Various donor agencies have become active players in defining and drafting strategies of transition from communist heritages and pasts to modern democratic societies and market economies, as well as in funding the implementation of these strategies.   However, after a quarter century of independence, most of Eurasia’s political elites have transformed into more autocratic regimes,… Continue reading Zuhra Halimova – Foreign Aid to Eurasia: Donors’ Agendas, Local Perceptions, and Lost Illusions

Azerbaijan's independence came after seven decades of militant atheism of the Soviet modernization project and emerged into staunch secularism of Western modernity, two factors that, on a par with the country's precarious neighbourhood, promised a sustained indigenous effort towards a desacralization of the country's political space and the associated exclusion of religion from politics, a… Continue reading Murad Ismayilov – (Homogenising) Hybrid Intentionality and the Dialectics of Elite Attitudes to Islam: Towards a Re-Sacralisation of the Political Space in Azerbaijan