From logic of competition to conflict: understanding the dynamics of EU-Russia relations

To understand the gradual worsening of EU–Russia relations in the decade preceding the Ukraine crisis, it is essential to understand the dynamics of their interaction. This article divides EU–Russia relations into three stages on the basis of changing intergroup dynamics: asymmetrical cooperation (1992–2003), pragmatic but increasing competition (2004–2013) and conflict (2013–present). It draws on the concept of ‘attributional bias’ to explain the escalating logic of competition during the second stage. The EU and Russia started to attribute each other negative geopolitical intentions up to the point where these images became so dominant that they interpreted each other’s behaviour almost exclusively in terms of these images, rather than on the basis of their actual behaviour. With the Ukraine crisis, EU–Russia relations changed from competition over institutional arrangements in the neighbourhood and over normative hegemony to conflict over direct control

The failed liberalisation of Algeria and the international context: a legacy of stable authoritarianism

The paper attempts to challenge the somewhat marginal role of international factors in the study of transitions to democracy. Theoretical and practical difficulties in proving causal mechanisms between international variables and domestic outcomes can be overcome by defining the international dimension in terms of Western dominance of world politics and by identifying Western actions towards democratising countries. The paper focuses on the case of Algeria, where international factors are key in explaining the initial process of democratisation and its following demise. In particular, the paper argues that direct Western policies, the pressures of the international system and external shocks influence the internal distribution of power and resources, which underpins the different strategies of all domestic actors. The paper concludes that analysis based purely on domestic factors cannot explain the process of democratisation and that international variables must be taken into more serious account and much more detailed

Understanding Russia's return to the Middle East

Over recent years, there has been a significant resurgence of Russian power and influence in the Middle East, which has been evident in the diplomatic and military intervention into Syria. This article identifies the principal factors behind Russia’s return to the region. First, there are domestic political influences with the coincidence of the uprisings in the Middle East, the so-called ‘Arab Spring,’ with large-scale domestic opposition protests within Russia during the elections in 2011–2012. Second, there is the role of ideas, most notably the growing anti-Westernism in Putin’s third presidential term, along with Russia’s own struggle against Islamist terrorism. These ideational factors contributed to Russia’s resolve to support the Assad government against both Western intervention and its domestic Islamist opposition. Third, Russia has benefited from a pragmatic and flexible approach in its engagement with the region. Moscow seeks to ensure that it is a critical actor for all the various states and political movements in the Middle East

Russia’s Eurasian past, present and future: rival international societies and Moscow’s place in the post-cold war world

The failure of post-Soviet Russia to integrate into the West became evident with the 2014 Ukraine crisis, leading Moscow to accelerate its declared “pivot to the East”. However, the increased dependence on China carries its own risks, such as the danger of becoming Beijing’s junior partner. For an erstwhile superpower that continues to declare and prize its autonomy in international affairs, this is a particularly unappealing prospect. Thus, it remains to be seen whether a genuinely balanced partnership can exist between both countries. This article uses insights from Adam Watson’s pendulum theory to explore Russia’s post-2014 Eurasian predicament. We argue that the rapid rightward swing of the pendulum in the Euro-Atlantic order following the end of the Cold War has proven indigestible for Moscow. The article then moves to discuss the Sino-Russian relationship in the context of the emerging Eurasian space. It concludes that the growing disillusionment of Russian leaders with the West since the 2000s, along with the normative convergence between Moscow and Beijing, has led to a closer partnership between the two. Yet the partnership is also riddled with a number of insecurities on Moscow’s side that could undermine the long-term prospects for cooperation between Russia and China

Stasis and Change: Russia and the Emergence of an Anti-Hegemonic World Order

This chapter argues that after a quarter century of stasis, the pattern of world order is changing and the inter-cold war period of the cold peace is giving way not to a thaw, but to the re-entrenchment of bipolar confrontation between the expansive liberal international order and the resistance of a group of states including Russia. Like the First Cold War, the second is also about the conflicting views of world order as the U.S.-led liberal international order is challenged by the emergence of a putative anti-hegemonic alignment between Russia, China and their allies in the emerging alternative architecture of world affairs – especially the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The clash between Russia and the West, in this sense, is only an early version – and ultimately perhaps not the most significant – of the challenges against the long-term stasis in international affairs. Although the sinews of a post-Western world are emerging, it remains to be seen whether bodies like SCO and BRICS will be able to sustain the multilateralism of the last seven decades in the absence of the hegemon that had provided the security and support for such multilaterialism to thrive

