehood could become an
impediment to democratization while blocking the installation of governing
institutions from the metropolitan states (Hariri 2012); Lange (2004) suggests
that indirect rule could be negatively associated with post-colonial develop-
ment. Indirect rule in itself can be highly heterogeneous (Naseemullah and
Staniland 2014).
Summing up, unlike research on regional organizations, which typically
looks at the contemporary democratization and how it is influenced by the
membership of the regional organization, research on imperialism mostly
focuses on the long-term consequences of colonial rule for democratic
development. Here, the results are ambiguous and depend upon the par-
ticular model of colonial rule, as well as regional, cultural, and historical
specificity.
⁶ In settler colonies, these traditions could have been imported from the metropolitan state, as
indeed happened in the British colonial empire.
2.2. AUTHORITARIAN COOPERATION PERSPEC TIVE
Under what conditions are autocracies able to successfully cooperate with each
other? Are autocracies more likely to cooperate with other autocracies than
with democratic regimes? Here, two literatures will guide our investigation.
The first looks at the ability of autocracies to cooperate with autocracies and
can be subsumed under the title of an “autocratic peace.” The second looks at
the credibility of authoritarian regimes and asks how it constrains their ability
to engage in international cooperation.
2.2.1. From democratic Kantian peace to a “new”

autocratic peace?
The discussion of autocratic peace is, to some extent, a mirror image of the
extremely well developed and elaborated research on democratic peace.
Democratic peace theory builds on the general belief that democracies are
less likely to initiate or contribute to conflict between themselves, as compared
to non-democracies. Starting from the eighteenth-century work of Immanuel
Kant on “perpetual peace,” numerous studies have developed this approach
further and applied it to studies of various aspects of international relations.
Since that time, the theory of democratic peace has become one of the most
discussed and developed theories in international relations and has been
applied to explain various trends in world politics (Mansfield and Snyder
1995, p. 790; Savun and Tirone, 2011), and subjected to empirical scrutiny in a
large number of studies.
The empirical findings of “democratic peace” studies are often explained,
first, through the costs associated with conflict and the damage that can be done
to otherwise beneficial commerce. Pragmatic logic and the economic benefits of
commerce therefore decrease instances of costly military conflicts among
democratic trade-partners and member states in international organizations.
The logic of pragmatism and benefits explains the behavior of democracies in
searching to increase commerce (sometimes through joint membership
in international organizations) and eliminate or reduce high-cost conflicts.
Second, apart from pragmatism, there is also idea- and value-related discus-
sion. Joint membership and commerce provide for communication channels
and personal links that radically decrease conflict,⁷ augmenting mutual trust
and understanding. Third, democracy is associated with a responsibility to the
electorate and the freedom of mass media as well as the balance of power. It is
difficult to justify the expense of war, and both financial and human costs are
⁷ Deutsch (1969), for example, was one of the first scholars to indicate the importance of
common borders in providing numerous communication channels.

evaluated by an electorate that has power over political leaders during elections
(Fearon 1994). The mass media, in turn, tends to provide critical evaluation of
governmental choices and thus influences public opinion. These institutional
restrictions offer reasons why democracies search for joint membership and
commerce with states that are also democracies, at the same time focusing on
the role of democracy in such aspects of international relations as foreign trade
and international environmental commitments (see also Russett et al. 1998;
Oneal and Russett 2001; King and Zeng 2001; Heagerty et al. 2002; Schultz
2002; Mousseau et al. 2003; Oneal et al. 2003; Obydenkova and Salahodjaev
2016; 2017b).
Although, within the family of the democracies, there are various types
of democratic systems, some studies indicate that democracies are more homo-
genous as a type of political system when compared to the non-democratic
regimes of the twentieth century. Increasing commerce implies an increase
in economic interdependence between states. Democracy would therefore
engender a higher level of trust for a state with similar values and principles
(this state would also face the same institutional limitations, responsibility
to an electorate, and the critics of a free mass media, etc.). This explains why
a democracy would only cooperate intensively with another democracy (in terms
of developing economic interdependence and joint membership in inter-
national organizations): both democratic states have a lower probability of
initiating military conflict against each other as both face the same internal
institutional restrictions.
Should we expect the logic of the perpetual peace theory to work for non-
democracies? If a state is not a democracy, would it seek for joint membership
in international organizations and for commerce with another non-
democracy due to pragmatism, economic benefit, and to minimize the prob-
ability of costly conflict? Peceny et al. (2002) suggest that this is indeed the
case: non-democracies should be less likely to engage in military confrontation
than countries from mixed regime dyads. Oren and Hays (1997) draw a
similar conclusion for the Socialist countries, and Weart (1994) argues that
a similar mechanism worked for the Medieval oligarchic republics. Finally,
Lai and Reiter (2000) suggest that similarity of political regime should make it
easier for autocracies to establish alliances with each other. A similar argument
should also apply to cooperation within an NDRO framework: fundamentally,
it is an extension of the homophily argument very popular in sociology
(McPherson et al. 2001), which suggests that similarity should encourage
cooperation.
The argument of the “autocratic peace” theory, however, calls for an
important question. Democratic peace is based on the assumption that all
types of democracy are homogenous in terms of internal institutional con-
strains, the freedom of the mass media, the balance of power, the responsibility
to the electorate on the part of political leaders, etc. Pecency et al. (2002)

distinguished several internal aspects that potentially drive cooperation
among similar regimes: institutional restrictions; transparency; strength
(war-fighting capability); and shared values. The homogeneity of democracies
as political regimes is thus an important driving factor of cooperation among
democratic state-actors in international politics. In contrast, non-democratic
regimes are much more heterogeneous. Paraphrasing the well-known quote
of the Polish mathematician Stanislav Ulam, talking about non-democracies
is, in some sense, similar to talking about non-elephant animals (quoted in
Campbell et al. 1985): the distinction between two non-democracies can be
enormous. The very notion of “non-democracy” suggests that we look at
regimes, which are not democratic, that is, do not satisfy the catalog of criteria
one applies to democratic regimes. While this catalog differs depending on the
concept of democracy (e.g. procedural and liberal), and there has been a broad
literature looking at the boundaries of what can still be called “democracy”
(Bollen 1993; Collier and Levitsky 1997; Merkel 2004), the regimes included
in the non-democratic group cover a broad spectrum of the ways polity can
organized (Glasius 2018a). For example, the lack of free and fair elections (the
key element of the procedural democracy definition) characterized a wide
range of different decision-making mechanisms (Bueno de Mesquita et al.
2005). Moreover, non-democracies may develop, modify, and transform
themselves radically over time: the non-democracies of the Cold War in the
twentieth century are not necessarily of the same type as the non-democratic
regimes in the twenty-first century. This brings us to the next key question:
which regimes and characteristics constitute the family of modern non-
democracies?
2.2.2. The mystery of modern non-democracies: who are they?
Modern non-democratic states present a real challenge to studies of political

regimes—they are new exotic animals in an otherwise well-known zoo of
political regimes. Until the end of the Cold War, the world was relatively
simple in terms of political regimes: it was divided into Western democracies
and Eastern authoritarian regimes (be that the cult of personality or single-
party rule). Following the seminal typology by Geddes (1999), Peceny et al.
(2002) distinguished three types within dictatorial regimes: military, single-
party based, and one-leader (personality) regimes. This distinction certainly
matters for the period they studied—that is, the second half of twentieth
century, the post-World War II period and the Cold War.⁸
⁸ Pecency et al. (2002) analyze the period 1945–94.


