Russia in international economic institutions: are there contradictions in the regional and global agendas?

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the analysis of Russia’s agenda in global and regional international economic institutions. Our aim is to reveal the main goals of Russia’s agenda in these institutions as well as their realisation and to find whether there is a contradiction or complementarity between Russian participation in global and in regional initiatives. We identify three of Russia’s main goals within the system of global and regional economic institutions as follows: increasing the role of Russia in global and regional economic governance; safeguarding the national economy from external shocks and facilitating its development; and ensuring the interests of Russian economic agents. We conclude that on the global level Russia has faced limitations on realising these goals and lacks its own agenda for international finance and trade issues. However, Russia has created and supported mechanisms for their realisation on the regional and trans-regional level.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia and international economic institutions
• Russian foreign economic policy
• global governance
• international financial system reform
• multilateral trade system
• Eurasian Economic Union
• regional economic integration

Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the helpful comments of Alexander Libman, Anastassia Obydenkova and an anonymous referee. All mistakes remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Russia’ s share in global GDP had increased from 0.8% in 2000 to 2.2% in 2007 (based on current exchange rates) and from 3.3 to 3.9%, based on PPP estimations (calculations on World Economic Outlook database as of October 2019).

2. Complete conditions of Russia`s accession to WTO are available at WTO website: https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/russia_e.htm.

3. Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Tajikistan.

4. After implementation of the Moldova–European Union Association Agreement and the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement, CIS FTA functions with multiple limitations.

5. https://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.aspx.

6. It is estimated as the annual average of the sum of current payments and current receipts (goods, services, income, and transfers) for a five year period (IMF, 2012).

7. See for example, Brasilia Declaration of 2019 Summit (http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/en/press-releases/21084-11th-brics-summit-brasilia-declaration).

8. Calculations based on data from https://stats.bis.org/statx/srs/table/c1?p=20193&c=.

9. Calculations based on data from https://www.bis.org/statistics/bankstats.htm?m=6%7C31%7C69.

10. https://cbr.ru/today/ms/smo/fsb/.

11. http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/4336.

12. https://www.bis.org/statistics/rpfx19.htm?m=6%7C381%7C677.

13. https://economy.gov.ru/material/news/maksim_oreshkin_rossiya_vystupaet_za_rasshirenie_geografii_vto.html; https://www.mid.ru/vsemirnaa-torgovaa-organizacia-vto-/-/asset_publisher/km9HkaXMTium/content/id/3782962.

14. For example, the Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia Maria Zakharova noticed that universal rules of international trade should be developed within the frameworks of the WTO with the participation of all interested parties while individual states were moving away from universal norms of international economic cooperation and trade in favour of non-transparent and closed associations as Trans-Pacific Partnership (https://www.gazeta.ru/business/news/2015/10/14/n_7770965.shtml).

15. https://economy.gov.ru/material/directions/vneshneekonomicheskaya_deyatelnost/vto/tekushchie_mnogostoronnie_peregovory/.

16. China holds in AIIB 26.75% of votes and 30.79% of capital.

17. https://www.aiib.org/en/about-aiib/governance/members-of-bank/index.html.

18. https://ria.ru/20200207/1564410429.html.

19. https://economy.gov.ru/material/directions/vneshneekonomicheskaya_deyatelnost/vto/tekushchie_mnogostoronnie_peregovory/.

20. https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/russia_e.htm. In particular, Russia initiated four complaints against European Union, two complaints against the United States and two against Ukraine. Dispute cases involving the Russian Federation as respondent include four complaints by the European Union, three by Ukraine, one by the United States and one by Japan.

21. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds499_e.htm.

22. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds499_e.htm.

23. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds493_e.htm.

24. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/499abr_e.pdf.

25. https://economy.gov.ru/material/news/ekaterina_mayorova_dela_na_million.html.

26. Account based on customs statistics of foreign trade (http://stat.customs.ru/apex/f?p=201:7:4393207315210336::NO:::).

27. Account based on statistics of the Eurasian economic commission (http://www.eurasiancommission.org/ru/act/integr_i_makroec/dep_stat/tradestat/tables/Pages/default.aspx).

28. https://www.rosbalt.ru/business/2009/06/10/646952.html.

29. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_10_734.

30. Complete conditions of Russia`s accession to WTO are available at WTO website: https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/russia_e.htm.

31. Complete conditions of Kazakhstan’s, Armenia`s and Kyrgyzstan’s accession to WTO are available at the WTO website: https://www.wto.org.

32. http://www.eurasiancommission.org/ru/act/trade/catr/ttr/Documents/ПЕРЕЧЕНЬ%20РК%20на%2026.03.2020.pdf; https://atameken.kz/ru/news/34346-rasshirenie-perechnya-iz-yatij-kazahstana-v-ramkah-vto1.

33. http://eec.eaeunion.org/ru/act/trade/SiteAssets/Presentation_2016%20rus.pdf.

34. https://eabr.org/en/about/facts-and-figures/.