The necessity of political ties for trade between Russia and the former communist bloc

Russian economic influence on Europe has been a hot topic for a while. In addition, the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) has been referred to as competition to the European Union, to rival its mostly economic importance. However, the EEU is considered to be a vehicle of Russian political interests. It can be argued that Russia gathers political friends into the Union and offers economic relations as a treat. In this paper we try to find out what is necessary (or sufficient) for having Russian economic influence in a country. To be more precise, what is needed in a country that a few decades ago was described as Russian (then Soviet) satellite or was part of the Soviet Union itself. This geographic area includes Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. The hypothesis that we state is that Russia tends to trade more with states that have favourable regimes towards Russia – the regime is a necessary condition. Bilateral trade is considered an outcome condition (dependent variable) and it is measured as yearly net trade per capita. The main tested condition is the friendliness of political regime of a former communist country. This condition is operationalised as positive or negative statements by the country towards Russian actions in Ukraine and Syria. The control conditions include GDP per capita as one part of the gravity function of international trade and free trade regimes. We are using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions. We expect to find that political relations are necessary for having trade with Russia