The post-Cold War period witnessed the disappearance of socialism and
most of the military regimes in Southern Europe, part of Latin America,
Central and Eastern Europe, as well as some transformations into democra-
cies, hybrid regimes, or newly emerged modern autocracies.⁹ Since the early
1990s, the distinction between democracy and all other political regimes
became much more complicated for a number of reasons. The fall of com-
munism marked an unconditional acceptance of democracy, rule of law,
human rights, and all other associated values, norms, and practices, as nor-
mative ideas by most states of the world. Modern non-democratic states
adjusted to this change by imitating constitutions, statuses, and even learned
to fake (relatively well) democratic practices. Not only did they establish
elections but also accommodated new international missions of electoral
observers.¹⁰ As a result of such an imitation of democracy on the part of non-
democratic states and the growing number of these new polities (neither
traditional totalitarian regimes nor democracies), scholars and politicians
are searching for colorful names to describe these newly emerged creatures,
calling them hybrid regimes, semi-autocracy, semi-democracy, weak democra-
cies, or electoral autocracies (e.g. Levitsky and Way 2010). Therefore, the line
between democracy and the modern non-democratic state became blurred.
There are many debates on the nature of modern autocracies, various types
of political regimes, fluctuating levels of democracy in a state and its implica-
tions for internal (domestic, national) politics, life satisfaction, and public
policy, among other issues (e.g. Schedler 2006; Obydenkova et al. 2016;
Obydenkova and Salohodjaev 2017a). While speaking of modern autocracies,
scholars tend to define them in a broad and encompassing way “as a general
term for all forms of non-democratic regimes” (Croissant and Wurster 2013,
p. 14). Many of modern autocracies of the twenty-first century are indeed very
different from their predecessors of the twentieth century—most of them
combine elements of democratic institutions with authoritarian practices—
the combination that has been described as “electoral autocracy” (Schedler
2006) or “competitive autocracy” (Levitsky and Way 2010). Scholars also
distinguished between “competitive” and “full” autocracies (e.g. China) and
even introduced a more nuanced distinction between “hegemonic” and “com-
petitive” authoritarian regimes (Howard and Roessler 2006). The post-Soviet
regimes are often described as “competitive autocracies” and defined as
“civilian regimes in which formal democratic institutions exist and are widely
viewed as the primary means of gaining power, but in which incumbents’
abuse of the state places them at a significant advantage vi-à-vis their oppon-
ents. Such regimes are competitive in that opposition parties use democratic
⁹ For the sequence of regime transitions throughout, see Huntington (1991).

¹⁰ The example would be numerous missions of electoral observers established under the
auspices of the CIS that will be analyzed in Chapter 9 of this book.

institutions to contest seriously for power, but they are not democratic because
the playing field is heavily skewed in favour of incumbents”; “Competitive
authoritarianism is a hybrid regime type, with important characteristics of
both democracy and authoritarianism” (Levitsky and Way 2010, p. 5).
However, this book also takes into account so-called full autocracies (e.g.
China). Full autocracy is defined as “a regime in which no viable channels exist
for opposition to contest legally for executive power”; “closed regimes in
which national-level democratic institutions do not exist (e.g. China, Cuba,
and Saudi Arabia) and hegemonic regimes in which formal democratic insti-
tutions exist on paper but are reduced to façade status in practice” (Levitsky
and Way 2010, p. 7). Given the main focus of this book, this project accounts
for both full autocracies and competitive autocracies as a type of hybrid regime
and we will refer to them throughout the book as “autocracies” or “non-
democracies.” Our joint endeavor focuses on this challenging family of mod-
ern non-democracy and uses the notion of “non-democracy” to account for all
regimes encompassing so-called hybrid regimes as well as actual autocracies.
Furthermore, some important studies have raised the question of how
different types of autocracies are transferred into different outcomes in
terms of their economic growth, quality of government, or stability—that is,
questioning their internal (national) implications (e.g. Hadenius and Teorell
2007). However, the question concerning how different types of autocracies
are transferred into different external (international) outcomes has not yet
been systematically studied. Hence, the book makes the first steps toward
exploring the hypothetical possibility that different types of autocratic regimes
interact differently with the outside world and toward considering both full
and competitive types of autocracies (as defined above).
Hybrid regimes represent a gray zone in political regime studies: they have
significant flexibility to adjust to becoming democracies and autocracies as
well as to imitate them (depending on economic and other pragmatic needs).
These regimes are more dynamic and the level of democratic elements fluc-
tuates within their political system, society, and economic system. They are
also more sensitive to external economic shocks, which are often paralleled
by internal financial crises and issues related to the well-being of their
populations. The mass media within this group of non-democracies are
subject to a mixed system of control by national leaders. Overall, previous
studies have demonstrated that the international behavior of hybrid regime
states is very different from that of consolidated regimes (be these autocracies
or democracies). Nevertheless, hybrid regimes are a relatively new phenom-
enon for studies of modern non-democracies and belong to the family of
non-democracies.
One of the key elements in any discussion of the ability of autocracies to
cooperate with each other is therefore the issue of ideological similarity. In
these terms, autocracies are not only strikingly different from each other, but

they also exhibit substantial evolution over time. The changes in the
international system that took place after the disintegration of the USSR in
1991, the fall of communism in the 1980s, and the rejection of Marxism-
Leninism as an ideology have led to an almost universal acceptance of
democratic values, norms, and principles in national politics. Many of the
modern non-democratic regimes (both autocracies and hybrid regimes)
which emerged in the 1990s have learned to use a democratic vocabulary,
incorporating terms such as “free and fair elections,” in their constitutions.
Modern non-democracies make an effort to create an image of democracy in
the eyes of the national population and international actors. Until the late
2010s, there was a solid exception to this modified modern family of non-
democracies that have all adjusted to new changes and challenges in the
international system. Some parts of the Islamic world, which traditionally
stand where they were in the twentieth century in terms of ideology and
values, are firmly opposed to democracy as a set of norms guiding the
political system (though the changes in this part of the world should not
be under-estimated—however, this book does not examine the Islamic world
closely enough to make more detailed conclusions). When it comes to other
parts of the world—some of the Middle East, post-Soviet Eurasia, Latin
America, and some African countries—many states try to improve their
democratic image even if this consists of purely ink-on-paper decorative
additions to constitutions and public statements.
In fact, even during the Cold War period (the second half of the twentieth
century), the role of ideology and shared values was questioned. Studies on
non-democracies of the twentieth century conclude that neither military
dictatorial regimes nor personalist (cult-based) regimes were ideological:
most “military regimes proclaim [themselves] to be technocratic and apolitical
rather than ideological” and “personalistic regimes lack a common ideology,”
while “the cult of the leader rather than ideology dominates” in the politics of
the Cold War era (Peceny et al. 2002, pp. 19–20). In contrast, single-party
dictatorial regimes of that period could be considered united by the ideology
of communism. However, this ideological foundation collapsed in the late
1980s, initiating the formation of very different entities at both national and
international level.
Any strongly developed ideology that penetrates the society and politics
of a state—be that Marxism-Leninism, socialism, or Islamic fundamentalism,
regardless of historical period—can be both a binding factor and create a
dividing line between states as international actors sharing this ideology. That
is, when ideology becomes the central focus of a certain political universe, it is
likely to initiate disputes and potential conflicts over ideological purity among
the states (Peceny et al. 2002). For example, the USSR and communist China
went different ways in the twentieth century, to the extent that China was
pictured as an enemy and a threat to the USSR. Accusations of deviation from

