ABSTRACT
The role of supranational organizations in the persistence of authoritarian regimes has recently attracted substantial attention in the literature. Primarily, two sets of regional organizations are considered from this point of view: the post-Soviet regionalism (with its various structures, see Allison 2008; Collins 2009; Cameron and Orenstein 2012; as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, see Ambrosio 2008; Schneider 2013; Cooley 2013) and the Gulf Cooperation Council, the alliance of Arab monarchies, which gained attention due to its active role in the Arab Spring (Colombo 2012; Kamrava 2012; Haimerl 2013; Steinberg 2014). However, already the first wave of regionalism after World War Two included COMECON, an organization consisting entirely of non-democracies and linked to the survival of Communist regimes. The existence of coalitions of non-democratic countries aiming, among other things, at preserving their regimes, as well as the fact that some of these coalitions take shape of regional organizations, is hardly in dispute, as well as the case that these organizations are prolific in Eurasia. Libman and Obydenkova (2013) show that non-democratic countries are more likely to sign a larger number of agreements within the CIS framework. Jackson (2014) also describes post-Soviet regional organizations as coalitions of autocrats.
