Journal of Eurasian Studies最新文献

{"title":"Azerbaijani youth in transition: Is the state youth policy effective enough?","authors":"Anar Valiyev, Abbas Babayev","doi":"10.1177/18793665211046066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/18793665211046066","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the role of the state youth policy of Azerbaijan in supporting young people through their transition from school to work, which is one of the stages when young people can be in particularly fragile situation if not provided with necessary opportunities. The reason for studying the case of Azerbaijan is a considerable share of youth Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET youth) among the country’s youth community. The NEET indicator is considered as a comprehensive indicator within the post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda to measure youth exclusion and marginalization. The findings of this research demonstrate that while the government assumes a broad responsibility to provide youth with education and employment opportunities to support their transition, these intentions have not been translated into real actions. An alarming situation of the country’s youth population is at risk of further exacerbation due to poor understanding of local realities by such global advocates for youth development as United Nations. We discuss this considering the flaws in the operationalization and localization of the concept of the “youth participation” promoted by the United Nations to advance youth interests.","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"4 1","pages":"145 - 154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73118680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Labor unions and institutional corruption: The case of Kazakhstan","authors":"Slyamzhar Akhmetzharov, Serik Orazgaliyev","doi":"10.1177/18793665211041198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/18793665211041198","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, we used the institutional corruption framework to analyze the evolution of labor unions in Kazakhstan. As a research method, we conducted a case study by combining document analysis with survey data covering (n)1,200 respondents across all 14 regions of the country. Our findings suggest that external and internal influences weakened labor unions and diverted from fulfilling their primary purpose of promoting interests of their members. External influences, represented by restrictive regulatory framework and state intervention, create conditions of limited independence of labor unions leaving them extremely narrow scope to operate in. Internal influences are represented by disagreements and conflicts between national-level labor unions. This article stipulates that dysfunctional and institutionally corrupt labor unions in Kazakhstan serve as an indicator of state fragility. The findings confirmed that institutional corruption of labor unions has an adverse impact on public trust, while a frequent occurrence of labor conflicts might impact political risk factors, contributing to increased state fragility.","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"133 - 144"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85651449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bad debt: The women’s mobilization against the financial industry in Kyrgyzstan","authors":"E. Satybaldieva","doi":"10.1177/18793665211029294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/18793665211029294","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a first person account of women’s mobilization against banking and microfinance sectors in Kyrgyzstan. It focuses on the key factors for the evolution of the anti-debt movement, and women’s political strategies to problematize interest and to denaturalize the discourse of financial inclusion. For many years, the financial industry has operated a gendered process of neoliberal capital accumulation under the guise of empowerment that has produced tensions between transnational capital and marginalized women. Building upon Bourdieusian ideas on social movements, the study shows the significance of strain and situational definition in the formation of the anti-debt mobilization. The article uses in-depth interviews with the leaders and activists of the anti-debt movement and borrowers to explore how gender, class and capital were intertwined. It contributes to the literature on post-Soviet politics by challenging the dominant elite-centered frameworks, which are inadequate to explain local movements and gendered activism.","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"169 - 181"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73753774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessment of quality of life in regions of Russia based on social media data","authors":"E. Shchekotin, V. Goiko, M. Myagkov, Darya O Dunaeva","doi":"10.1177/18793665211034185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/18793665211034185","url":null,"abstract":"The article offers a new method of quality of life assessment based on online activities of social networks users. The method has obvious advantages (quickness of research, low costs, large scale, and detailed character of the obtained information) and limitations (it covers only the “digital population,” whereas the rural population is not included). The article dwells on the potential of social networks as a data source to analyze the quality of life; it also presents the results of an empirical study of online activities of the users of VK, the most popular Russian social network. Using the obtained data, the authors have calculated the quality of life index for 83 regions of the Russian Federation based on 19 parameters of economic, social, and political aspects of life quality.","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"182 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88878680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Globalizing local understanding