Demokratizatsiya最新文献

{"title":"Be Careful What You Wish For: A Cautionary Tale of Post-Communist Judicial Empowerment","authors":"M. Popova","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.18.1.56-73","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.18.1.56-73","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article aims to curb the enthusiasm for post-Communist judicial empowerment by showing that sometimes a powerful judiciary can threaten the rule of law. It argues that the powerful Bulgarian Constitutional Court promotes conflict between the executive and the ordinary judiciary. The “war of institutions” has made Bulgaria the poster child for failed judicial reforms among new European Union members. Bulgaria’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale for EU candidate countries and show that strengthening the judiciary is not a panacea.","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"128 11 1","pages":"56-73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79595648","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":"Strident, Ambiguous and Duplicitous: Ukraine and the 2008 Russia-Georgia War","authors":"Taras Kuzio","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.17.4.350-372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.17.4.350-372","url":null,"abstract":"Russia's August 2008 invasion of Georgia and de facto annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will undoubtedly have repercussions for Ukaine's security. Although Ukraine had high hopes--following the Orange Revolution and election of the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko--of quickly integrating into Euro-Atlantic structures, only NATO opened its door in 2005-06 but closed it in 2007-08 due to low public support within Ukraine and the growing appeasement of Russia by key Western European NATO members. The EU continues not to view Ukraine as a future member. Ukraine's security vacuum is coupled with instability, preventing the adoption of a unified position on Russia's aggression in Georgia, which has plagued the entire Yushchenko administration and Russian assertiveness in the region. Russian-Ukrainian relations have deteriorated to their lowest point since the disintegration of the USSR. This poor state of affairs, combined with Russia's willingness and legal justification for defending \"Russian citizens\" abroad, opens up the possibility that localized conflict in the Crimea and Sevastopol can no longer be ruled out. (1) This article is divided into five sections. In the first section, I analyze Ukrainian security policies and security dilemmas in the aftermath of the August 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, (2) taking into consideration that NATO and EU membership are not likely for Ukraine in the foreseeable future. In the second section, I analyze Ukrainian-Georgian relations and the close ideological, personal, and security bonds between Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko and Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili. Although these particular connections emerged after the 2003 Rose Revolution and 2004 Orange Revolution, Ukraine and Georgia had a well-established security relationship under President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine and President Edward Shevardnadze of Georgia until 2003-04. In the third and fourth sections of the article, I discuss the likelihood of the Crimea becoming the next target for Russian territorial assertiveness in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Ukraine's security responses to what Kyiv sees as growing Russian nationalism. Russian opinion polls also show that the United States, Georgia, and Ukraine are the three most disliked countries in Russia. In these sections, I discuss Russia's inability to come to terms with Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, and territorial control over the Crimea, as well as Ukraine's fight to have different national interests from Russia. In the final section, I discuss how the Russia-Georgia war affected Ukrainian domestic politics (for a breakdown by leader and party, see the appendix). This section argues that existing divisions within the Orange Coalition prevented a unified response to the war, although both Our Ukraine (3) and the Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT), as the coalition's two key political forces, feuded, leading to the collapse of the coalition on September 3. (4) B","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"18 1","pages":"350-372"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91263577","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":"The Fundamentalist Utopia of Gennady Shimanov from the 1960S-1980s","authors":"Mikhail D. Suslov","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.17.4.324-349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.17.4.324-349","url":null,"abstract":"During the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev between 1964 and 1982, Soviet cultural ideology underwent barely visible yet crucially important ideological changes. The staunch Marxist-Leninist paradigm succumbed to a more pragmatic orientation. Self-sustaining existence at \"cold peace\" with society became a principal objective of the ruling elite. Evaporation of an official ideology prompted a compromise with the upper levels of society, and drove the regime toward a reluctant recognition of some new ideological schemes, combining Leninism and nationalistic populism. (1) There are various points of comparison between late Imperial Russia, modern Russia after 2000, and the advent of nationalism during the Brezhnev era. In the late nineteenth century, when the model of the \"enlightened monarchy\" was exhausted in Imperial Russia, the tsar and his camarilla were impelled to increasingly employ populist rhetoric and promote an ideological model of the \"people's monarchy,\" exemplified by Slavophiles and their followers. (2) The decrepit Soviet Empire reflected a similar intellectual context in its final decades. In both cases, a tangible opposition from the right appeared, painfully observing what it saw as \"pernicious changes\" and large-scale societal decline. The \"revolutionaries from the right,\" (3) both in late Imperial Russia and in Brezhnev's USSR, manifested a blend of conservatism, xenophobia and Orthodox pietism under the ideological umbrella of Slavophilism. The latter served as a referent ideology and a guiding star for many dissidents. (4) In Russia today, the agreement between the siloviki (security and military) group, certain oligarchs, church hierarchy, and radical right-wing ideologists is obvious. (5) The Eurasian Movement, headed by Aleksandr Dugin, has been especially influential among top political leadership, and is becoming popular in Russian academia and the mass media. (6) The most recent resurgence of modern Slavophilism can be seen Mikhail Iur'ev's provocative text The Fortress Russia (2004), which suggests economic and political isolationism, closure of cultural and academic ties with the West, introduction of an old Russian nonmetric system of measure, rejection of the principle of separation of powers, implantation of a military perspective and rigorous Orthodoxy, and promotion of the concept of Moscow as the \"Third Rome.