The paper investigates the change in the impact of democracy on political trust in national and international institutions, the European Union (EU) and to the United Nations (UN), after the start of ...the Great Recession 2008. Based on empirical evidence, the paper argues that the impact of the level of democracy on
national
trust is different from its impact on
international
trust post-crisis 2008, despite having been similar before 2008. Overall trend is in line with previous findings on decrease in trust to political institutions. In addition to these findings, this paper also demonstrates that the impact of democracy on trust in
international
institutions has changed radically after the start of the Great Recession. These findings are important for studies on political trust and democracy, on the consequences of the Great Recession, as well as for the comparative research on regional versus global institutions, such as the EU and the UN.
This article investigates whether and how regional international organizations created by authoritarian countries can aid the regime survival of their member states. Numerous regions of the world ...have witnessed a proliferation of regional organizations established by powerful authoritarian states. We argue that the external influence of these organizations can affect regime survival and reinforce non-democratic regime trajectories, but in a nuanced manner. The article argues that, in addition to examining the impact of the regional organization itself, one must examine how the existence of these regional organizations changes the strategy of autocratic leading states, which—in bilateral relations with other countries—could become more eager to support authoritarian regimes of geopolitical importance. We use the case of the Eurasian Economic Union to explore various strategies of Russia, the leading state, vis-à-vis post-Soviet Eurasian countries. These strategies, however, appear only to matter for authoritarian consolidation when countries, from the Russian point of view, are on the ‘front line’ of geopolitical competition with the EU, and which are, therefore, important in stabilizing Russian influence. The article identifies five strategic foreign policy models of leading states which are determined by the existence of regional organizations and evaluates the benefits of these strategies for both leading and targeted states.
This article examines the goals, methods, and implications of regional organizations founded and dominated by autocracies—including the Commonwealth of Independent States (spearheaded by Russia), ...Shanghai Cooperation Organization (China), Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Venezuela), and Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia). It shows the role that these organizations play in preserving and promoting autocracy and the different tools they use for this purpose: rhetorical endorsement; the redistribution of resources to support weaker authoritarian states; and even military interventions to suppress revolution. The existence of authoritarian regionalism poses an important challenge for Western states and institutions in democracy promotion around the world.
The paper investigates the effect of Communist legacies on attitudes toward migrants in present-day Russia. Midway through the first decade of the 2000s, Russia established itself as an attractive ...center of labor migration. This rise of migration triggered an upsurge of xenophobic sentiment and nationalism. This paper examines the variation of anti-migrant sentiments across the regions of the Russian Federation and concludes that it is strongly affected by the legacies of the Communist regime. Regions with a higher share of CPSU members in their population in the 1970s are characterized by stronger negative attitudes towards migrants.
Does corruption influence trust in national institutions in the same way as trust in international institutions? Did this influence change over the economic crisis 2008? Using data from the European ...Social Survey, we examined the association between corruption and trust in national and European parliaments before and after the start of the Great Recession 2008. We found that over the Crisis, the effect of corruption on trust in national parliament became more negative than it was before 2008. We also discovered a positive association between corruption and trust in the EU before the Crisis. That is, states with a higher level of national corruption seem to have more trust in international institutions, such as the EU. However, this relationship disappears after 2008. Our findings contribute to the debates on the impact of corruption on trust in national and international institutions, and on the consequences of the Great Recession.
The impact of democracy on governments’ choice of environmental policies has attracted significant academic attention in recent years. However, less attention has been devoted to the role of the ...social cognitive capital of the national population. Does society's cognitive capital matter in governmental choice regarding environmental policies, if at all? This study addresses this question through a large-N analysis of 94 countries accounting for the role of both political regimes and social capital in governmental choice of climate change policies. We find that higher social cognitive capital within a democratic state radically increases that state's commitment to adopt environmental policies. More specifically, a 1-point increase in the democracy index is associated with nearly 5 points increase in the adoption of the Climate Laws, Institutions and Measures Index (CLIMI). In a similar vein, a 10 points increase in social cognitive capital is associated with a nearly 16 points increase in CLIMI. The findings presented in this study aim to contribute to the ongoing debate on the impact of democracy and the cognitive capital of society on international environmentalism. The findings will also be interesting for scholars working on the impact of political institutional factors and the role of society in environmental policy choices made at the international level.
