The OSCE and Crisis of the Liberal Order: Responding to Russian and Institutional Contestation

The OSCE has traditionally competed for relevance with the other two principal western security organisations: NATO and the EU. Recently, however, the OSCE has come under increasing contestation from the east, as Russia and China have been busy undermining the liberal order and constructing illiberal counter-order infrastructures. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine – both members of the OSCE – challenges the very raison d’etre of the collective security organisation, while the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization compete with the OSCE in the post-Soviet space. While statist accounts on European security abound, organisational perspectives of the OSCE are scarce and this article intends to fill the lacuna. It first theorises how international organisations can respond to contestation based on the nature of the challenge, institutional design, institutional leadership, and the external opportunity structure. Relying on original interviews with national and OSCE officials, the article subsequently traces how the OSCE responded to Russian aggressions via-a-vis Ukraine and the inter-institutional competition, and gauges its effects on the organisation’s vitality. In doing so, the article contributes to an emerging research agenda on the role of bureaucracies for the resilience of international organisations and draws attention to the widely neglected fate of the OSCE.