Correction to: Frankenstein in Grozny: vertical and horizontal cracks in the foundation of Kadyrov’s rule

Asia Europe Journal - Many scholars have suggested that organized violence in Chechnya has ended, and that Russia’s Chechenization policy and Ramzan Kadyrov’s presidency deserve the...     

The differential demand for indirect rule: evidence from the North Caucasus

Indirect rule is one of the means that central authorities have long employed in hopes of defusing communal conflict and civil war in multicultural societies. Yet very little is known about the appeal of indirect rule among the ruled themselves. Why do people in some places demand more indirect rule and local autonomy, whereas others seem content to be governed directly by rulers of an alien culture? This is a crucial question with important implications for determining the form of governance that is most likely to provide social order in culturally heterogeneous societies. Although much attention has been given to consider the relative costs and benefits of direct versus indirect rule for the central authorities, the other side of the coin – namely, the variable demand for indirect rule among the members of distinctive cultural groups – has hardly been examined with systematic empirical data. This paper presents a theory of the differential demand for indirect rule and offers an initial test of its principal empirical implications using original micro-level data from the North Caucasus region of Russia. The theory's core claim is that the middle class should express the greatest demand for indirect rule, while both the upper and lower classes should prefer more direct rule. The theory therefore predicts that there will be an inverse parabolic relationship between the demand for indirect rule and economic class. The findings are largely consistent with these theoretical expectations.     

Rational or reckless? Georgia's zugzwang in the Caucasus

Although the 2008 Russian-Georgian war was a military defeat for Georgia, it has only reinforced Georgia's westward trajectory. One noteworthy difference from Georgia's pre-war policy is a new regional strategy – the North Caucasus Initiative – that seeks to create a soft power alternative to Russia's military dominance in the region. We suggest that this approach is rational rather than reckless, as some critics have claimed. It represents a carefully calculated strategy that is already benefiting Georgia and from which all concerned parties, including Russia, stand to gain. If the South and North Caucasus were more open and less divided – a direction in which this new initiative appears to point – the Caucasus could become more prosperous and more stable. That would serve Russia's long-term interest by significantly reducing the cost of subsidies to sustain and stabilize the volatile region.     

International Recognition and Religion: A Quantitative Analysis of Kosovo’s Contested Status

Recognition from other recognized states is the key to becoming a fully fledged member state of the international system. Although many new states are quickly and universally recognized, the recognition of other aspiring states remains highly contested. In these cases of contested sovereignty, some countries but not others extend recognition. However, research on what shapes a country’s decision to recognize a claim to sovereign statehood remains relatively sparse. This article focuses on how religion shapes the incentives of states to extend or withhold recognition to aspiring states in cases of contested sovereignty. It posits two mechanisms, one at the domestic level through religious institutions and one at the international level through transnational religious affinities. The article uses new data on all state decisions regarding the international recognition of Kosovo to test these propositions. The results provide strong support for these two pathways through which religion shapes state decisions regarding international recognition.     

Judgement without justice: on the efficacy of the European human rights regime

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is widely regarded as the most important human rights court worldwide. This article investigates the extent to which the court addresses cases from countries with the worst human rights performance. Using a new data set on all ECtHR judgments from 1995–2012, the analysis suggests that the ECtHR does not deliver its judgments against members of the Council of Europe with the worst human rights records, but instead against more democratic and affluent states. The reason is that litigating in front of a supranational court requires capacities that vulnerable people are unlikely to possess, except when aided by transnational advocacy groups. However, more judgements are issued against countries that lack independent judiciaries, where cases are less likely to be resolved at the domestic level. While the ECtHR might not address the worst human rights crimes, it plays a subsidiary role in the European human rights protection system by compensating for weak domestic judiciaries. However, the court's inability to independently pursue litigation, together with the lack of capacity in some countries to bring cases forward, have hampered more effective protection of human rights for the most vulnerable in Europe.     

Guns,roses and democratization: Huntington's secret admirer in the Caucasus

Georgia is the most democratic country in the Caucasus, but arguably its democratization has also been riddled by Huntingtonian developmental crises, resulting in ethnic conflicts and civil wars. We argue that variation in the type of political instability is best understood by focusing on the interaction between nationalism and political institutionalization rather than on their independent effects. We show that Gamsakhurdia's “state-breaking nationalism”, coupled with political deinstitutionalization, produced separatist and centrist civil wars. When Saakashvili's “state-making nationalism” enhanced state capacity, it marginalized the opposition and rekindled frozen separatist conflicts, but stronger administrative institutions enabled the government to avert another revolutionary regime change.     

Thinking Outside the Bloc: Explaining the Foreign Policies of Small States

What explains change and continuity in the foreign policy behavior of small states? Given the proliferation of small states over the past century, this topic has received relatively little systematic attention. When researchers do focus on small states, the emphasis has been on external and international factors, and the primary conclusion has been that small states are more likely to bandwagon with threatening great powers than to balance against them. In this article, we suggest that state- and individual-level variables can play a greater role in explaining the foreign policy behavior of small states and that small states sometimes choose to balance rather than bandwagon, especially when elite ideology is deeply embedded in formulating foreign policy. We develop this claim in terms of elite ideas about the identity and purpose of the state and examine its plausibility using primary sources and exclusive interviews with the security and foreign policy elite in Georgia. We find that this approach offers a more plausible explanation for Georgia's otherwise puzzling foreign policy behavior than frameworks that focus on the international or regional system. Although Georgia may be the exception that proves the rule, it can advance an understanding of the conditions under which standard explanations of small-state foreign policy behavior may miss their predictive mark and when incorporating the role of elite ideas can provide additional explanatory leverage.     

Inside Irredentism: A Global Empirical Analysis

Although many countries have ethnic kin on the “wrong side” of their borders, few seek to annex foreign territories on the basis of ethnicity. This article examines why some states pursue irredentism, whereas others exhibit restraint. It focuses on the triadic structure of the kin group in the irredentist state, its coethnic enclave, and the host state, and provides new data on all actual and potential irredentist cases from 1946 to 2014. The results indicate that irredentism is more likely when the kin group is near economic parity with other groups in its own state, which results in status inconsistency and engenders grievances. It is also more likely in more ethnically homogeneous countries with winner‐take‐all majoritarian systems where the kin group does not need to moderate its policy to win elections by attracting other groups. These conditions generate both the grievance and opportunity for kin groups to pursue irredentism.