Russia in WTO: interests, policy autonomy, and deliberations

Abstract

The author examines the role of Russia's WTO accession in shaping institutional adaptation across several important dimensions, arguing that WTO accession has generated more scope for pro-trade as opposed to protectionist domestic interest groups, constrained the scope of trade policy, and made more and better information available to deliberations by business and the public related to trade. Adjustments to Russian legislation and trade policies through the lengthy accession process have, it is argued, helped elicit more transparent forms of business-government coordination. The article also explores the role of Russia's WTO commitments in shaping the functioning of the Eurasian Customs Union formed in 2010. The crisis in Russia's relations with the EU and the US, initially sparked by contending projects of regional economic integration, will be a major challenge for the WTO's agenda-setting and conflict management functions, a test having implications for the broad question of relevance of the WTO in an atmosphere of renewed geopolitical tensions among major powers.

Harmonization of Russian supply chain management standards with EU requirements

“…This transition will require high implementation costs (Pinto et al, 2018). However, given rather long transition periods and the fact that the Russian Federation has already done a lot to harmonize its laws and standards with the European ones, these costs are not critical (Groves & Gini, 2011; O'Neal, 2014). Only the Russian Federation’s accession to the WTO has considerably increased the volume of its imports (Groves & Gini, 2011; Jordan, 2017).…”

Perspectives of the Russian agricultural exports in terms of comparative advantage

“…Results of the analysis show that such policy can be successful. O'Neal (2014) highlighted the same problem of the government intervention in agriculture. If the Russian government keeps this approach for the future, a further strengthening of the Russia's position as an exporter of agricultural products and an increasing number of products with comparative advantage can be expected.…”