Russian and Western scholarly perspectives on EU–Russia relations in Justice and Home Affairs: how ‘indigenous’ is the Russian scholarship?

ABSTRACT

The paper explores the state of academic dialogue between the Russian and Western scholarly communities studying the European Union (EU)–Russia relations in Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). By analyzing the citation patterns of the academic articles on the EU–Russia cooperation in this area, we arrive at the conclusion that the Russian scholarship mostly does not engage in a transnational academic dialogue with the Western counterparts. In other words, it has turned into a sealed ‘indigenous’ scholarly community. And what is more, it is also disintegrated within itself since the Russian scholars do not refer to the research produced by their compatriots either. To qualitatively substantiate our findings, in the last section of the paper, we review the universe of all articles written on the topic in Russian to distinguish five trends typical of the research published in Russian academic journals. We believe that these features are the result of the lack of engagement with the Western scholarship and simultaneously the cause which prevents the communication between the two scholarly communities. This, in turn, undermines the accumulation of the transnational multifaceted policy-relevant expertise essential for normalizing the relations between Brussels and Moscow in general and in JHA in particular.

KEYWORDS:

• EU–Russia studies
• academic communication
• EU–Russia relations
• Common Space of Freedom
• Security and Justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Available at http://polit.ru/article/2015/04/08/list_journals/#politology [accessed 13 January 2018].

2. Based on the Scopus data which have been processed by the SCImago research group. For more details, see https://www.scimagojr.com/aboutus.php [accessed 13 January 2018].

3. Available at http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?area=3300&category=3320 and http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?area=3300&category=3312 [accessed 13 January 2018].

4. Available at http://www.ponarseurasia.org/node/8771 [accessed 13 January 2018].

5. Another approach to draw such boundary is to rely on language or nationality (e.g. Romanova 2015).

6. Yet, posing similar research questions does not necessarily make a paper typical. This way, asking the same research question of what the problems and prospects of the EU–Russia visa talks are, in their paper Voynikov and Korneev (2013) approach this question rather differently by focusing on three major dimensions of those talks, namely the economic, legal, and political ones. Placing the Russian case in a broader comparative perspective of how the EU deals with third countries willing to introduce a visa-free regime with the Union, the authors provide an insightful analysis of a politically hierarchical nature of the EU–Russia visa talks conditioned by the legal and soft law instruments applied by the EU toward Moscow.

7. Another rare paper which focuses on major cooperative initiatives in the field of fighting organized crime and drug trafficking in particular is an article by Surikova (2010).

8. The paper by Domaniewski and Studzińska (2016) is the only article by Western scholars about the SBT and the relations between Russia, the EU, and its member states with regard to this question. Compared to the Russian articles, the Western authors mostly focus on the societal implications of the SBT, with communities inhabiting the border regions being the units of analysis. Importantly, the Western scholars make no reference to the earlier studies published in Russian in this case.

9. In his English-language paper, Golunov (2013) proceeds with his inquiry and places his analysis of EU–Russia borders in a broader perspective of critical borders studies, insisting on the importance of the perceptions of those who actively deal with these borders (those who cross them and those who keep them) for the political dialogue between Russia and the EU on the issue. EU–Russia borders and their relevance for the EU–Russia dialogue in the CSFSJ are also discussed by Diez, Stetter, and Albert (2006) in a broader perspective of the transformative power of European integration, and by Browning (2003) and Diener and Hagen (2011) with regard to the case of the Kaliningrad region.

10. A comprehensive overview of all the dimensions of the cooperation between Russia and the EU in JHA, and of the major ups and downs in their developments, as well as their critical evaluation are available in the seminal paper by Potemkina (2010) published in English.

11. In her earlier English-language article, Potemkina (2003) takes a much closer look at the impact of the Eastern enlargement on EU–Russia relations, tracing the dynamics of the Europeanization of visa policies by the then-candidate states, and the EU–Russia negotiations over visa facilitation and the Kaliningrad transit regimes, held during the pre-accession period.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.