Studying Peace in and with Central Eurasia: Starting from Local and Trans-Local Perspectives

ABSTRACT

In view of a crisis of liberal universalism peace research must reflect on how it is perceived, how peace is constructed in other places and how it can cope with diversity in ordering and peacebuilding. This Special Issue is an attempt to search starting points for peace research in and with Central Eurasia. The introductory concept clears a path through current research questions, normative problems and barriers of knowledge production. Considering ethnographic methodologies, it starts from the local everyday and takes an interest in how actors and institutions in concrete places and multiple socio-spatial configurations navigate conflict and peace.     

Timing is everything: a quantitative study of presidentialist regime dynamics in Eurasia, 1992–2016

Why do some countries with presidentialist constitutions feature more political closure than others at a given time? A quantitative study of post-Soviet countries since independence finds that much of the observed variation in political closure reflects timing, or the particular point at which a country happens to be within a regime cycle, rather than structural or other factors usually cited to explain regime change. Specifically, how much time a president has had to coordinate rivalrous networks around his or her authority is at least as strong a predictor of the level of regime closure as are economic development, economic growth, resource rents, proximity to Europe, and key cultural factors, even when controlling for the level of closure in the preceding year. This pattern is not found among countries with divided-executive constitutions, indicating it is related to the constitution rather than a general phenomenon.     

Reconsidering the ontological foundations of international energy affairs: realist geopolitics,market liberalism and a politico-economic alternative

Accounts of international energy affairs often present a divergence between geopolitical/realist and liberal market-based approaches. This article suggests that this state of affairs reflects the (often implicit) legacies of realist and rationalist international thought in the study of energy affairs and the corresponding political and economic ontological hierarchies of analytical frameworks employed in different accounts of energy politics. Consequently, this article recommends a greater explicit attention to scientific ontological foundations in studies of energy relations and, in line with the calls of Keating et al. and Strange, suggests an approach based in the literature on I/GPE, which merges political and economic ontological axioms, as most apposite for the study of energy affairs. Building on this framework, and giving particular examples from the context of Eurasian energy politics, this article then outlines a number of politico-economic heuristic models (structural diversity, territorial non-coincidence, milieu-shaping and market-authority bargains) that are particularly useful concepts in helping to explain the intricate interactions of international energy relations.     

How oil autocracies learn to stop worrying: Central Eurasia in 2008 global financial crisis

Autocracies in developing countries are more likely to collapse during economic crises. Some influential works and popular media extend this argument to oil-rich autocracies, but cross-national empirical studies find little evidence to support this view. Yet, while the causes of their stability during boom periods are well understood, how oil-rich autocratic regimes remain stable during busts is underexplored. This article advances an explanation that refines and complements existing accounts. I argue that we need to take into account three interrelated factors that currently are likely to stabilize oil-rich autocracies: considerable savings, policy learning, and sustenance of coercive capacity. Leveraging evidence drawn from 40 original interviews, documents, news media, and academic literature, I investigate the role of these factors through a comparative case study of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan during the 2008 global economic turmoil. The findings highlight the ruling elites’ ability to amass sizeable savings that later provide safety cushions, to update their know-how through drawing lessons within and beyond fiscal policy, and to sustain coercive capacity without resorting to overt repression. Through economic crises, they may learn to not escape the “resource curse,” but to escape despite the “resource curse.”     

Nomads under arrest: The nation-building and nation-destroying of Kalmyk nomads in Russia

Nomads are positioned outside of the modern conception of nations, which is based on a traditional or modern hierarchical model (Kuzio, 2001) which tends to “dehistoricize and essentialize tradition” (Chatterjee, 2010: 169). Using an analysis of the narrative construction of nomadic Kalmyk nationhood, particularly through historiography and culture, this article demonstrates that in spite of nation-destroying efforts from the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union, the Kalmyk nation has been flexible with reinventing cultural strategies in charting the nomadic national imaginary from Chinggis Khan to the Dalai Lama. It argues that nomadic nationhood contains a deeply imaginary response to nomads’ cultural and intellectual milieu which provided a way of freeing itself from Tsarist and Soviet modular narratives of national imagination, demonstrating how nomadic nationhood exists as a non-modular form of nationhood.     

Crossing Eurasia: trans-regional Afghan trading networks in China and beyond

An expanding body of literature in the field of Central Asian studies has brought attention to the problems of considering the region's complex dynamics through the lens of its nation-states. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the role played by trans-regional circulations in connecting parts of Central Asia to the wider world. This paper situates ethnographic work on trans-regional networks of Afghan traders in China, Central Asia, Russia, Ukraine and the UK in relation to the literature on trans-regional connections and circulation societies. Ethnographically it demonstrates the multi-polar nature of these trans-regional networks, and the importance of trading nodes, especially the Chinese city of Yiwu, to their formation and ongoing vitality.     

Collective Security and Non-State Actors in Eurasia

International security cooperation usually takes one of two forms. A classical collective security organization is designed to promote international security through regulating the behavior of its member states. A defensive security organization is designed to protect a group of states from threats emanating from a challenging state or group of states. Both forms of security cooperation bind states to act in concert with respect to threats presented by other states. The emergence of non-state actors such as terrorist or extremist organizations challenges traditional forms of collective security. Threats from political extremism, terrorism, and outlaw organizations have grown in visibility during the past decade in the countries of Eurasia. The terrorist attacks of September 11 and the ensuing global war on terrorism have given added impetus to the Eurasian inter-state cooperation in confronting non-traditional threats and challenges from non-state actors. Bearing in mind the theory of collective security, this article analyzes threats posed by non-state actors with respect to Eurasian collective security organizations including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures, and the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization. The article concludes that the effectiveness of these organizations at achieving stated objectives depends upon their capacity to adopt new criteria of effectiveness.     

东北亚地区天然气合作:前景与问题

俄罗斯和中亚油气将成为东北亚能源的重要供应来源。欧亚大陆的天然气市场一体化水平低,提高东北亚地区天然气市场一体化水平的途径是加快构建欧亚天然气管道网以及提高液化天然气产量。俄罗斯东部天然气开发战略与出口气源地建设对此至关重要。     

Bringing actors back in: political choices and sources of post-Soviet regime dynamics

One might summarize the state of the field of research into contemporary Russian politics as a “dismal consensus”: most observers believe that durable authoritarianism has consolidated itself, and there is very little chance of democratization in the foreseeable future. However, political regime changes are often launched and developed overtime as side effects of moves made by political actors, and their outcomes are not predetermined. This article aims to go beyond this “dismal consensus,” and revisits some of the arguments on the role of structure and agency in post-Soviet regime dynamics. Apart from the changes in structural variables, it reconsiders the role of the incentives and choices of self-interested political actors, who are not always omnipotent and well-informed strategists. The overall dismal tendencies nevertheless leave some “bias for hope” in the analysis of regime dynamics in post-Soviet Eurasia and beyond.     

创新与超越:新地缘政治与国家安全

运用地理关系谋划国家安全是地缘政治的本来使命.以扩张、对抗和谋霸为核心的传统地缘政治存在逻辑缺陷,不能合理解释当代国际政治现实,也无法有效应对国家安全面临的新挑战.为此,需要创新并超越传统地缘政治思维,以新地缘政治观来重新审视和谋划国家安全.中国在此方面进行了有益的探索和尝试,新安全观与和谐世界理论的提出与实践,表明新地缘政治具有相当的发展空间和现实应用价值.