Holding together regionalism and the interaction of functional bureaucracies

The paper focuses on regional integration projects established by countries originally comprising a single political entity after its collapse. It shows that in this framework the existing economic ties between countries are likely to adversely affect the interests of functional bureaucracy to support regional integration given the cutting off the existing connections is often more promising from the point of view of the budget expansion. Hence, interaction of national and supranational bureaucracies is unlikely to generate impetus for increasing regional cooperation. On the other hand, external economic shocks are likely to boost “holding-together” regionalism. The empirical case for the analysis is that of the regional cooperation of the post-Soviet countries in the area of transportation and power utilities.