\" (7) Iur'ev is no political outsider, but the President of Eurofinance Group, one of the richest Russians, former Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, and an active member of Dugin's Eurasian Movement. All different tendencies of modern Russian traditionalism, Slavophilism and religious fundamentalism can be grouped together under the banner of the \"Russian idea,\" (8) or, more specifically, the \"Russian Doctrine,\" as formulated in 2005 and supported by conservative intellectuals of Orthodox background such as Egor Kholmogorov, Mikhail Leont'ev, Dmitri Rogozin, and Natalia Narochnitskaia. (9) This ideology is base","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"27 1","pages":"324-349"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89415327","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":"Perestroika Began in Prague","authors":"Y. Ambartsumov","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.17.4.373-388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.17.4.373-388","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"56 1","pages":"373-388"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69881928","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":"Does \"Populism\" in Europe's New Democracies Really Matter?","authors":"Philip Dimitrov","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.17.4.310-323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.17.4.310-323","url":null,"abstract":"There are authors who claim that a populist revolution has already started in the new democracies of Europe--countries that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, aspired to join or joined NATO or the European Union). (1) If that is the case, the implications are serious. Studying the situation in the new democracies of Europe is especially tempting for at least three reasons: They exhibit in a more direct form some political, mostly populist tendencies that seem to be bulging all around Europe; they seem politically closer to Western countries and can help us better understand what is going on in Western Europe; and new democracies are still considered the weakest point of the West--most of them remain the main object of interest to both an increasingly powerful and aggressive Russia and the forces of fundamentalist Islam. The term populism is easily confused because of its wide and indiscriminate usage. Apart from its mostly historical use for concepts and activities connected with the Populist Party in the United States, it usually has a negative connotation and is used to define political trends that claim to express the needs and desires of common people, usually by challenging the governing elites and by promising things that cannot be delivered. However, the term is also used by politicians who have missed addressing some important issues to castigate their adversaries for managing to address these issues and gaining politically as a result. In Europe, the term has gradually come to mean something that exhibits characteristics of what used to be called in a very broad sense \"fascisoid\"--an amalgam of antidemocratic, statist, xenophobic, ethnocentrist trends, which oppose representative institutions, free initiative, competition, and a number of \"Western values\" like diversity, tolerance, and freedom of expression. Such a definition seems to be pigeonholing populism into a convenient, well-known ideology that can be conceived of as an atavistic--and highly unpleasant-occurrence. The unfolding of strong tendencies in this direction in Eastern Europe, (2) however, seems to provide new insights for the critical assessment of this phenomenon. Four Conspicuous Characteristics of Populism in Eastern Europe The populist movements in Eastern Europe exhibit some common features that can be easily identified. The first of these characteristics is an emphasis on restoring \"statehood.\" The term statehood is hardly translatable, and the dictionary definition fails to explain its implications. In the late-Communist era, the term was widely used to distinguish between the traditional state (e.g., \"capitalist\" or \"feudalist\"), which was officially denounced, and the importance of having some form of a state. Gradually the meaning shifted from the expectation of having rules, security, and a level of solidarity to the idea that the state is supposed to \"give\" work, culture, a future, and individual fulfillment. Emotionally, this seemed to resonate with the sen","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"345 1","pages":"310-323"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72437522","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":"A U.S. Lawyer's Opinion of the Economic Impact of Technology and Corporate Law Developments in the USSR/Russia and China from the Mid-1970s to Today","authors":"T. Shillinglaw","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.17.4.292-309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.17.4.292-309","url":null,"abstract":"I was a lawyer for two large American companies--first for Allis-Chalmers and then for Coming--devoting a great deal of my time to the Soviet Union and Russia beginning in 1975 (including being a resident for Allis-Chalmers in Moscow for 1977 and 1978), and to China beginning in 1983. I worked with both countries until my retirement from Coming in mid-2006. As such, I was in a position to observe significant, indeed historic, changes in both countries' relative economic developments, which I believe were based in significant part on their respective corporate and related technology-law developments during that time. This paper is based on my own observations, including my interactions over this period with many Western, Soviet/Russian and Chinese lawyers, businesspeople and government officials. (1) In brief, this entire period saw China, beginning from a developmental base far inferior to that of the USSR, leapfrog the USSR/Russian