the “true” Socialist ideology have, generally speaking, been frequent in the
communist bloc. An important point is needed here: the actual reasons for
splits among non-democracies with a shared ideology most often have noth-
ing to do with an interpretation of ideology, but merely serve as justification
for the conflict. However, in some cases, a different ideological interpretation
may be a genuine cause for conflict among non-democracies. Non-democratic
states with a strong ideology “attempt to derive their legitimacy from identi-
fication with an ideological corpus” and if the ideology is challenged, it may
pose an actual threat and undermine the stability of the regime (Linz 1975,
p. 197; quoted in Peceny et al. 2002, p. 20).
Thus, the role of ideology seems to remain ambiguous over the Cold War
period as well as in the twenty-first century: it can serve as a binding factor
(communism in the twentieth century) and can contribute to conflicts among
states with the same ideological background that deviate in their interpret-
ation of a given ideology over time. Similarly, in the Islamic world, while
religious commonality unites countries in some cases, in others it contributes
to conflict. The conflict between the Sunni Gulf monarchies and Shia Iran,
which escalated in early 2016, is a good example of this (besides the theo-
logical divisions of Islam, different views on political Islam present in the
Middle East frequently divide countries more than they unite them).
Therefore, among modern non-democracies, we distinguish the type with-
out a normative power (in terms of conditionality or ideology) and yet another
type with extremely strong ideological commitments. This is one of the most
important issues that demonstrate how modern non-democracies differ from
the non-democratic regimes of the Cold War period. In terms of our book, we
expect the extent of ideological commitment of the regimes to impact their
ability to cooperate with each other and, ultimately, the functioning of the
NDROs. Finally, Owen (2005) indicates that the extent to which regimes with
similar ideologies are likely to cooperate depends on the presence of other
competing ideologies: this bridges the authoritarian cooperation perspective
with the third perspective on which we base our theory, that of autocracy
promotion and diffusion.
2.2.3. How do political regimes matter

for regionalism and . . . do they?
Do political regimes actually matter in establishing or joining a regional

organization? While a democratic regime is intuitively a desirable character-
istic in a potential member state, it is still important to consider explicitly why
and how political regime matters.
Any form of international cooperation requires the partners’ ability to
provide credible commitments for their actions. Starting from the seminal

work of Fearon (1994), a widespread claim in the political science literature
suggests that authoritarian leaders should find it more difficult to commit to
upholding their promises should the external environment change (Gaubatz
1996). This is due to a number of factors. First, the electorate (informed by
independent mass media) is likely to punish democratic leaders for lying; in
non-democracies, this mechanism is absent.¹¹ Fearon’s audience costs argu-
ment has spurred a huge literature investigating both the extent to which
people are likely to punish this sort of behavior and the reasons why people
punish politicians who do not keep their promises, not only vis-à-vis their
constituency, but also vis-à-vis other countries.¹² Second, in democracies the
costs of removing leaders from office are low, and if there are benefits from
international cooperation for the general public, reneging on international
commitments is likely to cause leaders to lose office (McGillvray and Smith
2008). Third, the decisions of the democratic leaders are constrained by a
multitude of domestic institutions, which make significant policy changes very
difficult and thus increase the probability that the necessary consensus for not
upholding international commitments will be never reached.¹³ For example,
in democracies, dissatisfied domestic groups can challenge a policy change in
a court of law, which is clearly impossible in a non-democracy. Moreover, in a
non-democratic state, the mass media is controlled by the government and
serves to justify any governmental decision (be that in national or inter-
national politics), thus manipulating public opinion and misrepresenting
reality (Mickiewicz 2008; Obydenkova 2008; Rose et al. 2011; Obydenkova
and Arpino 2018).
From all these arguments, it follows that once democracies manage to
commit to certain policies (which is inevitable if they want to establish a
regional organization), they will keep these promises. Autocracies demon-
strate a higher likelihood to change their commitments, which, in turn, should
reduce the willingness of other states to cooperate with them, as long as the
sunk costs of cooperation are sufficiently high. That is, for example, if imple-
menting an NDRO requires substantial internal policy changes; if the NDRO
leads to increasing dependence on foreign trade with a certain state; if the
NDRO limits the foreign policy options of the autocrats, the willingness of
partners to join the organization should go down. One should therefore expect
NDROs to focus on issues which are less costly for the regimes and where the
need for credible commitment is lower. This is yet another reason why
authoritarian countries could be more likely to use NDROs primarily as a
¹¹ See, however, the work of Weeks (2008) on autocratic audience costs, suggesting that the
leaders of authoritarian states are typically not as unconstrained as the argument suggests.
¹² See Ashworth and Ramsay (2009) and Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2012) for a survey of
the literature.
¹³ On the other hand, populist pressure could actually increase the probability that democ-
racies will take extreme positions in international relations.

tool to increase their international status and legitimacy, at the same time
fiercely avoiding any restrictions on their sovereignty.
However, not all autocracies are identical in terms of the credibility of their
commitments. First, as Mattes and Rodrigues (2014) have shown, the extent to
which authoritarian regimes are unable to provide credible commitments
differs for single-party, personalist, and military regimes and is conditional on
the extent of accountability, transparency, and political constraints on the
leadership existing in these regimes. Thus, autocracies can have a better predis-
position to cooperate with some states rather than with others (see also
Ishiyama et al. 2008). Second, Mazumder (2017) argues that as autocracies
become more central in the networks of preferential trade agreements (i.e. the
transparency of their foreign policy increases), the extent to which they exercise
cooperative behavior also goes up. In this way, a low credibility of commitment
still it does not mean that cooperation among autocracies is impossible. For us,
it is instead a reason to look at the specific patterns and goals of cooperation
authoritarian regimes select while creating NDROs—the authoritarian cooper-
ation perspective echoes the comparative regionalism perspective in calling
for a more careful examination of the actual objectives of the NDROs beyond
any official façade of their mandates. Finally, as we will argue in what follows,
under certain conditions, a lack of credibility can actually encourage coun-
tries to join an NDRO, as it reduces the risks associated with manipulative
behavior of the leading states.
2.3. EXTERNAL INFLUENCES AND P OLITICAL

REGIMES
2.3.1. International dimension of regime transition
The fact that external factors play a substantial role in regimes has only
recently received recognition in the scholarly literature. Disentangling this
internal–external nexus and exploring its mechanisms is a challenging task
that has spurred a number of important studies on the international dimen-
sion of democracy, regional and geographical diffusion, usually and mostly
associated with the impact of the EU on democratization in its neighborhood
and beyond, and the literature on the international dimension of democra-
tization (Whitehead 1996, 2001; Kopstein and Reilly 2000; Levitsky and Way
2005; Simmons et al. 2006; Obydenkova 2007; 2012a; 2012b; Wright 2009;
Morlino et al. 2011; Morlino 2011; Börzel and Risse 2012a, 2012b; Börzel and
Solingen 2014; Tansey 2016a).
This rich literature on regionalism mostly discussed one perspective: the
impact of membership in an international organization on democratization

