Personalist leaders, such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, Belarus's Alexander Lukashenko or Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, are increasingly prominent players in the international landscape; their motivations and policies, however, are poorly understood. The regimes they lead are difficult to examine, mostly because of their most defining feature-an inordinate concentration of power in the hands of one single individual. Yet, personalist leaders do not rule alone, even if they do not always govern...

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the wars in Yugoslavia radically changed the security environment in Europe and Central Asia. Some predictions assumed the emerging unipolarity of the liberal world order would end neutrality policies in East and West, but, as this volume shows, this was not the case. While some traditional Cold War neutrals like Sweden and Finland have been edging closer to security alignment with western institutions, there are others like Austria, Switzerland, Irelan...

This book investigates the roles that ideas and constructs associated with Eurasia have played in the making of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy during the Nazarbaev era.This book delves into the specific Eurasia-centric narratives through which the regime, headed by Nursultan Nazarbaev, imagined the role of post-Soviet Kazakhstan in the wider Eurasian geopolitical space. Based on substantive fieldwork and sustained engagement with primary sources, the book unveils the power implication...

Over the last decade or so, academic and non-academic observers have focussed mainly, if not exclusively on the institutions and places of formal power in the Greater Middle East, depicting politics in the region as a small area limited to local authoritarian rulers.In contrast, this book aims to explore the ‘hidden geographies’ of power, i.e. the political dynamics developing inside, in parallel to, and beyond institutional forums; arguing that these hidden geographies play a cruc...

This collection covers the major trends of the media environment of the post-Communist world and their recent development, with special focus on Russia and the post-Soviet space. The term ‘media environment’ covers not just traditional print and electronic media, but new media as well, and ranges from the political to entertainment and various artistic spheres. What role do market forces play in the process of media democratization, and how do state structures regulate, suppress, or use ca...

Turkmenistan, an independent nation since 1991, is a strategically important Central Asian state. This book covers the most significant period of the establishment of the Turkmen political regime. At the core of this book is the Doctrine of Positive Neutrality, which, from 1995 onwards, constituted the theoretical backbone for the foreign policy of post-Soviet Turkmenistan. The author analyses the reason and aim of the concept, its significance for and impact on the country’s domestic and ...

This book examines how the authoritarian regimes of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to consolidate their political control over Central Asia. Through restrictive policies and strategic manipulation, these governments reshaped the region’s politics and societies during 2020–2022.This volume offers readers an insight into three key areas where Central Asia’s pandemic power grab was most visible: mobility control, whereby restrictive legislatio...

‘The people want’ – thus began the slogans chanted by millions of protesters in 2011 in what was dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’.  While the protests revealed a long-suppressed craving for democracy, they also laid bare a deep structural crisis.In this landmark work, Middle East analyst Gilbert Achcar examines the socio-economic roots and political dynamics of the regional upheaval. He assesses the peculiarities of the region’s states and regimes, and sheds light on the movements that use...

**“A valuable primer on foreign policy: a primer that concerned citizens of all political persuasions—not to mention the president and his advisers—could benefit from reading.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesAn examination of a world increasingly defined by disorder and a United States unable to shape the world in its image, from the president of the Council on Foreign Relations**Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. The rules, policies, and institutions...

Egypt's autocratic regime is being weakened by economic crises, growing political opposition, and the pressures of globalization. Observers now wonder which way Egypt will go when the country's aging president, Husni Mubarak, passes from the scene: will it embrace Western-style liberalism and democracy? Or will it become an Islamic theocracy similar to Iran? Egypt after Mubarak demonstrates that both secular and Islamist opponents of the regime are navigating a middle path that may ...

The New Middle East is one of the first comprehensive books to critically examine the Arab popular uprisings of 2011–12. While these uprisings prompted a number of cursory publications, this volume contains meticulous and thoughtful reflections on the causes, drivers and effects of these seminal events on the internal, regional and international politics of the Middle East and North Africa. Although specific conditions in individual countries that have experienced large-scale popular mobil...

Hopes for a new peaceful international order after the end of the Cold War have been dashed by sobering realities: Great powers are once again competing for honor and influence. The world remains “unipolar,” but international competition among the United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, and Iran raise new threats of regional conflict, and a new contest between western liberalism and the great eastern autocracies of Russia and China has reinjected ideology into geopolitics.For t...