Regional security governance in the former Soviet space? Researching institutions, actors and practices

Abstract

This article aims at studying the articulation of different security models in the former Soviet space. On the one hand, it explores the extent to which an Eurasian system of security governance has emerged/is emerging; on the other hand, it advances the idea that security governance in the region results from the co-contribution of formal and informal security practices. In spite of several methodological limitations when tracing practices, the article presents a preliminary classification of the sources of informal security practices in the former Soviet space, and identifies two mechanisms to explain how regional security governance can be affected by informal security practices.

Keywords:

• Governance
• practices
• post-Soviet region
• informal

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Miguel Haubrich Seco, Elin Hellquist and Inken von Borzyskowski for comments on preliminary drafts of the manuscript. The paper was first presented at the FUB-HSE Seminar “Formality vs Informality Interaction: Reflection in Institutions and Practices”, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, April 2015. Its extended abstract has been published in Yevgeny Grigoryevich Yasin (ed.), Proceedings of the XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development (7–10 April 2015), Moscow: Higher School of Economics Publishing House, 2016, pp. 315–318.

Notes

1. The concepts of “summitry regionalism” and “regime-boosting regionalism” have emerged in reference to African regionalism, to account for the symbolic and rhetorical use of regional organizations by political elites mainly to “demonstrate support and loyalty toward one another in order to raise the status, image, and formal sovereignty of their often authoritarian regimes” (Söderbaum 2012, 61).

2. Despite the fact that they have some elements of contiguity, Bach clarifies the crucial difference between “trans-state regionalism” and “shadow regionalism” (a term developed by Fredrik Söderbaum): the latter is “associated with violence and emergence of entrepreneurs of insecurity”, while the former does not necessarily imply the criminalization of cross-border transactions or the presence of regional “ungoverned spaces” (Bach 2016, 74).

3. From the Central Asian Commonwealth formed in 1991 to the Organisation of Central Asian Cooperation (2002), passing through intermediate steps and chameleonic transformations (such as the Central Asian Economic Union and the Central Asian Economic Cooperation).

4. According to Sergei Lebedev, the CIS Executive Secretary, the different tools of regional cooperation could have complemented each other, just as the craftsman works with a hammer when dealing with nails and a screwdriver when dealing with screws (Вечерний Бишкек, 19 May 2011).

5. See the 1996 Agreement on Confidence-Building in the Military Field Along the Border Areas and the 1997 Agreement on the Mutual Reduction of Military Forces in the Border Areas.

6. This means that member states reciprocally acknowledge an act of terrorism, separatism, extremism regardless of whether their respective national legislations include includes the act in the same category of crimes.

7. Those countries’ initials form the acronym giving the name to their coalition. As a matter of fact, with Uzbekistan joining GUAM in 1999, the initiative became GUUAM; nevertheless, the Uzbek parenthesis lasted only a few years, as Uzbekistan firstly decided to suspend its membership three years later and then withdrew in May 2005, following the controversial events which occurred in Andijan.

8. Author’s interview with Kyrgyz expert (Bishkek, 14 March 2014). The interviewee participated in the group which prepared and chaired the meeting of the Security Council Secretaries for the SСO member states, and the meeting of the Committee of Security Council Secretaries for the CSTO member states, both held in Bishkek in 2007.

9. Informal practices have also been defined as “either more intimate, face-to-face social relationships or more personal modes of social control or types of social organisations and pressures” (Misztal 2000, 18) – however, this definition seems to cast light on the individual (attitudinal-behavioural) aspect of informality, while our orientation is towards patterns to be traced at the meso- and macro-level.

10. In Ukraine, defence and police officials allegedly run illegal/shadow commercial activities, and there is some evidence of organized corruption within sections of the military. In Georgia, some newspaper articles reported that the army’s “voluntary reserves” have been organized through recruiting former criminals. In Kazakhstan, it has been found that a group of smugglers operated under the cover of the Kazakh security forces. In Russia, the penetration of organized crime into the Russian defence sector includes close relations between army officials and representatives of organized crime.

11. The author’s fieldwork researches seem to confirm that the reference to Soviet mentality and “mental maps” is a recurrent feature that influences elites’ narrative templates. The shared Soviet experience has been revealed to be a collective framework of memory which has not only shaped the imagination of the past but also mediated the collective imaginaries of the future. During a number of interviews, several references to a resilient “Soviet mentality” (“collective memories”, the presence of “generations that remember the same past”, the same routines in private and public life, the same education schemes) have been observed.

12. Since then, the activities, functions and structures of druzhiny have been regulated by a decree issued by the provisional government, which also allowed for their armament in the case of an emergency.

13. This aspect was underlined by Tevan Poghosyan (Executive Director of the International Centre for Human Development) during a personal communication with the author.

14. Author’s personal communication with an Armenian Defence Adviser about the participation of Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s troops in the International Security Assistance Force.

15. Author’s personal communication with one of the leading officials previously in charge of the Border Management Programme in Central Asia.