and the consolidation of democracy (Pevehouse 2002a, 2002b). This literature
argues that there is a positive correlation between membership in an inter-
national organization and democracy: democracies are more likely to join
international organizations (Mansfield and Pevehouse 2006). The reason is
that international organizations act as credible commitment devices for nas-
cent democracies, particularly if they implement strong conditions of mem-
bership (e.g. in the EU).
In contrast, the capacity of external factors to exercise a negative influence
on democratic transitions has received only limited attention. The focus of the
existing literature is clear if one takes into account the enormous role played
by some democratic actors (such as the EU) in shaping the paths of regime
transition for candidate-states and neighboring countries (Morlino and
Sadurski 2010). Nevertheless, the non-democratic actors and their impact on
political regimes have received far less attention. Some very recent studies
have concentrated on creating conceptual frameworks for this phenomenon
(Burnell and Schlumberger 2010; Ambrosio 2010; Whitehead 2014, 2018;
Börzel 2015; Kästner 2015; Obydenkova and Libman 2015a; von Soest 2015;
Tansey 2016b); have considered specific aspects of the external influences of
autocracies, such as international coalitions (e.g. Allison 2008, 2013; Collins
2009; Cameron and Orenstein 2012; Ishiyama 2018) or have looked at mutual
learning among regimes (e.g. Hale 2005b; Herd 2005; Heydemann and
Leenders 2011; Kubicek 2011; Hall and Ambrosio 2017). However, the exist-
ing evidence is still extremely limited and often contradictory, and all studies
explicitly acknowledge the need for further, detailed examination of the
conceptual and especially the empirical levels regarding the external impact
of autocratic actors and their regional organizations. In other words, if the EU
(composed of democracies) could be shown to have had a democratizing
impact on its neighborhood, is it possible that a regional organization (com-
posed of autocracies) could have had an impact on autocratization?
Apart from studies on the impact of regional organizations on political
regimes, there is another collection of related analysis on the influence of
external factors such as foreign trade. Similar to the studies on the impact of
regionalism, studies on foreign trade traditionally focused on democracy-
reinforcing impacts. This is not surprising given the traditional approach of
Kantian peace literature. Starting from the eighteenth century, numerous
“democratic peace” studies have sought to explain international political and
economic cooperation among democracies and their impact on decreasing
wars, on membership of international organizations, and foreign commerce
(Kant 1991; 2003; Oneal and Russett 1999). However, very few studies so far
have focused on a new phenomenon of “authoritarian peace”—international
cooperation among modern autocracies in the twenty–first century and its
impact. Under what circumstances do modern non-democratic regimes imi-
tate the behavior of democracies through establishing their own regional

organizations and through developing foreign trade among autocracies? More
importantly: what is the impact of this strategy on the political regimes of
member states, on the region, and on wars? While these questions have been
addressed with regard to democracies (in “democratic peace” studies), it has
yet to be raised for modern autocracies.
The literature on how economic development and growth affects democ-
ratization is large and examines various facets of this issue. However, one of
the most contradictory features of these studies involves the role of inter-
national economic ties (foreign trade and foreign investments). The political
science literature has argued that trade can promote democracy (e.g. Lopez-
Cordoba and Meissner 2008). However, more careful consideration of the
available theoretical and empirical evidence has challenged these conclusions
(Milner and Mukherjee 2009). A few recent studies have analyzed the negative
impact of specific patterns of foreign trade on democratization (Obydenkova
and Libman 2012; Libman and Obydenkova 2014). Thus, it is extremely
important to study how and why external factors (e.g. regional organizations
and/or foreign trade) could become a factor exercising negative influences on
democratization prospects. To capture such topics, this book is explicitly
constructed in an interdisciplinary fashion that bridges comparative region-
alism and political regimes.
2.3.2. Autocracy promotion and diffusion perspective
The 2010s have witnessed a surge in research activity on the foreign policy of
non-democratic countries which has had the intention of preventing democ-
ratization or supporting the survival of friendly autocratic regimes in other
countries (autocracy promotion). There has also been an increase in research
into the unintentional effects of autocracies on neighboring countries that has
lead to authoritarian consolidation there (autocracy diffusion).¹⁴ This litera-
ture typically focuses on the activity of so-called “gravity centers of authoritarian
rule” (Kneuer and Demmelhuber 2016) such as Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran,
or Saudi Arabia, which (intentionally and unintentionally) affect the political
development in their neighboring countries, and has produced numerous
¹⁴ The debate over using “regime transition” as an appropriate term has played an important
role in our main case study, post-Soviet Eurasia, but has also done so elsewhere (Carothers 2002).
The term “regime transition” is generally applied to the first decade after a state’s independence
(here 1991–mid-2000s), and the current regimes are no longer referred to as “regimes in
transition” (there is more discussion of regime consolidation). However, given that our main
research period covers the 1990s and mid-2000s, we generally refer to any regime dynamics in
this period as “regime transition.” The term “regime transition” allows us to account for
transitions to autocracy, semi-autocracy, or semi-democracy. Overall, “regime transition” is
much broader than other current terms.
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Then aunt took him upstairs to his room, and I was left alone with
Jack, who looked rather out of humour.
"How different from the dry-as-dust old professor we expected!" I

said to him. "He looks quite young."
"He says he is thirty-two," replied Jack. "I don't call that exactly
juvenile."
"It may not seem so to eighteen," I responded loftily.
"I shall be nineteen in July," said Jack hastily, "and you are only a
few months older, so there, Nan."
"I am aware of the fact," I said calmly, "and I consider myself quite
old enough. We were not discussing my age but Professor
Faulkner's."
"He does not like to be called Professor Faulkner," said Jack. "He
told me so."
"Did he?" I said. "That is rather sensible of him. He seems very

nice."
"Oh, of course, you'll think him so," said Jack impatiently. "Girls are
always taken with a fellow who gives himself airs like that."
"Airs like what?" I asked, but Jack vouchsafed no reply, and aunt
coming downstairs the next moment, he at once said that he must be
off. She detained him while she told him about the Americans, a
piece of news which seemed to cheer him somewhat. Then she
reminded him that he and his father were to dine with us on the
following evening, and he departed.
"Oh, auntie, how different from what we expected!" I said, as soon as

we were alone in the drawing-room. "He is not in the least like the
Vicar."
"Very different from what you expected," she retorted. "He is so
pleased with his room, Nan. He says he feels that he has come to a
haven of rest."
"How nice of him!" I said. "You like him, do you not, Auntie?"
"Yes," she said decidedly. "I feel sure that we shall find him easy to
get on with, and I am not often mistaken in first impressions."
Our guest did not join us till the dinner-gong sounded. When he
entered the dining-room I was glad that I had taken pains with my
toilet, for he was carefully dressed, and a little cluster of my
primroses adorned his dinner-jacket. He saw my eyes rest on them,
and said with a smile:
"You cannot think how pleased I was to find some primroses in my

room. It is years since I plucked an English primrose."
"You will be able to do so here," said my aunt; "they are coming out
in our woods, and will be plentiful in a week or two."
"I am so glad to hear it," he said simply. "They will be a delight to

me."
"Then you are not like the immortal Peter Bell?" I said, speaking my
thought almost involuntarily.
"By no means," he said, smiling, "since all the joys of my childhood

seem to live again for me when I see a primrose."
We got on marvellously well together on that first evening. Aunt and I

