Regional Governance: Explaining Varieties of Authority in Regional Organizations in Eurasia

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a massive proliferation of regional agreements and organizations worldwide. Also Eurasia has experienced a surge of inter-state activities at the regional level. With more than 25 regional organizations, which have emerged since the early 90ies, the density of regional organizations in Eurasia is surprisingly high. However, regional organizations differ significantly in terms of membership, focus and the level of authority. Authority transfer entails two dimensions: states pool authority at the regional level by creating a collective body, in which they participate themselves, which can make binding decisions for its members. Delegation describes a conditional grant of authority from member states to an agent, such as an organization’s secretariat, for a specified and limited purpose. While in Eurasia there is almost no pooling of decision-making, some organizations show a surprisingly strong degree of authority delegation. Furthermore, there seems to be a regional preference for task-specific rather than general-purpose organizations. This paper aims to map regional organizations in Eurasia, analyze their institutional design and identify patterns of regional integration within the framework of regional organizations. To analyze the institutional design of regional organizations in Eurasia, an analytical framework is developed, which builds up on a model to measure regional authority by Gary Marks and Liesbet Hooghe and relies on the distinction of four dimensions: policy scope, pooling and delegation of authority as well as sanction mechanisms. The paper addresses the question of the outcome of state-led regionalism, which is conceptualized as the degree to which member states equip regional organizations with tasks, authority and action capacity. It shall generate useful knowledge about the way regional organizations in the post-Soviet space are set up and function and shed light on the role of secretariats of regional organizations. This paper is the first of a series of papers on Eurasian integration and aims to explore the variety of regional organizations and patterns in their institutional design as well as to answer the question why states in region, that is characterized by authoritarian or hybrid regimes, delegate or pool authority at the regional level in the first place. In a second step, the findings shall be explained by drawing on theories of regional integration. The drivers accounting for the variation in design shall be determined by testing the assumptions of common theories of International Relations and European Integration. A special emphasis shall be put on Russian membership as an explanatory variable.