ABSTRACT
Led by Eurasia’s two most influential states, China and Russia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is regarded as the strongest manifestation of post-regionalism in Eurasia. This chapter focuses on the following questions: What are the material and historical conditions that brought the SCO to life and accelerated its pace? What are the region-wide and external factors that keep the SCO experience alive and thriving? In what direction has the SCO evolved, and what have been the major achievements of this experience for Eurasian security? What are the strategic factors that may have impeded the further development of SCO-led regional cooperation in a post-hegemonic direction? Eurasia’s experience of post-hegemonic regionalism involves a highly comprehensive and sophisticated cooperation process. This is driven by a concrete agenda of post-hegemonic development that revolves around the fight against Northern interventionism as well as long-term complications such as terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism. In the SCO, moreover, competition between regional powers such as China and Russia is mediated within a peaceful framework thanks to a strong normative and institutional structure that regulates Eurasian diplomacy based on the principles of national sovereignty, non-interference, non-interventionism, and mutual trust. The SCO’s current challenges include limited civil society participation, the prevalence of bilateralism, the clash of individual agendas as reflected in the multiplication of post-hegemonic institutions, continuing tensions between supranationalism and national sovereignty, and other problems related to institutional weakness.
