Virtually every analysis of security in the South Caucasus links the region’s precarious situation in one way or another to the incompletion or absence of democracy there.  While none of the three South Caucasian states is totalitarian, it is clear that they all suffer from quite visible democratic deficits.  And these deficits are particularly aggravated during presidential and parliamentary elections.  The recent Georgian and Armenian presidential elections underscored the fragility of both democratic practices and of internal security in those states.  Indeed, th...

Mainstream theories of international relations have long ignored ideological factors in their attempts to explain international outcomes.  Reducing the history of international system to the history of class struggle (Marxism), or anarchy-induced global-level competition among major powers (Realism) resulted in missing the important role nationalism played in the evolution of the international system. Nationalism, however, has been a central factor in determining the content and direction of social development in post-Soviet states. An analysis of the modern history of non-Russian p...