Lachin

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)....

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....