Civics Education and Democracy Building in Azerbaijan: A Missed Opportunity?

Abstract Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Azerbaijan, this article examines the civics education program that existed in Azerbaijan in the 1990s and the early 2000s, prior to its incorporation into a newly created “life skills” (həyat bilgisi in Azerbaijani) course. It is argued that a disconnect between curriculum reform and classroom practice resulted in a missed opportunity for the “first cohort of post-Soviet Azerbaijanis” to benefit from a civics education program that could have had the capacity to impart a meaningful understanding of democracy and thereby useful democracy building skills.