Region-making at last in the former soviet area: Some suggestions for future research

Abstract

In March and October 2017, two workshops took place at Sciences Po Bordeaux, gathering together scholars of comparative regionalism and area studies specialists. We engaged in a constructive debate to contribute to and revitalise studies on the regional reordering of post-Soviet spaces. We investigated, beyond Eurocentric views, the renewed regionalisation processes that have taken place in the former Soviet area since the 2010s. For the past twenty years, studies on regionalism have undergone major changes, moving from institutionalist and top-down approaches that have focused on the design and policy outputs of regional organisations to the attempt of understanding the diversified and endogenous factors that shape region-building and region-making in non-Western worlds. We thus aim to take stock of that debate, nourishing it with a challenging, area-based, case study. In that respect, the regionalisation of global order calls for further studies on underresearched aspects such as the impact of business communities in promoting regional agendas or the narratives on collective identities fabricated by political leaders. In particular, sanctions and counter-sanctions seem to have strengthened this rhetoric moves, putting values and perceptions at the centre of regionalisation in the reconfigured post-Soviet space. This article resumes the research agenda that resulted from a collective endeavour, and that has been driven by recent changes in international politics and the foreign policies of states which are - more or less reluctantly - positioned in post-Soviet spaces. The establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) provides a further case for reflecting on the 25-year trajectory of region-building and region-making, which deserves investigation beyond assessments and interpretations based on tangible processes and material outcomes.