1989 as a mimetic revolution: Russia and the challenge of post-communism

Various terms have been used to describe the momentous events of 1989, including Jürgen Habermas’s ‘rectifying revolution,’ and my own notion of 1989 as a type of ‘anti-revolution’: repudiating not only what had come before, but also denying the political logic of communist power, as well as the emancipatory potential of revolutionary socialism in its entirety. In the event, while the negative agenda of 1989 has been fulfilled, it failed in the end to transcend the political logic of the systems that collapsed at that time. This paper explores the unfulfilled potential of 1989. Finally, 1989 became more of a counter- rather than an anti-revolution, replicating in an inverted form the practices of the mature state socialist regimes. The paucity of institutional and intellectual innovation arising from 1989 is striking. The dominant motif was ‘returnism,’ the attempt to join an established enterprise rather than transforming it. Thus, 1989 can be seen as mimetic revolution, in the sense that it emulated systems that were not organically developed in the societies in which they were implanted. For Eastern Europe ‘returning’ to Europe appeared natural, but for Russia the civilizational challenge of post-communism was of an entirely different order. There could be no return, and instead of a linear transition outlined by the classic transitological literature, Russia’s post-communism demonstrated that the history of others could not be mechanically transplanted from one society to another

The Rho GDI Rdi1 regulates Rho GTPases by distinct mechanisms

© 2008 by The American Society for Cell Biology. Under the License and Publishing Agreement, authors grant to the general public, effective two months after publication of (i.e.,. the appearance of) the edited manuscript in an online issue of MBoC, the nonexclusive right to copy, distribute, or display the manuscript subject to the terms of the Creative Commons–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).The small guanosine triphosphate (GTP)-binding proteins of the Rho family are implicated in various cell functions, including establishment and maintenance of cell polarity. Activity of Rho guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) is not only regulated by guanine nucleotide exchange factors and GTPase-activating proteins but also by guanine nucleotide dissociation inhibitors (GDIs). These proteins have the ability to extract Rho proteins from membranes and keep them in an inactive cytosolic complex. Here, we show that Rdi1, the sole Rho GDI of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, contributes to pseudohyphal growth and mitotic exit. Rdi1 interacts only with Cdc42, Rho1, and Rho4, and it regulates these Rho GTPases by distinct mechanisms. Binding between Rdi1 and Cdc42 as well as Rho1 is modulated by the Cdc42 effector and p21-activated kinase Cla4. After membrane extraction mediated by Rdi1, Rho4 is degraded by a novel mechanism, which includes the glycogen synthase kinase 3β homologue Ygk3, vacuolar proteases, and the proteasome. Together, these results indicate that Rdi1 uses distinct modes of regulation for different Rho GTPases.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaf

The different faces of power in EU-Russia relations

This article applies Barnett and Duvall’s taxonomy of power to EU-Russia relations aiming to understand power in its complexity and without a priori theoretical assumptions. Four different types of power – compulsory, institutional, structural and productive - feature simultaneously. It is argued that non-compulsory forms of power are key to understand the logic of competition in EU-Russia relations in the decade preceding the 2014 Ukraine crisis, despite receiving limited scholarly attention. First, a struggle over institutional power, the capacity to control the conditions of the other actor indirectly, appeared from rivalling integration projects and competing norm diffusion. Secondly, power relations were strongly characterised by constitutive forms of power - structural and productive -, in particular the capacity to produce and recognise identities, such as Europeanness. In both fields the EU held a hegemonic position, which Russia increasingly challenged. The geopolitical reading of the regime change in Ukraine in 2014 prompted Moscow to a radical change of strategy, shifting the emphasis in the confrontation to compulsory power. Attempts at direct control, from annexation to sanctions, now dominate relations. Whereas Russia seeks to prevent the Euro-Atlantic community from gaining effective control over Ukraine through destabilisation, this can be labelled ‘negative’ compulsory power

Oil and gas:a blessing for the few. Hydrocarbons and inequality within regions in Russia

Building on earlier work on regional inequality in Russia the article seeks to demonstrate that the regional oil and gas abundance is associated with high within-region inequality. It provides empirical evidence that hydrocarbons represent one of the leading determinants of an increased gap between rich and poor in the producing regions. The discussion focuses on a possible cluster of geographic, economic and political factors underlying the phenomenon