found him such an interesting companion that we almost forgot how
recent our acquaintance was. He talked a good deal about his life in
India, and it was evident that he had relinquished his work there with
great reluctance. He had met with sundry adventures there, too, of
which he spoke in the simplest fashion, but which showed me he
was a man of fine courage and a good sportsman. I thought that
Jack would like him better when he came to know more about him.
He made very light of the health failure which had brought him home.
It was the result of the warm, moist climate of the place of his
sojourn. He had got the better of the feverish attacks which had
prostrated him. What he lacked now was nervous strength, and that
he believed the fresh air and repose of the country would soon
restore.
When he said this, Aunt Patty explained that I too was suffering from
nervous exhaustion, and, rather to my vexation, told the story of my
disappointment. But as I met his look of perfect comprehension and
sympathy, I felt that I did not mind in the least.
"Ah, Miss Nan, don't I know what that meant for you!" he said. It was
strange how from the first he fell into the way of addressing me as
"Miss Nan," just as if he had known me all my life. And stranger still it
was that, though I was rather wont to stand on my dignity, I felt no
inclination to resent his thus dispensing with ceremony.
"It did seem hard at first," I murmured, "but now I don't mind."
"I know," he said. "It went sorely against the grain with me when I
found that I must resign my post at the college, and go back to
England. My students were very dear to me, and I hoped that I was
impressing some of them for good. But there was no alternative—if I
would go on living. So you and I have the same duty before us at
present—to lay up a fresh store of energy."
"I have found it an easy duty so far," I said cheerfully.
"Indeed, in this fair home, with the spring unfolding about us, and all
the lovely summer to come, it promises to be a delightful one," was
his ready response.
So a bond of mutual comprehension was at once established

between me and Alan Faulkner.
Aunt Patty got on with him equally well, and I could see by the way in
which he listened to her and deferred to her that he felt the attraction
of her unaffected goodness and kindness.
Nor was the Vicar less pleased when he made the acquaintance of
our guest on the following evening. He found an affinity with the
Professor at once, and showed a desire to monopolise his attention;
but whenever, as we sat at the table, their talk threatened to become
too abstruse, Mr. Faulkner would seek, by some explanatory word, to
draw me and aunt into it, or would try to divert it into a more ordinary
channel. How deep they plunged, or how far back in human history
they went after we left them to themselves, I cannot say. Their
conversation soon wearied Jack, for within five minutes, he joined us
in the drawing-room.
Jack was in rather a perverse mood.
"I suppose that is the sort of chap the governor would like me to be,"
he growled, "able to jaw on learned subjects in that conceited
fashion."
"Then I am afraid he will be disappointed," I said severely; "for even

if you succeed in passing your exam, you will never be in the least
like Mr. Faulkner."
"I am exceedingly glad to hear it!" he said with a disagreeable laugh.
It was so odd of Jack to take such a dislike to the Professor. I never

saw the least trace of conceit in his bearing, and he showed the
utmost consideration for Jack. I was vexed with the boy for being so
unreasonable; but it was of no use my saying anything—he only
grew worse.
For my part the more I saw of Alan Faulkner, the better I liked him. I
was glad we had time to get well acquainted with him before any
other guests arrived. For aunt's sake I was, of course, glad, but
otherwise I could have regretted that the Americans were coming on
the morrow.
CHAPTER VII
THE AMERICANS
MR. JOSIAH DICKS and his daughter arrived on the following day,
just as we were about to sit down to luncheon. They drove in a fly
from Chelmsford and brought with them a goodly array of trunks and
valises, though they presently explained that this represented but a
fraction of their luggage.
He was a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking man, and had the yellow,

parchment-like complexion with which I had credited Professor
Faulkner; but his restless movements and keen, alert glances
showed him to be very much alive. His forehead was bald, save for a
wisp of hair which stood up on it in such a manner as to give him
somewhat the appearance of a cockatoo. His daughter was a tall,
slight, smart-looking girl. Her face was rather pasty in its colouring;
but the sharp, piquant features were not devoid of charm. She wore
a most remarkable hat, with so many wings sticking out of it that one
shuddered to think how many small birds had been slaughtered for
the gratification of her vanity. I could not admire it, yet it was of a
style that suited her. She was a striking figure as she entered the
house wearing a long, drab travelling coat with gilt buttons, and a
magnificent boa of Russian sable, with a muff of the same fur,
depending from her neck by a gold chain.
"So this is 'Gay Bowers!'" she said in a high, thin voice with the
unmistakable enunciation of an American as she looked about her,
frankly observant, "and really it is as pretty as its name. I call this old
hall perfectly lovely."
"It's real antique, this," said her father, speaking with a still more
striking accent, "that staircase now—"
But here my aunt's advance cut short his words.
"Mr. Dicks, I believe?" she said.
"Right you are, ma'am," he replied; "you see Josiah Dicks of

Indianapolis, and this is my daughter, Pollie—or, as she prefers to be
called, Paulina. We've come, as I wrote you we should, and I hope
you can take us in."
"I have some vacant rooms which I shall be happy to show you,"
said Aunt Patty, "but we were just going to lunch; will you not sit
down with us, and we can discuss business matters later."
"I guess that will suit us excellently, eh! What say you, Pollie?" was
his response. "The fact is, we left our hotel soon after ten, and the
fresh country air on the way hither has given a decided edge to our
appetites."
I took Miss Dicks to my room to refresh herself after the journey. She
sniffed with her pretty little nose as we went up the staircase, and
said, "How deliciously fresh it smells here! I hate the smell of
London, don't you? Are there many people staying in the house?"
"Why, no," I said, rather embarrassed by the question. "You see it is

a new thing for us to have boarders at 'Gay Bowers,' and at present
there are only ourselves and Mr. Faulkner."
She laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "Well, to be sure, and I

thought there would be twenty at least! I looked forward to music and
dancing in the evening!"
I felt inclined to laugh too, but I answered gravely, "Then I am afraid

our home will hardly suit you, for it is small, as you see, and we
could never accommodate more than half the number you name."
"I see," she said with a little pout. "Well, I must make the best of it
now, I suppose. I like the look of the lady, Mrs.—what is her name?"
"Mrs. Lucas," I said; "she is my aunt."
"Oh!" Thereupon she turned and looked at me from head to foot with
a thoroughness which let slip no detail of my appearance. My colour
rose, yet I gave her credit for intending no insolence by her cool
survey.
A moment later, as she removed her hat with her eyes on the mirror,
I took the opportunity to observe her more closely. Her hair was a
pale brown and fairly plentiful. It presented an arrangement of poufs
and combs, and tortoiseshell ornaments, which was quite novel to
me. I found it more extraordinary than beautiful, though when I got
used to the style I saw that it suited her.
The travellers had acquired the art of quickly making themselves at

home. As we took our luncheon they spoke and acted as if "Gay
Bowers" belonged to them. More than once I saw Aunt Patty flush
with resentment at what she evidently considered an impertinence.
But she had the good sense to hide her annoyance.
Cook, knowing that strangers were expected, had risen to the

occasion and sent up some very dainty dishes. Josiah Dicks did
ample justice to her excellent pastry, although he assured us he was
a martyr to dyspepsia.
When luncheon was over, aunt offered to show our visitors the
rooms she could give them. As they followed her from the room,
Miss Dicks turned and said to me in a very audible undertone, "How
very good-looking he is!" She jerked her head towards the window
where Alan Faulkner stood playing with Sweep. It was extraordinary
how that dog had taken to him. Ever since my arrival I had sought in
vain to coax her into accompanying me on my walks. She had
always preferred to wander alone about uncle's favourite haunts, or
to crouch disconsolately on the mat outside his former sanctum; but
now she was ready to follow Mr. Faulkner anywhere.
"Oh, hush!" I responded in a whisper to Miss Dicks's remark. "He
may hear you."
"Would it matter if he did?" she returned coolly. "Men like to be told

