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Paper long abstract:

The return of geopolitics on the European continent made two aspects apparent. One the one hand, The EU and Russia have entered into a kind of competitive and conflict relationship about exerting influence on countries in a number of post-soviet states. On the other hand, the EU's main foreign policy strategy towards its eastern neighbors has failed to achieve its objectives of creating peace and stability.

By focusing on the case of Armenia, this research aims to analyze how the South Caucasus countries are affected by the growing tensions between the EU and Russia, how they deal with the influence of external actors and how manage to combine European and Eurasian integration models. This paper focuses on the foreign policy challenges regarding Armenia's participation in integration models proposed by EU and Russia that have changed the place and role of the country in the contemporary political processes.

The study is based on critical discourse analysis of the relevant statements and speeches of Armenian foreign policy figures aimed to justify the decision of Armenian government not to initial the negotiated Association Agreement with the EU, including a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (AA/DCFTA), and the participation of the country in Russian-led Eurasian Union by economic and security circumstances. I argued that growing tensions between the EU and Russia do not allow the South Caucasus countries to achieve the Russian-European balance. Developing a coherent strategy for the region that focuses on an integrated approach recognizing the shared interests of Russia, the EU, and the South Caucasus countries is an urgent challenge that remains unmet today.

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Autocracies in developing countries are more likely to collapse during economic crises. Some influential works and popular media extend this argument to oil-rich autocracies, but cross-national empirical studies find little evidence to support this view. Yet, while the causes of their stability during boom periods are well understood, how oil-rich autocratic regimes remain stable during busts is underexplored. This article advances an explanation that refines and complements existing accounts. I argue that we need to take into account three interrelated factors that currently are likely to stabilize oil-rich autocracies: considerable savings, policy learning, and sustenance of coercive capacity. Leveraging evidence drawn from 75 original interviews, documents, news media, and academic literature, I investigate the role of these factors through a comparative case study of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan during the 2008 global economic turmoil. The findings highlight the ruling elites' ability to amass sizeable savings that later provide safety cushions, to update their know-how through drawing lessons within and beyond fiscal policy, and to sustain coercive capacity without resorting to overt repression. Through economic crises, they may learn to not escape the "resource curse," but to escape despite the "resource curse."

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Although One Belt, One Road (OBOR) is being hailed as one of Beijing's grandest flagship projects, it may have a bumpy start in Central Asia. As the leaders of Central Asian states struggle to advance good governance and curb corruption, rent-seeking schemes emerge as an important part of political processes. Ruling elites in the region are infamously experienced at capturing the state, directing state resources toward personal enrichment. The Silk Road Economic Belt, which will provide an unprecedented influx of funding into poor Central Asian republics, has the potential to become a new source of rent for Central Asia's ruling elites and cause divisions between different Central Asian clans.

Thus, this work attempts to pragmatically assess the threats of rent-seeking for the successful implementation of the Silk Road Economic Belt project in Central Asia. It seeks not only to expose illicit practices that exist in the domestic politics of Central Asian states, but also to illuminate that Chinese modes of foreign investment do not often comply with the normative expectations of responsible development, instead exacerbating the problems of political accountability and economic governance in Central Asia. One of the most paramount questions to explore is how China's peculiar and non-transparent modes of foreign investment, along with their indigenous social practices (such as guanxi) will evolve in the graft-prone region of Central Asia. Not only can such a way of doing business jeopardize the deliverables and reputation of OBOR, but it can also antagonize national communities and feed the rapidly growing sinophobia in Central Asia.

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Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the agency of the Central Asian republics on the mega-regional integration projects of Russia's Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China's One Belt One Road (OBOR). These grand visions initiated by two great powers have recently been attracting scholarly attention due to their significant politico-economic influence on broader Eurasian regional relations. Central Asia is typically considered a sphere of influence subject to competition and cooperation between an assertive Russia and a rising China in the post-Soviet space. The current academic discourses on International Relations relating to Central Asia are heavily dependent upon a neorealist approach based on a system-centered explanation which disregards the unique capability and competence of small states. The author argues that each respective Central Asian republic as a 'subject', rather than as a 'unit' restricted by a structural distribution of power, is capable of and competent at taking part in and playing its roles in the Russia-led EAEU and the China-led OBOR, and making Moscow and Beijing cautiously consider the interests of their Central Asian neighbors. In contrast to the neorealist approach with structure-centered analysis, the author argues that the Central Asian republics determine their own attitudes and formulate their own interests by themselves in regard to the two great integration projects promoted by Russia and China. The author introduces an interpretative approach based on hermeneutics which reveals essential desires and implied meanings to capture the subjective roles of Central Asia in the Eurasian integration process covering most of the Central Eurasian region. This methodology makes it possible to consider not only material resources, but also those values that precede the actions of key Central Asian figures and experts in the sphere of international relations and diplomacy. The research is based on an empirical array of data relevant to political rhetoric of politicians, diplomats, scholars and experts in specialized communities and mass media in Central Asian countries on the matters of Russia's EAEU and China's OBOR.