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Tuesday | 21 November. 2017
De Facto States and Their Patrons: Towards Theory-Building
"De Facto States and Their Patrons: Towards Theory-Building"

Dr. Vincenc Kopeček, University of Ostrava (Czechia)

Wednesday, November 22, 18:30 at CRRC-Georgia office

Terms such as occupation, puppet state, protectorate etc. are quite often employed in order to describe relations between de facto states and their patrons. These terms, however, seem to be rather more political than academic, as they mostly reflect the position of one party of the dispute. In fact, relations between individual de facto states and their patrons are somewhat neglected in the scholarly literature, though there are some works one can build on, such as the concept of kin state developed by Brubaker and applied by Caspersen for the cases of several de facto states in the Balkans. The concept of kin state involvement serves as the basis for an analysis of relations between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. These relations, in comparison with other similar cases, such as the Turkish-North Cypriot relations, feature a whole range of highly specific features, such as a common ethno-cultural framework, mutually mingling political elites and a handful of formal and, most importantly, a whole range of informal mechanisms, which enable both entities to achieve political deals, as well as to mutually influence each other’s internal decision making processes.

Vincenc Kopeček holds a Ph.D. in Political and Cultural Geography from the Department of Human Geography of the University of Ostrava, where he has been teaching as an assistant professor since 2008. In his research, he focuses mainly on ethnic conflicts, de facto states and informal political institutions in the region of the South Caucasus.