that they are good-looking."
"That may be," I replied; "but it is a taste I should not care to gratify."
She laughed.
"Pollie Dicks," called her father from the staircase, "are you coming
to choose your room?"
"He means to stay," she said to me with a sagacious nod, "and I've
no objection."
When she came downstairs a little later, Aunt Patty told me that Miss
Dicks had chosen the room on the left of mine. It was a large room,
commanding the front of the house. Her father had had to content
himself with a smaller room at the back.
"He seems much pleased with the place," said my aunt, "but his
daughter is evidently afraid of finding it dull."
"Do you like them, auntie?" I asked.
An odd smile crossed her face.
"They are mortals," she said. "I don't quite know what to make of
them, but I mean to like them, Nan. I cannot afford to quarrel with my
bread and butter."
"Still, I do think that they might have behaved a little more like
'guests' at luncheon," I said. "Mr. Dicks asked for 'crackers' just as if
he were in an hotel."
"I must confess that I felt rather riled for a moment," said my aunt;
"but I am sure he did not mean to annoy me. They are evidently
used to hotel life, and they cannot guess, nor do I wish that they
should, how it feels to me to receive strangers thus into my home.
My common-sense tells me that I must not allow myself to be over-
sensitive. I only hope Mr. Faulkner will like them."
"He seems to like them," I said.
Indeed I had been astonished to see the friendly interest in the

newcomers which he displayed, and the readiness with which he
talked to them.
The following day was Easter Sunday, and for once the weather was
all that one could wish it to be upon that day. It was not exactly
warm, but the sun shone brightly, and there was a delicious,
indescribable feeling of spring in the air. The trees were budding,
and the hedges breaking into leaf. Every day now showed some
fresh sign of spring's advance.
We all went to church in the morning. Mr. Dicks was struck with the
venerable beauty of our church, but he was severe in his criticism of
the service and the sermon. He had no patience with the defects of
our choir, and certainly their singing was very rural. He was anxious
to impress us with the superior order of things to be found in
America.
Jack joined us after the service, and we all, with the exception of my
aunt, took a short walk before luncheon. Mr. Dicks explained that he
was not fond of walking, but that his doctor had advised him to walk
several miles every day. His daughter frankly said that she hated it,
and certainly the smart pointed shoes she wore appeared ill adapted
to our country roads. I saw Mr. Faulkner looking at them, and
wondered whether he were admiring, or merely struck, as I was, with
their unsuitability.
"Pollie is fond of cycling," said Mr. Dicks, looking at me. "Do you
cycle?"
"I can," I said, "but unfortunately I have no bicycle of my own. I use

my sister's sometimes when I am at home."
"That is a pity," he said. "Pollie's machine will be sent down to-
morrow. It would be nice if you could ride with her."
"Do you cycle?" asked Miss Dicks, turning to Mr. Faulkner.
"I have not ridden since I came back from India," he said.
"Did you ride there?" she asked.
"Yes; I often rode with my students," he said. "In the province where I
was living the roads were as smooth and level as a billiard-table, so
that riding was delightful."
"Then I don't wonder that you have not ridden since," Jack said.
"Are the roads very bad about here?" she asked, glancing at him.
"You ride, of course?"
"They are not so bad," he replied, "but I don't say they would
compare favourably with a billiard-table."
"You will ride with me, won't you?" she said to him with a fascinating
smile.
"With pleasure," he responded, adding loyally, "and we'll hire a

machine at Chelmsford, so that Miss Nan can accompany us."
"And you will come, too, will you not?" she said, turning towards
Professor Faulkner.
I did not hear his reply, for at that moment Mr. Dicks addressed a
question to me; but it struck me that she was rather a forward young
woman.
Two days later a consignment of trunks arrived for Miss Dicks. She
had already displayed such a variety of pretty and fashionable
changes of attire that I wondered how many more clothes she had.
Judging by the size of her trunks she might have had a different
gown for each day of the year.
She appeared delighted to receive her luggage, and spent the
greater part of the next day in her room, engaged in unpacking the
boxes. Late in the afternoon I was going upstairs when I heard a
voice calling, "Nan, Nan!" Glancing upwards, I saw Miss Dicks
standing at the door of her room. I had not given her permission to
address me by my Christian name, and it would not have occurred to
me to call her "Pollie." But this was only another instance of the
inimitable coolness with which she made herself at home with us all.
I could only conclude that her free and easy bearing was typically
American, and endeavour to reconcile myself to it with as good a
grace as possible.
"Do come here, Nan, and look at my things," she cried as she saw
me.
As I entered her room I exclaimed at the sight it presented. Bed,

sofa, table, chairs, and even the floor were littered with all kinds of
choice and pretty things, making the place look like a bazaar. There
were mosaics and marbles from Italy, Roman lamps, conchas,
cameos, exquisite bits of Venetian glass, corals and tortoise-shells
from Naples, silk blankets from Como, and olive-wood boxes from
Bellagio. But it is vain to attempt to name all the things that met my
eyes. I think there were specimens of the arts and manufactures of
every place which she and her father had visited.
"Oh, how lovely!" I exclaimed. "But what will you do with all these
things? Are you going to open a shop?"
"Not exactly," she said with a laugh. "I am going to take them back to
America with me. Some are for myself, and some for my friends.
Father wanted me not to unpack them till we got them home, but I
felt that I must look and see if they were all safe."
For the next half-hour I had nothing to do but admire. There were
little boxes packed with small and rare ornaments, which she opened
one by one to show me the contents. I felt sure now that Josiah
Dicks must be a millionaire. It was a delight to me to see so many
pretty things, and their possessor seemed to enjoy my appreciation
of them.
"Aunt Maria begged me to buy everything I wanted. She said, 'Now

don't come home and say "I wish I had bought this, that, or the
other." Get all that pleases you while you are there,'" Miss Dicks
explained.
"You seem to have obeyed her most thoroughly," I remarked. "Does

your aunt live with you at home?"
"Yes, I have no mother, you know," she said. "She died when I was a
child. She nursed my little brother through scarlet fever. He died, and
then she took it and died."
She told me this in the most matter-of-fact way; but somehow I felt
differently towards her after she said that. I was feeling rather
envious of the girl who had carte blanche to spend money so
lavishly, and wondering what Olive and Peggy would say when they
heard of it, but now I felt that, though we girls had so few of the
things that money could buy, yet, as long as we had father and
mother and one another, we were richer than Paulina Dicks.
When I had looked at everything, she startled me by saying:
"Now I want you to choose something for yourself."
My colour rose as I replied by saying hurriedly:
"Oh, no, I cannot do that!"
"Why not?" she asked, surveying me with frank surprise. "When you
see that I have such heaps of things? I can never make use of them
all myself." But I still decidedly declined.
"Take this coral necklace," she said. "You were admiring it, and it
would look pretty on the black frock you wear of an evening. Why,
what is the matter with you? Are you proud? I believe you are, for
you never call me by my name, although I call you 'Nan.'"
"I will call you whatever you please," I said, "but I cannot accept any
of your pretty things, for you did not buy them for me."
"No, because I did not know you when I bought them; but I meant to
give a good many away. Oh, very well, Miss Darracott, I see you do
not mean to be friendly with Paulina Dicks!"
So in the end I had to yield, and accepted a little brooch of Florentine

mosaic, which I have to this day. And I promised that I would call her
Paulina.
"Paulina Adelaide is my name," she said. "No one calls me Pollie