of fragility in Eurasia","authors":"P. Kalra, Siddharth Shanker Saxena","doi":"10.1177/18793665211044839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/18793665211044839","url":null,"abstract":"The article aims to introduce the underlying motivation and conceptual underpinning to the special issue entitled “Globalizing Local Understanding of Fragility in Eurasia.” The main purpose of this article is to problematize the popular opinion and portrayal of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) and more generally the countries of Eurasia and the Caucasus as inherently fragile states which are politically unstable and thus on the brink of collapse. This article also seeks to question narratives of modernity that are singular and constantly out of reach for large swathes of the world’s populations because of the narrowness and hegemonic nature of the architecture of global governance. By carefully considering the ways and means through which international institutions categorize countries as fragile and/or failed, the article aims to provide the theoretical foreground for the special issue which focuses on locating inherent community resilience strategies. We explain how the non-participatory norm making behavior of international organizations privilege certain actors, largely the Global North, and simultaneously ignore the majority of Eurasian states. In other words, a demand predicated in the linear evaluation of institutions and norms dictated by global institutions clash with the Eurasian model of inherent complex adaptive capability and introduce fragility. The focus thus is on understanding the ‘local’ based on the historical analysis of development in the region, nodal points of urban development and community life, forms of social capital, and community resilience strategies in the wider Eurasian region.","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"103 - 112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88159942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Russia, China, and the concept of Indo-Pacific","authors":"I. Denisov, O. Paramonov, E. Arapova, I. Safranchuk","doi":"10.1177/1879366521999899","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1879366521999899","url":null,"abstract":"The newly minted concept of the “Indo-Pacific Region” (IPR) is generally seen as a response by the United States and its allies to China’s growing influence in strategically important areas of the Pacific and Indian oceans. However, the view of IPR as a single (U.S.-led) anti-Beijing front is simplistic and misleading, obscuring a variety of approaches by the region’s states. New Delhi has a strong tradition of non-alignment, whereas Tokyo is more interested in rules that restrict unilateral actions not only by China but also by other regional players, including the United States. Australian business is very cautious about frictions in trade relations with China. Beijing views the growing military activity of the United States off its shores, including in the South China Sea, as a threat to regional stability. According to the authoritative Chinese sources, the Indo-Pacific strategy of Donald Trump is part of broader efforts to prevent China from becoming a dominant regional and global power. At the same time, the development of Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) understanding of the Indo-Pacific region is less of a concern to Beijing, as the South-East Asian countries interested in balancing China and the United States are unlikely to fully join the fight against the “authoritarian threat.” As for Russia, it unequivocally rejects the military/power-based U.S. version of the IPR concept and is more amenable to flexible versions promoted by other players, such as Tokyo’s multilateral vision for the Indo-Pacific Region. In the end, the final response of Russia and China to IPR will thus be determined not only by U.S. actions but also by the behavior of other regional powers.","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"72 - 85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78735717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Europe as the Western Peninsula of Greater Eurasia","authors":"G. Diesen","doi":"10.1177/1879366521998240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1879366521998240","url":null,"abstract":"Will increased economic connectivity on the Eurasian supercontinent convert Europe into the western peninsula of Greater Eurasia? US geoeconomic primacy has relied on organizing the two other major economic regions of the world, Europe and Asia, into the US-led trans-Atlantic region and Indo-Pacific region. Greater Eurasia is a geoeconomic initiative by Russia and China to integrate Europe and Asia to construct a new region. Greater Eurasia is constructed by first establishing a Russian-Chinese regional partnership that decouples from US primacy, and second to integrate Europe into the new Eurasian region. The geoeconomic architecture for region-building, much like the economics of nation-building, consists of developing connectivity and dependencies with strategic industries, transportation corridors, and financial instruments.","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"43 1","pages":"19 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89044097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: From greater Europe to greater Eurasia","authors":"Andrej Krickovic, R. Sakwa","doi":"10.1177/1879366521999907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1879366521999907","url":null,"abstract":"Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). This Special Issue is a project of the `International Laboratory on International Order Studies and the New Regionalism’ of the Higher School of Economics. It examines four key issues. First, at the most abstract level, the collection looks at the profound shift in economic and political power from the West to the East. The definition of both terms—East and West—will be contextualized, but it is clear that we need profound