Karabakh

Abstract The current post-Soviet bureaucracy in South Caucasian republics, and notably in ethnically diverse Azerbaijan and Georgia, has yet been unable to link ethnicity, territory, and political administration in the process of state-building and democratic development. Bureaucratic evolution from communism to liberalism has simply contributed to the establishment of a handy “electoral democracy” and lucrative economic liberalism for the elites. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, particularistic identities, reinforced differences, and fragmentation of societies have been the dominant characteristics of the South Caucasian republics of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan (or Trans-Caucasus)....

Yerevan, Armenia On October 27th, 1999 five gunmen broke into the chamber of the National Assembly of Armenia during the weekly session of parliamentary inquiries addressed to the Government and opened fire. Within seconds they had killed the Prime Minister of Armenia as well as the Chairman of the Parliament, his two deputies and 4 other members of the Parliament and the Government, whose nearly total membership was present at the session....

EVENT: Senior presidential adviser Jirair (Gerard) Libaridian resigned. SIGNIFICANCE: Libaridian’s departure comes at a time when Armenia has been mounting a relatively successful effort to build its international ties. ANALYSIS: On September 15, Jirair Libaridian announced that President Levon Ter-Petrosian had accepted his resignation as a senior foreign policy advisor, on purely personal grounds. Libaridian has been a key architect of Armenian foreign policy since independence, playing a central role in negotiations over Nagorno Karabakh and in warming relations with Turkey....

Almost every day now media outlets report on the continuous multinational effort to forge out a final peace settlement in the nine year-old conflict between the government of Azerbaijan and the people of the de- facto independent Nagorno Karabakh Republic-Artsakh. Their reports generally contain a brief on a recent round of talks, where parties would once again reiterate their incompatible positions, with mediators privately promising a diplomatic breakthrough soon. Over the years such reports have become enveloped in the usual repetition of grim statistics: tallies numbering the dead and refugees, and areas occupied....