except my father. And one other person," she added, as an
afterthought.
Presently she asked me if I thought Mrs. Lucas would like to see her
collection of pretty things. I said I was sure that she would, and ran
to call my aunt. When aunt came, Paulina exhibited everything
afresh, and described in an amusing fashion how she had made
some of her purchases. The dressing-bell rang ere aunt had seen
everything. Then their owner plaintively observed that she did not
know how she should get them all into their boxes again. Unpacking
was much easier than packing, she feared. Thereupon aunt and I
pledged ourselves to help her after dinner, with the result that we
were busy in her room till nearly midnight.
Paulina came to the dinner-table wearing a set of quaint cameo

ornaments, which excited Mr. Faulkner's attention. It appeared that
he knew something of cameos. He had passed through Italy on his
way home from India, and he and the Americans were soon
comparing their experiences of Vesuvius, Sorrento, and Capri, or
discussing the sights of Rome.
I listened in silence, feeling out of it all and rather discontented as I

compared Paulina's exquisitely-made Parisian frock with my own
homely white blouse. I must have looked bored when suddenly I
became aware that Alan Faulkner was observing me with a keen,
penetrating glance that seemed to read my very thoughts.
"We are wearying Miss Nan with our traveller's talk," he said. "She
has yet to learn the fascination of Italy. But the time will come, Miss
Nan."
"Never!" I said almost bitterly. "I see not the least chance of such
good fortune for me, and therefore I will not let my mind dwell on the
delights of travel!"
The look of wonder and regret with which Alan Faulkner regarded
me made me instantly ashamed of the morose manner in which I
had responded to his kindly remark. I heartily wished that I could
recall my words, or remove the impression they had created.
"Whatever he may think of Pollie Dicks," I said to myself as we rose

from the table, "he cannot help seeing that she is more good-natured
than I am."
CHAPTER VIII
A PRINCELY GIFT
"IS Miss Nan here?" asked Mr. Dicks, opening the door of the
drawing-room, where I had been pouring out tea for Aunt Patty and
such of her guests as liked the fragrant beverage. Josiah Dicks
never drank tea; his daughter took it with a slice of lemon in Russian
fashion.
"Yes, I am here," I responded. "What can I do for you, Mr. Dicks?"
"Just come this way, young lady, that is all," he said. "I have
something to show you."
As I rose and went towards him, I saw a look of amusement on Alan

Faulkner's face. Our eyes met, and we smiled at each other as I
passed him. He and I got a little quiet fun sometimes out of the
Americans. I could not help thinking that he wanted to come too and
see whatever Mr. Dicks had to show me.
It was a lovely day towards the end of April, the first really warm day
we had had. The hall door was open. Signing to me to follow him,
Josiah Dicks led the way to the back of the house, where was the
tool-house in which Pollie's bicycle was kept. She had already taken
one or two rides with Jack Upsher, but there had been some little
difficulty in hiring a bicycle for me, and I had not yet had a ride with
her.
As I approached the tool-house I saw Paulina within, flushed with

sundry exertions. She had just removed the last wrapping from a
brand-new machine.
"What!" I exclaimed. "Another bicycle! What can you want with two?"
Her beautiful machine had already moved me to admiration, if not to
envy, and here she was with another first-class one!
"Pollie does not want two, but I guess you can do with one," said Mr.
Dicks. "This is yours, Miss Nan."
I think I was never so taken aback in my life. I did not know what to
say. It seemed impossible that I could accept so valuable a gift from
one who was almost a stranger; yet I could see that both Josiah
Dicks and his daughter would be dreadfully hurt if I refused it. I knew
too that he did not like the idea of Paulina's riding about the country
alone, and that this was his way of securing a companion for her. I
tried to say that I would regard it as a loan; but that would not do. I
had to accept it. I had heard mother say that it sometimes takes
more grace to receive a gift than to bestow one, and I felt the truth of
the words now. I fear I expressed my thanks very awkwardly, yet I
was truly grateful in spite of my overwhelming sense of obligation.
"You must try it," cried Paulina eagerly. "Let us take it round to the
front of the house, and I'll mount you."
In a few minutes I was riding up and down the short drive before the
house. Mr. Faulkner caught sight of me from the drawing-room
window, and he and aunt came out to see what it meant. Aunt Patty
was as much astonished as I was by Josiah Dicks's munificence; but
she had more presence of mind and thanked him very warmly for his
kindness to me.
"That's all right," he said; "you've no need to thank me. It's just as it
should be. I like to see young people enjoy themselves. They'll never
be young but once."
Meanwhile Mr. Faulkner had been quietly examining my machine,

and he told me, in an aside, that it had all the latest improvements,
and was one of the best he had ever seen.
Certainly I found it an easy one to ride, and after a little practice I

began to feel as if it were part of myself. It was too late for us to do
much that day; but Paulina got out her machine, and we rode as far
as the village. As we passed the Vicarage we caught sight of Jack in
the garden. He shouted as he saw me spinning by, and I had to halt
and show him my delightful gift. He seemed almost as pleased as I
was. We arranged forthwith to ride with him on the following
afternoon. After dinner, I managed to get away by myself for a time,
and wrote a long letter to mother, for I felt that I must tell her about
my present.
It would not be easy to say how much enjoyment I derived from Mr.
Dicks's gift. As long as the weather continued fair, Paulina and I rode
every day. Jack accompanied us as often as he could, and was
sorely tempted to curtail the time he devoted to his studies. Then
one morning, Mr. Faulkner went to London by an early train, and
when he came back in the evening he brought a bicycle with him.
After that he too was often our companion. If we rode out a party of
four, Jack always elected to ride beside me, while Paulina seemed
equally bent on securing Mr. Faulkner as her escort, so that I had
little opportunity of talking with him. This vexed me somewhat, for
Alan Faulkner had generally interesting things to tell one, whereas
Jack's never-ceasing flow of small talk was apt to become a trifle
wearisome. We had some delightful rides and visited most of the
picturesque villages or fine old churches within twenty miles of "Gay
Bowers." But after Miss Cottrell came to stay with us, I was less free
to scour the country.
Colonel Hyde and Miss Cottrell arrived about the same time, when
spring was merging into summer, and we fondly hoped that cold
winds were over. There was no other connection between these two
individuals. The Colonel was an old friend of Mr. Upsher's. He was
Jack's godfather, and being a widower and childless, the chief
attraction "Gay Bowers" had for him was that it was so near
Greentree Vicarage.
Miss Cottrell might have been fifty. She informed Aunt Patty that she
was thirty-nine, and my aunt charitably believed her, though she
certainly looked much older. She was fond of the country, and her
coming was simply the result of seeing our advertisement. She
furnished aunt with references to persons of good social standing,
yet somehow she always struck us as not being exactly a
gentlewoman. She said she had been a governess for many years, a
fact which perhaps accounted for her worn and faded appearance,
but had taught only in the "best families." As she occasionally let fall
an "h" or made a slip in grammar, we came to the conclusion that the
"best families" known to her had not a high standard of education.
She was fond of talking of a certain Lady Mowbray, with whom she
had lived in closest intimacy for many years. "Dear Lady Mowbray"
was quoted on every possible occasion, till we grew rather weary of
her name, and longed to suggest that she should be left to rest in her
grave in peace. We knew she was dead, for Miss Cottrell had
spoken of the "handsome legacy" which this friend had left her. This
sum of money, together with some property she had inherited from
an uncle, had rendered it unnecessary for her longer to "take a
situation," a consummation for which she seemed devoutly thankful.
Yet Miss Cottrell was by no means of an indolent nature. She prided

