Democratization and Civil Society in the Post-Soviet South Caucasus

Date

2009-10-24

Author

Ergun Özbolat, Ayça

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

214
views

0
downloads

The post-Soviet period in the South Caucasus is shaped by the processes of nation and state-building and attempts to democratization as elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. The aim of this article is to highlight the peculiarities of the post-Soviet transition in the region while focusing on the nature of political transformation, democratization and civil society development. The analysis of the post-independence politics in the South Caucasus shows that the entire process of transition is dominated by the co-existence of continuity and change. The patterns of continuity inherited from the Soviet past are predominantly represented and reproduced by the ruling elite with varying degrees whereas the patterns of change associated with liberalization and democratization are mainly internalized and propagated by the societal actors. Yet, it is quite clear that unless the ruling elite's initiatives and policies towards democratic change are secured, the transformative power of societal actors remains insufficient.

Subject Keywords

Post-Soviet transition, Democratization, Civil society, Political transformation, South Caucasus

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/46558

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-60750-684-3-47

Collections

Department of Sociology, Conference / Seminar

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Actors in the south caucasus : stability providers or instability exploiters Yükselen, Hasan; Bağcı, Hüseyin; Department of International Relations (2004) This thesis analyses the developments in the South Caucasus region since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The disintegration brought about the decleration of independence from teh states in the region, namely Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. However, the conflicts in the aftermath of independence drawing the region into instability brought about the question of whether the instability in the region is an end result of teh policies of regional actors in the region. Whether teh stability in the South Cau...
Old and New Problems in the Balkans and Marxism Türkeş, Mustafa (2018-12-01) Efforts to determine the place of Marxism in the Balkans in a historical manner seem to enable us to outline not only the historical importance of Marxism but also to point out more precisely its relevance with contemporary problems and possible solutions in the Balkans. In order to outline very briefly the place of Marxism in the Balkans, this paper first seeks to discuss the old (late 19th, early 20th) and new (late 20th, early 21st century) common problems people in the Balkans encountered with a view to...
Constructing the Albanian Nation through Discourse Continuity and Change in Three Periods in Modern History of Albania Sulstarova, Enis; Köksal, Pınar (2008-01-01) This article analyzes the continuity and change in the nationalist discourse in Albania during the three periods of its modern history, National Awakening (1878-1912), Communism (1944-1990), and Post-Communism (1990-2002) by looking at the three basic approaches of the literature on ethnic studies: primordialism, circumstantialism, and constructionism. We aim to show how the actors of nationalist discourse construct a 'primordial' Albanian identity in different, yet somehow consistent ways over these three ...
Syrian Armenians during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries Memiş (Eroğlu), Şerife; Turan, Ömer; Department of Middle East Studies (2007) This thesis analyses the situation of the Syrian Armenians during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries. The central position of the Provinces of Aleppo and Damascus, parts of today’s Syria, for both the Armenian communities of Aleppo and Damascus and the Ottoman Empire are the main incentives that determine the focus of this study as Syrian Armenians. Apart from the representation of the social, economic, political, religious, cultural and educational life of t...
Mapping the spatial ideologies: the case of Hekimhan mining settlement, Malatya Evirgen, Nihal; Alanyalı Aral, Eda.; Department of Architecture (2019) This thesis follows the spatial traces of iron mining in Hekimhan district of Malatya, aiming to make its dialectical relationship to the history of political-economy of Turkey and ideological framework visible. Within this scope, it examines how the iron and steel industry has been linked to political-economic relations throughout the history of the Republic and approaches ideological superstructure elements regarding their reflections on space. By focusing on social facilities of the Hekimhan Mining Insti...

Citation Formats

A. Ergun Özbolat, “Democratization and Civil Society in the Post-Soviet South Caucasus,” 2009, vol. 77, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/46558.