study of political spatiality to provide deeper framing of the epochal move of the center of economic gravity to the East, and with it shifts in global power and the very terms in which power, influence, and status are assessed. The “West” as a political concept was devised during the Cold War, but it is now being disaggregated; while the “East” is taking on new political forms and becoming more assertive in expression. The new East is not necessarily commensurate with the West in political and order-making terms, and thus a new East-West rivalry has emerged, accompanied by continuing North-South contradictions. The ability of the ideology of globalization to smooth over these antinomies is weakening. Second, and rather more specifically, the early postCold War years were accompanied by the belief that Europe would at last be united and that some sort of pan-continental Greater European political identity would emerge. This was formulated by Mikhail Gorbachev as a Common European Home, but his conception of a transformed European international politics was immediately challenged by the idea of a “Europe whole and free” based on the Atlantic power system. In the end, the latter concept led to a process of the enlargement of an existing system, through the expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union, rather than the transformation of European international relations. No stable inclusive peace order was established in Europe, and after 25 years of the cold peace, in 2014 some sort of new Cold War returned to the continent and to global politics. Third, over the same period Asia underwent a process of dramatic transformation, and today the challenge is to find an adequate political form for the rise of the East. China has sponsored the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), while the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other regional bodies have become more active. Global contestation is now the sharpest in this region, accompanied by a clash of integration and alignment projects. The idea of the Indo-Pacific Region (IPR) is explicitly sponsored by the U","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"41 1","pages":"3 - 4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78123530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From “Greater Europe” to “Greater Eurasia”: Status concerns and the evolution of Russia’s approach to alignment and regional integration","authors":"Andrej Krickovic, I. Pellicciari","doi":"10.1177/1879366521998808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1879366521998808","url":null,"abstract":"Russia’s approach to alignment and regional integration has evolved dramatically—from a focus on the West and disinterest and neglect of regional integration in the 1990s, to vigorous efforts to reintegrate the post-Soviet space under Russian leadership in the period between 2009 and 2014, to forming a “Greater Eurasia” that transcends the post-Soviet space and includes China and other non-Western powers (such as Turkey, India, and Iran) today. Status concerns are key to understanding this evolution in policy and vision as a declining Russia struggles to avoid losing great power status. Russia initially eschewed its relationships with post-Soviet states in favor of integration with Europe and the West, which seemed to offer greater status gains. When Russia failed to find a place in the Western liberal order and “Greater Europe” commensurate with its status aspirations, it shifted its attention to regional integration of the post-Soviet space, believing this would make Russia, in the words of President Putin, “one of the poles in a future multipolar world.” However, integrating the post-Soviet space proved to be an arduous task (that failed miserably in Ukraine) and did not yield the status gains Russia hoped for. The scope of Eurasian integration has now shifted to the formation of a “Greater Eurasia,” as Russia looks to gain status through its association with more dynamic rising and emerging powers.","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"86 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1879366521998808","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72503040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sino-Russian rapprochement and Greater Eurasia: From geopolitical pole to international society?","authors":"A. Lukin, D. Novikov","doi":"10.1177/18793665211000057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/18793665211000057","url":null,"abstract":"Can international anarchy be stabilized, if not globally, then at least regionally? Those scholars who give a positive answer usually refer to the North Atlantic community which can be categorized as an international society from the viewpoint of the English school. The emergence of such a community outside the West is traditionally considered hardly possible. However, this article argues that it may already be emerging in Eurasia, with Russia and China being the key drivers of this trend. In the past few years, these two powers have put forward a number of major initiatives aimed at developing transport networks and logistics, and deepening economic and institutional ties between different parts of the continent. These include but are not limited to Eurasian Economic Union, supported by Russia, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Together, Moscow and Beijing began to form a new platform for security and economic cooperation “from Kaliningrad to Shanghai”—the community of Greater Eurasia. Based on the analysis of the geopolitical logic of these initiatives, this article suggests that a new, non-Western international society may be forming in Eurasia among the states with different political systems and cultures, but common geopolitical aims and fears.","PeriodicalId":39195,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eurasian Studies","volume":"252 1","pages":"28 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78197729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}