Democratic Transformation and Obstruction ─ Eu, Us, and Russia in the South Caucasus

"Although 'democracy promotion' has become a popular term for policy makers and scholars, democratization is rarely a smooth or linear transition. While some countries quickly democratize, others lag behind despite a long period of democracy promotion activities. Furthermore, while democracy promotion has been widely studied, there is a paucity of literature available assessing the outcome or the impact of democracy promotion. This book investigates democracy promotion by the European Union and the United States of America and seeks to uncover why intensive democracy promotion has resulted in limited democratic progress. Exploring case studies of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia this book examines the conditions in which democracy promotion is more likely to result in democratic transformation. In addition, it introduces the concept of 'democracy blocker', a powerful authoritarian regional actor who is capable of blocking democratization in other countries. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Political Science, Democracy, Democratization, EU Studies, U.S. Politics, Comparative Politics and Foreign Policy"--

Nelli Babayan is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science at the Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany.