Eurasian Politics and Society: Issues and Challenges studies the various outcomes of regional transformation, the ideology of Turkish Eurasianism, and the Eurasian Economic Union. In doing so, it looks at the power struggle in the South Caucasus, Kazakhstan’s relations with Russia, Russia’s sense of Eurasianism, and geopolitical awareness as a pattern of imperial self-perception for Putin’s Russia. The book also provides a detailed analysis of the situation in Syria from a humanitarian perspective, and utilizes an innovative approach in exploring how the European Neighbourhood Policy resonates in Neo/Functionalism. As such, this volume represents a valuable resource for graduate and undergraduate students, academics and researchers in the areas of security, political economy, European studies, post-Soviet studies, and Eurasian studies.
The transitional politics of Eurasian space is marked by a constant struggle among three sets of ideas and institutions: the 1 is the remarkable resilience of Soviet ideas and institutions; 2, an attempt by the regimes of these states to reinvent the historical and cultural traditions of preSoviet periods; and third is an attempt by a section of the powerful elite to superimpose Western liberal ideas and institutions. There is a strange intertwining of these ideas and institutions. This book examines the extent to which the postSoviet politics has departed from the Soviet one. What are the new ideational structures emerging in these states and how far have they crystallised into institutions? What are the external influences which are shaping the institutions in the Eurasian space? And finally, what are the various dynamics of geopolitics in this region? Experts from various countries will delve into the shifting dynamics of Eurasian politics.
Reflecting on two decades of experience, Gender Politics in Post-Communist Eurasia offers new and important insights into contemporary global gender politics by leading scholars from Central Asia, Europe, and the United States - into the contemporary dynamics of gender politics in a critical area of the world. The volume includes case studies of Romania, Russia, and Tajikistan; comparative analyses of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan; and regional examinations of Eastern and Central Europe and Central Asia. The interdisciplinary contributions focus on issues such as the influence of global and regional norms on women's rights, the impact of international political economy on women's social and economic positions, and the implications of international and regional migration and human trafficking for women's lives. Gender Politics in Post-Communist Eurasia provides wide-ranging analyses that capture the distinctiveness of specific countries and regions while illuminating the interplay between the local and the global in gender politics.
First Published in 1998. This ambitious ten-volume series develops a com prehensive analysis of the evolving world role of the post-Soviet successor states. Each volume considers a different factor influencing the relationship between internal politics and international relations in Russia and in the western and southern tiers of newly independent states.
"As a global power, the United States will always be interested in Eurasia and engaged with its peoples and nations. Eurasia is too large and important a part of the world to be ignored. It casts a shadow of the old Soviet threat forward in time, and its axis-the Russian Federation-is nuclear-armed. So are its neighbors, China to the east, India and Pakistan to the south; and there are others in the queue. Eurasia's new nations are players on today's most urgent global issues: terrorism; counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction; economic stability and growth (including its energy centerpiece); stable political development (including democratization, its long-term key).... So the context for why Eurasia matters is very large."—from Eurasia's New Frontiers In Eurasia's New Frontiers, Thomas W. Simons, Jr., a distinguished veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service with extensive experience in the Communist and post-Communist worlds, assays the political, economic, and social developments in the fifteen successor states to the Soviet Union that comprise Eurasia—from Estonia to Azerbaijan and from Tajikistan to Ukraine, centered on Russia. He makes a compelling case that the United States can play a large role in shaping the future of this vast and strategic region, and at less cost than during Soviet times. This can only be accomplished, however, if U.S. policy toward Eurasia shifts from alternating hand-wringing and indifference to steady and flexible engagement that focuses on its fledgling individual nation-states. Throughout Eurasia, Simons shows, civil society is anemic, market reforms have been discredited, and political development has been stunted. Authoritarian and semiauthoritarian regimes are firmly in place from Belarus to Central Asia; in Ukraine, Moldova, and even Russia, some democratic forms have taken hold; but everywhere, politics features struggle among elites over access to economic resources, albeit often defined in terms of "sovereignty." Almost everywhere, states are consolidating: as resurgent Russia presses on its neighbors, they can now press back, alone or with help from the outside world. Simons believes that the post-Soviet space needs stable development of state institutions within which new civil societies can take root and grow. Potentially strong state institutions are, in his view, Soviet Communism's "secret gift" to Eurasia, and they may well enable the region to become in time an arc of promise, an anchor of relative stability in a troubled part of the world. For that to happen, Simons argues, the nationalism that gives content to these new state structures must be the right kind: civic and inclusionary rather than ethno-religious and exclusionary. Because Russia is so diverse and its nationalism so state-oriented, Simons also sees it as more likely to develop that kind of civic nationalism than some of its new neighbors. The United States has a limited but real role to play in helping or hindering its emergence everywhere in Eurasia. If it wishes to help, though, the U.S. must realize that in this part of the world the path to democracy leads through state development. The U.S. will continue to advocate for its core values, but it can best act as a City on the Hill for Eurasia if its policy centers on the emerging new states of today, for they must be the incubators of tomorrow's civil societies.
