Overlap with contestation? Comparing norms and policies of regional organizations in the post-Soviet space

ABSTRACT

Two sets of regional organizations contribute to the overlapping regionalism in the former Soviet space. On one side we find the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe (COE), whose original ‘Cold War agenda’ was to enhance the political dialogue across the East–West divide in Europe. On the other side is a kaleidoscopic group of organizations which have been established in the framework of (re-)emerging ambitions of regional leadership, if not hegemony, whose creation has been often interpreted in ‘reactive’ terms, to counterbalance Western influences and projects in the Eurasian geopolitical theatre. The article aims at conceptualizing these regional overlaps, focusing on drivers and effects in terms of regional governance in the post-Soviet region. The authors investigate the similarities and contradictions among four organizations (OSCE, COE, Commonwealth of Independent States and Shanghai Cooperation Organization) from the two different organizational sets, regarding leading norms and policies that address both human and security dimensions.

KEYWORDS:

• Overlapping regionalism
• OSCE
• Council of Europe
• Commonwealth of Independent States
• Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Acknowledgements

The article was in part drafted with the support of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG) The Transformative Power of Europe, hosted at the Freie Universität Berlin and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Earlier versions of this article were presented at the workshop Dealing with Overlapping Regionalism: Complementary or Competitive Strategies?, organized by the KFG (Berlin, May 2014), and at the conference The Helsinki Final Act at 40: Reflections and Prescriptions vis-à-vis the OSCE in Eurasia (Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan, 10–12 September 2014). The authors thank the participants of these two events for their contributions to the improvement of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Among the latest contributions in line with this interpretation is that of Lane and Samokhvalov (2015).

2. In an interview released in December 2007, Sergei Lebedev, CIS executive secretary, denied that CIS, GUAM and SCO were actually parallel regional organizations, given that the majority of SCO’s members and all of GUAM’s members were also involved in the CIS, and several levels of interaction existed both between CIS and SCO and between CIS and GUAM. Accordingly, the intersection between the different institutions only confirmed the increasingly important role of regional organizations in the globalized world. Similar interviews released in 2008 and 2009 (and reported on the website of the CIS Executive Committee, http://www.e-cis.info) restated this position (although GUAM was gradually removed from this kind of narrative). The proliferation of other organizations did not indicate the depletion or exhaustion of CIS’s role, and the duplication problems could have been smoothly contained. According to Lebedev, the different regional cooperation tools could have complemented each other, just as a craftsman works with a hammer when dealing with nails and a screwdriver when dealing with screws (Lebedev 2011).

3. This aspect is likely to lead to further institutional overlaps, for example between the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union and China’s One Belt, One Road initiative.

4. These two features led us not to focus specifically on the CSTO, in spite of the relevance of its mandate and influence. How the institutionalization of the CSTO has developed after 2002 (making it a collective defence alliance) is certainly telling from a geopolitical perspective, especially if compared and contrasted with the intensification of NATO activities in the post-Soviet space (for example through the Partnership for Peace), and the recent talks about possible CSTO–NATO cooperation in the fields of countering drug trafficking and enhancing Central Asian border security vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Contrariwise, our case selection includes the COE: while it is not a security cooperation organization, it has elaborated a specific approach regarding counter-terrorism. Further, its role as norm entrepreneur in the post-Soviet region is worth noting. In that perspective, a study of overlapping security dispositifs and practices can make a future venue of research.

5. The ‘human dimension’ is a label introduced by the OSCE to refer to the policy fields of human rights and democracy.

6. The concept of forum shopping was introduced by scholars of international law to study the behaviour of actors in jurisdictionally compound settings. In international relations, similar notions have been developed (‘regime shifting’, ‘institutional choice’); see Busch (2007); Helfer (2004); and Jupille and Snidal (2005).

7. Conversely, overlap can result from an unintended path of regional/international institution-building that evolved over time. Some regional organisations end up overlapping with others because of an institutions’ resilience and/or inertia.

8. Art. 1, COE (1949).

9. As the charter states, one of the SCO’s objectives is ‘to consolidate multidisciplinary cooperation in the maintenance and strengthening of peace, security and stability in the region and promotion of a new democratic, fair and rational political and economic international order’.

10. Similar principles are restated throughout several documents; see for example SCO (2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2010).

11. This vision has recently assumed a special significance in connection with the events of the Arab Spring; see SCO (2011b).

12. Declaration by the Member States of the CIS regarding the state of affairs within the OSCE, Moscow, 3 July 2004. The declaration was signed by Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine and was reported in the Statement by Mr Alexey N. Borodavkin, Representative Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the OSCE, Vienna, 8 July 2004. See also: Statement by Mr Alexey N. Borodavkin, Representative Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation at the Meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council, Vienna, 13 January 2005; and Keynote Statement by Mr Alexander Torshin, Member of the Council of the IPA CIS and Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation (PACE 2007; Socor 2007, 2007a, 2007b).

13. It is noteworthy that divergences over how the OSCE should enact its human-dimension policies exist not only in the field of election observation missions but also with regard to, for example, the protection of minority rights and the freedom of the media.

14. In 1998 the Venice Commission concluded that the CIS Convention offered less protection than the European Court of Human Rights, and these arguments where reiterated in 2001, when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolutions 1249 and 1519 (Russo 2015).

15. See SCO (2008). A similar formula has been inserted into the Preamble of the 2009 Convention on Counter-Terrorism of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: ‘Understanding the need for ever-expanding efforts in counter-terrorism, and reaffirming that all such efforts must abide by the rule of law, democratic values, fundamental human rights and freedoms, as well as the precepts of international law … ’.