This grant enabled Dr. Molchanov to attend the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) 42nd annual conference on September 3-5 in 2012.
Summary of paper presented:
The paper aims to present a study of regional integration projects in the postcommunist Eurasia, defined as the former Soviet space plus China, and the impact that the Russian foreign policy has on these projects. The role that major powers, both indigenous (Russia) and external to the post Soviet region (China, USA) play in, alternatively, encouraging or dampening the development of the competing regionalist projects remains underexplored. The paper will endeavor to close this gab by looking at new regionalism in Eurasia in the context of a parallel exploration of Russia’s foreign policy. I address Eurasian regionalist projects as a subset of the new regionalism (NR) developments that had emerged in response to neoliberal globalization and represent an adaptive reaction to it. The foreign emphasis in a study of evolving regionalisms endeavors to refocus the attention on regionalizing agency and its role in shaping regional institutions and structures. Such a refocusing allows building a bridge from a study of new regionalism to a study of domestic determinants of foreign policy.