This volume studies the contemporary dynamics of conflict and cooperation within Eurasia with reference to interdependencies, partnerships and contestations on regional security, energy, democratic transition, and trade. Its key concern, in a broader sense, is, therefore, to understand the various outcomes of post-Soviet regional transformation and the intra- and inter-regional integrative or dismantling interaction making the regional countries hopeful or pessimistic about the future of their immediate and extended neighbourhood within contemporary Eurasia. The contributions here unfold the contemporary strategies of individual states with regards to cooperation, on the one hand, and the unavoidable conflicts in both bilateral relations and on a regional level, on the other. The chapters examine, with reference to central Eurasia, the root causes and the transitive character of conflict and cooperation, regional security dynamics and competing security complexes, and rising powers’ increasing involvement in the equation favouring cooperation via trade. As such, this book provides a better understanding of both the issues and the challenges the wider Eurasian region is currently experiencing.
This book proposes a new way of understanding events throughout the world that are usually interpreted as democratization, rising authoritarianism, or revolution. Where the rule of law is weak and corruption pervasive, what may appear to be democratic or authoritarian breakthroughs are often just regular, predictable phases in longer-term cyclic dynamics - patronal politics. This is shown through in-depth narratives of the post-1991 political history of all post-Soviet polities that are not in the European Union. This book also includes chapters on czarist and Soviet history and on global patterns.
"State weakness" is seen to be a widespread problem throughout Central Asia and other parts of post-socialist space, and more broadly in areas of the developing world. Challenging the widespread assumption that these "weak states" inevitably slide toward failure, Paradox of Power takes careful stock of the varied experiences of Eurasian states to reveal a wide array of surprising outcomes. The case studies show how states teeter but do not collapse, provide public goods against all odds, interact with societies in creative ways, utilize coercion effectively against internal opponents, and establish practices that are far more durable than the language of "weakness" would allow. While deepening our understanding of the phenomenon in Eurasia in particular, the essays also contribute to more general theories of state weakness.
In this original and timely book, Bruno Maçães argues that the best word for the emerging global order is 'Eurasian', and shows why we need to begin thinking on a super-continental scale. While China and Russia have been quicker to recognise the increasing strategic significance of Eurasia, even Europeans are realizing that their political project is intimately linked to the rest of the supercontinent - and as Maçães shows, they will be stronger for it. Weaving together history, diplomacy and vivid reports from his six-month overland journey across Eurasia from Baku to Samarkand, Vladivostock to Beijing, Maçães provides a fascinating portrait of this shifting geopolitical landscape. As he demonstrates, we can already see the coming Eurasianism in China's bold infrastructure project reopening the historic Silk Road, in the success of cities like Hong Kong and Singapore, in Turkey's increasing global role and in the fact that, revealingly, the United States is redefining its place as between Europe and Asia. An insightful and clarifying book for our turbulent times, The Dawn of Eurasia argues that the artificial separation of the world's largest island cannot hold, and the sooner we realise it, the better.
