ABSTRACT
The development of post-Socialist countries has often been discussed from the point of view of Europeanization, defined as transmission of European norms, values and practices to other countries outside the European Union (EU). Europeanization outside the EU can be associated with two interrelated phenomena. First, on the level of international organizations, Europeanization involves the spread of regional integration agreements, mimicking the EU in terms of their design and proclaimed goals. This spread results from conscious effort undertaken by the EU to promote regionalism worldwide as part of its external relations (Schimmelpfennig 2009; Boerzel and Risse 2009); informal influence on the staff of regional organizations, which is often trained and socialized in the EU (Shams 2005); but also the fact that the EU is frequently considered a blueprint for regional integration worldwide (Lenz 2012). Second, on the level of individual countries, Europeanization involves, in particular, the spread of market economy, democracy and rule of law. At the same time, at both levels, one can differentiate between the real
institutional transplantation, on the one hand, and the imitation of institutional transplantation, on the other, when countries merely copy the formal aspects of the European norms and practices, which in reality did not function or changed their content entirely. This imitation happens because countries are unable or unwilling actually to implement the institutions they transplant. Reasons why real transplantation happened in some cases and imitation occurred in others became one of the main topics of the literature on post-socialist transition (e.g. Woodruff 2000; Zweynert and Goldschmidt 2006). There exist almost no studies looking at the fit of two levels of Europeani-
zation – for instance, how organizations, which consciously develop and transform themselves following the EU blueprint or under EU guidelines, affect the domestic institutional transformation of their member countries. Do the regional integration projects inspired by the EU change the domestic institutions of the member countries in a way promoting democracy, market economy and rule of law? The lack of attention to this research question is partly because the effect of many regional organizations on their member countries is actually negligible. However, there may also be cases of regional organizations that have an effect on the domestic politics of their members.
The question becomes even more difficult to answer if one looks at regional organizations, which merely imitate the institutional transplantation from the EU. While the prior probability of finding a positive impact of this type of organization on domestic institutions of their members seems to be low, we are not aware of any empirical research on this topic. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the case of Eurasian economic
integration in this context. In particular, we look at the Customs Union (CU) – currently the flagship project of Eurasian integration, which is intended to be transformed into the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in 2015. The literature on the CU and its relation to the EU so far has typically emphasized the incompatibility and competition of the post-Soviet CU and EU-driven projects, like the Eastern Partnership (Dragneva and Wolczuk 2012; Cohen 2013), although some papers also indicate the opportunities for cooperation (Shumylo-Tapiola 2012; Charap and Troitskiy 2013; Vinokurov 2014). There are two arguments supporting the incompatibility claim. The first focuses on the institutional design chosen by the CU. It is impossible for any country simultaneously to join a customs union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan and unilaterally negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU, to adapt the CU common tariff and the EU Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) tariffs. This argument, however, concerns the impact of the CU on the international trade regime; it does not mean that one cannot be a member of the CU and cooperate with the EU in terms of policy reforms and democratization. The second argument focuses on the political aspects of the CU. It looks at the CU as a regional organization set up by Russia as a tool of hegemony in the post-Soviet space, created for purely political reasons with no economic benefits (Saivetz 2012; Aslund 2013). If that is the case, again, the CU and the EU ought to become competing regional integration projects. None of these arguments, however, explicitly answers the question we ask
in this chapter: how does the CU affect the domestic institutions of its member countries? While dealing with this question, we will proceed as follows. In the next section we shall try to understand whether the CU can be considered an example of Europeanization at the level of regional organizations, i.e. whether it copies the EU in terms of its structure and functioning. Then we shall turn to the effects of the CU on domestic institutions. Since the CU has been functioning so far for less than four years, many observations we make are preliminary or are implied by the specifics of how decision making in the CU is organized or which goals the CU intends to achieve. Finally, we shall summarize the results of our investigation and consider possible future development of the CU in light of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 and its implications for our research question.
