Authoritarian and Democratic Diffusion in Post-Soviet Eurasia

There is a rich body of theorizing on the diffusion of democracy across space and time. There is also an emerging scholarship on authoritarian diffusion. The dynamics of the interaction between external democratic and autocratic diffusion processes and their effects on  political regime outcomes have received scant attention in the literature. Do democratic diffusion processes help counter external authoritarian influences? And, in contexts where external diffusion of democratic influences is weak, do we observe greater susceptibility to diffusion from regional autocracies that might in turn reinforce authoritarian practices and institutions in “recipient” states? To address these questions, the paper analyses the hypothetical impact of post-Soviet foreign trade tries on regime, on the one hand, and the impact of the EU's aid on the other hand. We find that EU aid has the effect of countering external autocratic influences that work through Soviet-era inter-regional economic ties. The findings of the paper have wider implications for the literature on diffusion and international dimension of regime transition in general and in post-Communism world in particulr. This paper is part of the project co-authored with Tomila Lankina, Alexnader Libman and myself, Anastassia Obydenkova. It makes part of my own larger project at Davis Center of Harvard University titled "Autocracy Diffusion Across Borders".