•This article investigates the impact of democracy on climate change.•It investigates the impact of social cognitive capital on CLIMI.•The analysis builds on the data from 94 states.•This paper finds that both democracy and social cognitive capital are significant.
Abstract
Which limitations does the hegemon face when exerting financial statecraft through multilateral institutions? Recent studies indicate that intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that are ...tools of collective financial statecraft sponsored by the United States, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, lead developing states to align with Washington in the United Nations (UN). The same effect is verified in the case of US bilateral aid. Little, however, has been discussed about the effect of American-sponsored regional development banks (RDBs) in the same context. RDBs are IGOs with unique characteristics as each of them covers a region of the world and relies on resources from developed sponsors and developing borrowing members alike. In this article we aim to fill this gap in the debates on economic and financial statecraft by demonstrating through tobit models that the higher the material capabilities of a borrowing state that takes loans, the less likely it is to align with the United States at the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Membership of all RDBs but the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) yields the same effect. Results indicate the need to develop further research on RDBs to assess whether they create incentives for challenging the hegemon.
The paper summarises the findings of this special issue and suggests avenues for future research. It concludes that the Eurasian regionalisms' development in the 2010s was influenced, among other ...factors, by Russia's concerns about external threats and by its control over the Eurasian space. However, the design of the regional institutions does not make them incompatible with global governance. The cooperation between global and regional institutions varies depending on the agenda of the specific regional organisation. In addition to direct competition between global and regional institutions, there may be an indirect one through offering access to different forms of economic benefits. Through this indirect strategy, regional institutions may reduce the incentives for individual countries to comply with their obligations to global institutions. This paper also places Eurasia within a global context of analysis and considers similar trends world-wide as well as outlines the agenda for future studies of global versus regional governance.
This paper analyses the ideational interaction underlying attempts at regional integration and cooperation in Eurasia. While the ideas and values of the European Union have been relatively ...well-studied within the theory of Europeanisation, the key concepts, ideas, values and principles driving Eurasian regionalism have remained out of the main focus of Western scholarship. This paper aims to shed more light on this ideational basis of Eurasian regionalism by unveiling the discourse developed in Russian scholarship and available only in Russian. Understanding interactions between institutions will always remain partial as long as the ideational interaction is not addressed. Such concepts as 'integrative mentality', as a segment of the wider category 'foreign policy mentality', and the theory of neo-Eurasianism have been incorporated into Russian political discourse and therefore affect public opinion through specific interpretation of economic, political and cultural processes in the EU's near neighbourhood and the EU as an actor. The analysis presented in this paper indicates the development of new ideational competition, in addition to the well-documented geopolitical one. The paper also aspires to contribute to emerging research on public support to governmental strategic choices and self-legitimation of international organisations in Eurasia.
The paper analyses the impact of democratisation on firm innovation in European and Central Asian post-communist states using panel-data and cross-sectional approaches. The sample consists of over ...25,000 establishments in 25 transition economies. Our empirical analysis provides an array of novel findings to the institutional literature. First, our analysis demonstrates that post-communist democratisation has had a direct impact on firms' propensity to innovate across transition economies. Second, we find that the relationship between the level of democracy and firm innovation takes the form of a U-shape or inverted U-shape depending on the definition of firm innovation. That is, the states with the lowest and highest levels of democracy exhibit less firm innovation than states with intermediate levels of democracy. The paper contributes to the institutional literature and to studies on the consequences of post-communist regime transition for economic development.
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