SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Shadow Governance: Approaches to Government and Institutions in Eurasia's de facto States

Abstract

From violent beginnings in the late 1980s and early 1990s de facto states across the post-Soviet space have stayed with us to continually challenge not only the international state-political and legal order, but also numerous political and social science theories regarding ethnic mobilization, violence, the relationship between recognition and democratization, that between internal and external sovereignty, and conflict resolution.  De facto states are also both urgent and deeply politicized items high up on policy agendas. This presentation examines the evolving thematic of de facto states over the last 20 years, examining the deep tensions between scholarly and policy-oriented approaches and at the same time presenting an argument that governance and institutions in unrecognised states matter and need both constructive and principled engagement.  

Speaker Biography

Laurence Broers joined Conciliation Resources as Projects Manager for the Caucasus programme in November 2008. Before this he worked for two-and-half years at Amnesty International as a researcher on Armenia and Azerbaijan. He has published articles in scholarly journals relating to themes of ethnicity, democratization and conflict in the South Caucasus and worked as one of the editors of the first comprehensive Georgian-English dictionary to be published since Georgian independence. Laurence completed his doctoral studies on the post-Soviet republic of Georgia in 2004 and has participated in numerous NGO projects in Georgia.