Federation in economic development; today, any neutral observer could only conclude that China vastly outpaces the Russian Federation economically, using virtually any relevant indicia or means of comparison. The clearest support for my personal observations contained in this paper is whether legislative changes in areas supporting foreign trade and investment were adopted more quickly and in greater depth, continuity and clarity in China than in the USSR/Russian Federation. This indeed was the case. A very important reason for China being so comparatively successful in developing its economy, beginning with the administration of Deng Xaioping, has been its ability--indeed, its desire--to incorporate Western industrial design and manufacturing technology, and increasingly to build on this technology to develop its own sources of technology in an ever-growing number of industrial sectors. Greatly assisting China in this regard has been the country's extremely open regulatory environment in relation to foreign investment and its cultural receptivity to Western business practices, as well its extensive adoption of Western commercial law concepts, including those relating to technology. Though it is outside the scope of this paper, it must be noted that certainly important for China was the desire (if not the necessity) to be open to Western investment in order to create a rapidly growing domestic industry, making export-quality products, in order to absorb what turned out to be a rural-to-urban internal migration of a size unmatched in history. Russia did not face this problem, and hence had no corresponding need to attract foreign investment to solve it. Given China's ongoing policies and attitudes encouraging foreign investment and other forms of foreign company participation in the Chinese economy, I do not see anything in the current commercial law developments within the Russian Federation relating to foreign companies that would, in the foreseeable future, help to narrow this development gap between the two countri","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"38 1","pages":"292-309"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76909164","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":"Still Staging Democracy: Contestation and Conciliation in Postwar Georgia","authors":"Cory Welt","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.17.3.196-227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.17.3.196-227","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Georgia's August War with Russia prompted a new wave of political mobilization against the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili after a previous effort faltered in 2007-2008. Despite its renewed vigor, the postwar opposition failed for at least three reasons: 1) increased levels of political discontent did not translate to broad public support for the president's resignation; 2) the opposition remained divided with regard to its methods and aims; and 3) the government successfully represented itself as an alternative engine of democratization. Georgian \"street politics\" ought to now be replaced by the implementation of desirable constitutional, electoral, and media reform. Keywords: August War, Georgia, Rose Revolution, state-led reform, street protest ********** Waging war, especially a disastrous one, can have dire consequences for ailing regimes. Georgia's August 2008 war with Russia came after a year of political discontent, especially in the capital city of Tbilisi; a slowing economy; and a rising disenchantment with the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose ascent to power following the 2003 Rose Revolution was a hopeful sign of democratic breakthrough in the troubled Black Sea-Caspian region. Although the political opposition to Saakashvili failed to oust the government before the war, it regrouped afterwards, pursuing the president's resignation--a step it insisted was necessary for Georgia's further democratization and security. The defection of some previously high-level officials in Saakashvili's government, coupled with growing criticism of Saakashvili in the Western capitals most supportive of Georgia, encouraged the opposition to believe that its goal was both justifiable and obtainable. However, the Georgian government was not as vulnerable as many in the opposition believed. A post-Rose Revolution record of successful spending on social programs and infrastructure, the population's postwar solidarity in the face of the Russian threat, and foreign aid packages that included substantial budgetary support all provided the Saakashvili administration with a considerable cushion. More generally, the opposition simply underestimated the difficulty of translating social discontent into regime change. A disillusioned (or at least disconcerted) public still failed to view the war as the kind of unforgivable transgression the opposition made it out to be, so there was no sustained collective protest. The opposition's internal divisions also made it more difficult to compete with the state for support. Although the defections from the government may have been significant, there were only a few. By comparison, the opposition remained openly divided, with its leaders joining forces tactically but with no real consensus regarding the ends and means of protest, and often charting a course of action based on personal animosities toward Saakashvili or their personal political fortunes, rather than working to achieve po","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"20 1","pages":"196-227"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88396318","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":"The Five-Day War and Transnational Politics: A Semiospace Spanning the Borders between Georgia, Russia, and Ossetia","authors":"K. Matsuzato","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.17.3.228-250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.17.3.228-250","url":null,"abstract":"A draft of this article was submitted to the conference, \"Putin's Blueprint and the Five-Day War in Georgia: Security and Political Implications in the CEE/CIS and U.S. Policy,\" held on April 6, 2009, at Heldref Publications in Washington, DC.In this article, I scrutinize the impact of the Five-Day War of 2008 on the domestic politics of the Black Sea countries. Rather than focusing on one country involved in the war-either Georgia, Russia, or the de facto Ossetian polity (combining its northern and southern territories)-I try to show the existence of a political semiotic space spanning the borders of Georgia, Russia, and Ossetia