Abstract

This paper examines how supranational institutions evolve under authoritarian regionalism by analysing the competition policy of the Eurasian Economic Union. While existing scholarship portrays the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) as a weak and subordinate administrative body, this paper argues that the EEC nevertheless engages in incremental forms of institutional agency. It examines how the EEC adapts, expands, and restraints its competition policy competences under conditions of limited delegation, strong sovereignty constraints, and politically connected market structures. Drawing on historical institutionalism, the paper investigates three episodes of institutional change via the framework of conversion, drift, and layering. It shows that the EEC pursues conversion through activism on extraterritorial jurisdiction, experiences drift in its strategic restraint regarding investigative powers such as dawn raids, and engages in layering through the formalisation of soft law instruments. The paper conceptualises these dynamics as bounded supranationalism and contributes to debates on institutional change in former Soviet and non-democratic regional organisations.