herself on her active habits, and was especially fond of gardening.
Her love for this pursuit brought her into collision with old Hobbes,
our gardener. He could not forgive her for presuming to instruct him
on certain points, and when she offered to help him, he well-nigh
resigned his post. In order to secure peace between them, aunt had
to make over to her a tiny plot of ground, where she could grow what
she liked, and make what experiments she pleased, Hobbes being
strictly forbidden to interfere with it. The scorn with which he
regarded her attempts at horticulture was sublime.
Unfortunately, though fond of exercise, Miss Cottrell did not care for
solitary walks, and I often felt it incumbent on me to be her
companion. Her society was far from agreeable to me. It was
wonderful how little we had in common. Although she had been a
governess, she seemed absolutely without literary tastes, and even
devoid of all ideas that were not petty and trivial. Every attempt to
hold an intelligent conversation with her brought me face to face with
a dead wall.
All she cared for was to dwell on personal details of her own life or
the lives of others. She had an insatiable curiosity, and was for ever
asking me questions concerning my aunt or her guests, or my own
home life, which I could not or would not answer. Her love of gossip
led her to visit daily the one small shop the village could boast, and
marvellous were the tales she brought us from thence. She was
ready to talk to any one and every one whom she might encounter.
She was fond of visiting the cottagers, and they appreciated her
visits, for she listened attentively to the most garrulous, and told
them what to do for their rheumatism or cramp, and how to treat the
ailments of their children. I must say she was very kind-hearted; her
good nature and her love of flowers were her redeeming qualities.
She professed to admire the Vicar's preaching, and she often found
cause to visit the Vicarage. She paid both the Vicar and his friend
the Colonel more attention than they could appreciate. And the worst
of it was that she was slower to take a hint than any one I had ever
known. How Aunt Patty bore with her irritating ways I cannot tell.
Miss Cottrell certainly put a severe strain upon the politeness and
forbearance of her hostess. She was not a bad sort of woman, but
only insufferably vulgar, tactless and ill-bred.
Paulina made fun of her, yet neither she nor her father seemed to
object to Miss Cottrell's cross-questioning, or to shun her society; but
Colonel Hyde and Professor Faulkner would make their escape from
the drawing-room whenever it was possible, if that lady entered it.
Aunt confessed to me that she longed to dismiss this unwelcome
guest, but had no sufficient excuse.
She had not been with us very long when Josiah Dicks had an attack
of illness. Miss Cottrell, having wrung from me the statement that I
believed him to be a millionaire, evinced the utmost interest in the
American. She annoyed me very much by saying that she could see
that Professor Faulkner was looking after his money by courting
Paulina. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It was, of course,
possible that Alan Faulkner might be attracted by Paulina, but he
was not the man to woo her for the sake of her father's wealth. But it
was absurd of me to mind what such a one as Miss Cottrell said.
Though he was very far from well, Mr. Dicks would not stay in his
room, but hung about the house looking the colour of one of the
sovereigns he spent so lavishly. Miss Cottrell was full of sympathy
for him. She suggested various remedies, which he tried one after
another, while he rejected Aunt Patty's sensible advice that he
should send for a medical man from Chelmsford.
Miss Cottrell's solicitude contrasted oddly with Paulina's apparent

indifference. When she came downstairs the next morning she was
wearing a hat, and carried a coat over her arm, and she said quite
calmly as she took her place at the breakfast-table:
"Poppa says he is worse. He has been in awful pain all night, and
has not slept a wink. He thinks he is dying."
"My dear," ejaculated Aunt Patty, "I am distressed to hear it. And are
you going for the doctor?"
"Oh, no," said Paulina, opening her eyes widely. "He isn't dying, you
know. I am going to London."
"On his account—to get him medicine perhaps?" suggested my aunt

anxiously.
Paulina glanced across the table with amusement in her eyes.
"I am going to London to have a new gown fitted," she said, "and to
do some shopping."
"But, my dear Miss Dicks, what will your father do without you? Is it
well that you should leave him alone all day when he is suffering
so?"
My aunt looked amazed as she put these queries.
"Oh, he says now that he will see a doctor," Paulina replied. "I can
call and tell him to come if he lives near the station. I should do
Poppa no good by staying at home. He has had these attacks
before, and they will take their course. I knew he would be ill when I
saw him eating that salmon."
"But would you not like to see the doctor yourself?" aunt said.
"Cannot you put off going to London for a day or two?"
"That would inconvenience Madame Hortense," Paulina said gravely.

"No, I had better keep my appointment. I know you will look after
Poppa, Mrs. Lucas, and you will help her, will you not, Miss Cottrell?"

Authoritarian Regionalism in The World of International Organizations: Global Perspectives and The Eurasian Enigma Anastassia V. Obydenkova

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Authoritarian Regionalism in The World of International Organizations: Global Perspectives and The Eurasian Enigma Anastassia V. Obydenkova

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Authoritarian Regionalism in the World

of International Organizations: Global

The Wireless World: Global Histories Of International

International Organizations under Pressure:

International Law and Development in the Global South

The Logic of Immunity: Deciphering an Enigma Bobby

Managing Nonprofit Organizations in a Policy World

Populist Foreign Policy: Regional Perspectives of

The Misery Of International Law: Confrontations With

The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic

While working on this book, we have received substantial feedback from a

4.3. The Dataset 73

10.4. Heterogeneity of Membership and Hegemony 190

5.1. Distribution of the average Polity IV score of the ROs 77

xii List of Figures

xiv List of Tables

AIIB Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

2 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

² http://www.vibory.ru/Regs/GD/part-11.htm, accessed July 24, 2018; http://kommersant.ru/

1.1. AUTHORITARIAN REGIONALISM THROUGHOUT

The phenomenon of authoritarian regionalism is a global one: one ﬁnds

4 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

6 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

1.2. THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE BOOK

8 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

1.3. SEQUENCE OF CHAPTERS

10 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

Regionalism and Political Regimes

2.1. THE COMPARATIVE REGIONALISM PERSPECTIVE

2.1.1. Regional organizations and non-democratic members

12 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

Regionalism and Political Regimes 13

14 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

2.1.2. Globalization, regional organizations,

Our discussion so far has focused on the ability of regional organizations to

Regionalism and Political Regimes 15

⁴ See also Davis (2009); Davis and Wilf (2017).

16 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

2.1.3. Imperialism and non-democratic regional organizations

While the existing literature on regionalism does acknowledge the possibility

⁵ On hierarchy in international relations see also Cooley (2003, 2005).

Regionalism and Political Regimes 17

18 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

2.2. AUTHORITARIAN COOPERATION PERSPEC TIVE

2.2.1. From democratic Kantian peace to a “new”

Regionalism and Political Regimes 19

20 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

2.2.2. The mystery of modern non-democracies: who are they?

Modern non-democratic states present a real challenge to studies of political

⁸ Pecency et al. (2002) analyze the period 1945–94.

Regionalism and Political Regimes 21

⁹ For the sequence of regime transitions throughout, see Huntington (1991).

22 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

Regionalism and Political Regimes 23

24 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

2.2.3. How do political regimes matter

Do political regimes actually matter in establishing or joining a regional

Regionalism and Political Regimes 25

26 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations

2.3. EXTERNAL INFLUENCES AND P OLITICAL

2.3.1. International dimension of regime transition

Regionalism and Political Regimes 27

28 Regionalism in the World of International Organizations