that emerged as a result of two decades of conflict regulation and continues to function even after the Five-Day War. To put it differently, this is a case study of transnational politics.This article is a byproduct of my research on the Joint Control Commission for Georgian-Ossetian Conflict Resolution (JCC), which was active from 1992 to 2008.1 When I first visited Vladikavkaz in January 2009, I started conducting interviews to learn \"objective\" information about the JCC. Before long, I became fascinated by my subjects' narratives, which were full of wit and humor despite their unpleasant memories of the war. When I visited Georgia in March 2009, meetings, demonstrations, and rock concerts demanding the resignation of (or criminal sanctions against) Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, attended by thousands of participants, were held every day. I collected as many commentaries and stories from the opposition leaders as possible, conveyed them to the South Ossetian experts, and asked them whether the new tendencies in Georgian society were worth making them rethink their relations with Georgia. I essentially tried to organize virtual debates between the experts severed from each other by the military line after August 2008. This method of virtual debate is often used in historiographical studies.2In this article, I organize the further analyses according to questions that both Georgian and Ossetian experts recognize as relevant: (1) Who started the war, Russia or Georgia? (2) If Georgia started the war, was this because Saakashvili was trapped by Russia? (3) Why did Russian troops march toward Tskhinval so slowly, thus inflicting evitable casualties on the South Ossetians? (4) Was the creation of Dmitry Sanakoev's government a provocation or an attempt at peace? (5) Can Georgia expect to reunify South Ossetia in the future, despite the atrocities in August 2008? and (6) Should the Georgian nation bear collective responsibility for the Five-Day War?I will try to convey the experts' lively voices, particularly those of the Georgian opposition and the South Ossetians. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate that a virtual transnational semiospace of Georgian and Ossetian experts continues to exist, even after the Five-Day War.Theoretical Proposition: Why Can the Unrecognized States Be a Nursery for Transnational Politics?As ","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"1 1","pages":"228-250"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75474462","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":"Georgian Politics since the August 2008 War","authors":"S. Cornell, N. Nilsson","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.17.3.251-268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.17.3.251-268","url":null,"abstract":"Georgian politics since late 2007 has attracted interest mainly because of its highly polarized political climate. The leadership of Mikheil Saakashvili, widely heralded as a beacon of democracy in ...","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"13 1","pages":"251-268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89527611","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":"Victim of a \"War of Ideologies\": Azerbaijan after the Russia-Georgia War","authors":"Anar Valiyev","doi":"10.3200/DEMO.17.3.269-288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.17.3.269-288","url":null,"abstract":"The five-day war between Russia and Georgia dramatically changed the political situation in the South Caucasus. Although Azerbaijan was not directly involved in the conflict, the war nevertheless forced Baku to reevaluate its foreign and domestic policies. Moscow's successful military intervention in Georgia forced Azerbaijan to distance itself from the United States to avoid antagonizing a belligerent Russia. Meanwhile, the inability of the Western countries-the United States in particular-to adequately respond to Russia led to large-scale public disappointment among Azerbaijanis. The crisis also \"generated new sources of instability for the entire post-Soviet space, not only because it highlighted a new form of Russian revisionism but also because it brought to the fore the limits of Western policies in what Kremlin views as its sphere of influence.\"1 Moscow clearly showed its claims over the South Caucasus and demonstrated its readiness to embark on military confrontation to achieve its goals. The postwar situation indicated that Azerbaijan could become the next site where U.S.-Russian rivalry will arise. The Russian government's decision to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia has led Azerbaijan to fear that Moscow would try to give similar support to the ethnic Armenian population in the region of Karabakh if Azerbaijan aligns itself too closely to the West.Much has been written about the Russia-Georgia War's impact on foreign policy, energy projects, and the clash of geopolitical interests. However, scholars and researchers have generally overlooked the influence of the war on domestic policy, political development, and changes in public perception. One of the assumptions of realist theory, which shapes the paradigm that underlies much of the theoretical understanding of political science, is that \"states are unitary actors and that domestic politics can be separated from foreign policy.\"2 Unfortunately, the complexity of the problem in Azerbaijan has made it difficult to distinguish between domestic and foreign politics. The absence of any visible developments in domestic politics, the silence of political scientists and public figures, and an inactive and docile public have coalesced to limit research on the problem.In this article, I aim to analyze the domestic development in Azerbaijan and establish causality between certain events and the Russia-Georgia crisis. I look at the Azerbaijani public's changes in perception to see whether any changes occurred because of the conflict. I then examine the domestic security issues facing Azerbaijan and the government's reaction to these events. Finally, I examine political development in Azerbaijan after the war.Public Opinions, Changing Perceptions, and ExpectationsThe war put Baku in a very delicate position. Refusing to support an important ally would have negatively affected Azerbaijan's image both abroad and in the eyes of a public that was clearly on the side of neighboring Georgia. The Aze","PeriodicalId":39667,"journal":{"name":"Demokratizatsiya","volume":"169 1","pages":"269-288"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78822244","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}