Presidential Power and Authoritarian Regionalism: Mediating External Pressures in Post-Soviet Eurasia

Existing research links strong presidential powers and regional authoritarian networks to autocratization and the consolidation of autocracy in post-Soviet Eurasia. Domestically, regimes with concentrated presidential authority weaken horizontal accountability and enable executive aggrandizement, thus creating favorable conditions for autocratic consolidation. These institutional vulnerabilities can be externally reinforced through regional authoritarian networks. The literature on authoritarian regionalism finds that non-democratic regional organizations (NDROs) can serve as mechanisms for regime legitimation, policy coordination, and resistance to democratic pressures. However, how strong presidential powers and regional authoritarian networks interact with each other remains undertheorized. Building on this, this study examines how presidential dominance, understood as the institutional concentration of executive power, mediates the effects of competing international pressures and shapes regime trajectories in the region. The post-Soviet Eurasian region is particularly relevant for analyzing presidential dominance and authoritarian regionalism, as executive power tends to be highly concentrated within the presidency, coexisting with overlapping NDRO memberships and competing influence of democratic and non-democratic external actors. The core assumption is that the degree of presidential dominance conditions how external pressures, both democratic and autocratic, influence domestic regime outcomes. Presidents are assumed to act as gatekeepers between external influences and domestic adaptation, especially in regimes characterized by strong presidential dominance. This paper explores how varying combinations of presidential dominance and external alignment (Russian and Western) determine whether post-Soviet Eurasian regimes consolidate autocracy or resist it, and how presidents with different institutional strengths manage competing pressures. By combining institutional and diffusion perspectives, the study aims to show how executive concentration shapes the effectiveness of external authoritarian and democratic forces. The analysis covers eleven post-Soviet states (excluding the Baltic states) from 1991 to 2024. Methodologically, the study employs a configurational approach using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify combinations of presidential dominance, NDRO engagement, linkage, and leverage that are sufficient for regime outcomes in the region. To uncover underlying mechanisms, selected cases are examined through process-tracing, illustrating how presidents instrumentalize external pressures. The findings suggest that the post-Soviet Eurasian states employ different coping strategies depending on the institutional strength of the presidency and alignment with external actors in the region. These findings advance understanding of authoritarian diffusion by revealing how presidential institutions shape states’ responsiveness to both authoritarian and democratic pressures.