Do economic crises impede or advance regional economic integration in the post-Soviet space?

摘要

This article investigates the effect of economic crises on the development of post-Soviet regional integration, focusing on Russia-Kazakhstan relations and particularly the case of the Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan customs union. While the literature often argues that crises are accompanied by growing protectionism, we observe a substantially more complex relation. We find that crises as a rule result in an increase in integration rhetoric and can also result in an increase in actual economic and institutional integration. However, the actual integration effort goes up only when a crisis has followed a prolonged period of economic growth, i.e. the countries have accumulated sufficient reserves. At the same time, the existing ties must be strong, with no viable alternative available to the policy makers. Otherwise there is too strong an incentive to use protectionist measures to compensate for the decrease in budgetary revenue.