On April 12, 2017, CRRC, ARISC and American Councils are proud to present the 4th talk of the Spring 2017 Works-in-Progress series on Politics and Foreign Policy Making in Georgia & Kyrgyzstan, by Shairbek Dzhuraev from the University of St Andrews.
The paper looks at political developments and their relationship to foreign policy making in two countries, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. In the process of state-building since the late years of the Soviet Union, these countries went through large-scale, and at times tragic and consequential, political developments. Today both are seen as better developed democracies in their respective regions, South Caucasus and Central Asia respectively. Their foreign policies, however, are increasingly divergent, with Georgia committed to Euro-Atlantic integration and Kyrgyzstan seeking closer ties within Eurasian/post-Soviet region. Many studies approach such themes with explanatory ambition, seeking to establish salient “causes”, whether at international or domestic level. While often very neat and nice, causal models, however, tend to bracket richer and deeper politics behind foreign policy. This project aims to address this issue through examining the nature and evolutions of particular aspects of ‘domestic politics’ within and across successive political regimes in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan since 1991. This is is an early stage project.
Shairbek Dzhuraev is a Marie Curie Fellow and PhD candidate at School of International Relations of University of St Andrews. He previously served as Deputy Director at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek in 2012-2015. He also held a number of management and teaching positions at American University of Central Asia between 2007-2012. Shairbek holds MSc in International Relations from London School of Economics (2005). He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation on foreign policy making in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.
*****
W-i-P is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that takes place at the new office of CRRC at Chkhikvadze St. 1. It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public.
The purpose of the W-i-P series is to provide support and productive criticism to those researching and developing academic projects pertaining the Caucasus region.
Would you like to present at one of the W-i-P sessions? Send an e-mail to m.sikharulidze@crrccenters.org
