Cascade: Exploring the Security-Democracy Nexus in the Caucasus

Reconceptualizing Democracy and Security
The diverse domestic, political, economic and social practices and preferences of various elite actors and different societal groups in the Caucasus states have a crucial impact on the security­-democracy nexus.

There is a need for social legitimation of governance and strong local ownership in order to support democratic reforms and achieve sustainable security. Russia's 'counter-normative' response, backed up by power instruments and 'de-democratization' trends constitutes a potential source of regional conflict and insecurity and calls into question both the EU's reliance on normatively-constituted forms of democratic governance and its role as a security provider in this region. 

Difficult though it may appear at present, attention should be paid to preventing regions at the interface of the EU and Russia-led integration projects from becoming a source of increased tensions and instead to exploring possibilities for the two projects to work together to promote stability.

Migration, Mobilities and Poverty
The Greek financial crisis has has had a significant effect on the labour market, and migrant women in particular. First, their wages have dropped significantly. Second, only live-in jobs that involve caring for the sick, elderly and disabled are currently available. The unregulated commodification of care creates highly precarious working conditions. Thus, some Georgian female migrants seek other destinations such as Italy, Spain or Turkey.

Georgian care-workers are exploited due to the informality of their working place and mostly undocumented status. These women lack basic social and labour rights and experience inequality and marginalization in Greece.

Circular labour migration should be formalized and promoted by the EU in order to provide social and ontological security of the labour migrants and adequately respond to the large demand in the care sector in countries such as Greece.

Local Economic and Social Developments in the Caucasus
In the Russian context, the desire to act within the rules is limited by corruption, unreliable law enforcement, and lack of coherence within the court system. Thus, support for the bottom level of justice is necessary through various mechanisms of reputational control and the introduction of "polyjuridism" into the legal framework.

Big business is unable to interact directly with urban petty producers due to difference in scale of business. The functions of a mediator can be performed by establishment of a local cooperation, protecting the interests of "its own" producers and promoting their products and services in the market.

Organizational support is necessary to create cooperatives capable of making local agents competitive. This poses a significant challenge since social solidarity in the North Caucasus goes parallel to distrust of neighbors.

Political Order, Democratization and Civil Societies
The fight against corruption and security sector reforms highlight the diversity of South Caucasus in terms of achieved reforms. They also illustrate the discrepancy between formal commitments taken vis-a-vis international organizations and their effective implementation in the South Caucasus.

While Georgia has made significant progress on the fight against corruption in the wake of the Rose revolution, the country still needs to address the lack of oversight over the Prosecutor's office and to strengthen the government's accountability between elections. In Armenia, more needs to be done in terms of transparency of political funding, improving trust in the judiciary system and allowing civil society to engage more strongly in the process of fight against corruption. In Azerbaijan, selective justice and open trade for influence make it difficult to develop trust in public institutions. In addition, in recent years increasing crackdown on civil society has negatively affected the state's capacity to effectively fight against corruption.

While Georgian constitutional arrangements meet the main international norms and practices in terms of democratic control over the security sector, the parliament is not able to fully exercise its power and implement its responsibilities. In Armenia, the democratic control of the military hinges on the overall level of democracy and the capacity of the National Assembly to check the executive branch. In Azerbaijan, the oversight bodies have only limited responsibilities to monitor public bodies, including in the security sector.

Religion and Politics
Our research shows no inherent links between the level of religiosity and the relevance of religion in the public sphere and, more specifically, in the political arena. The importance of religion in politics mainly stems from the resources it provides within the political field. On the one hand, by mobilizing traditions (and in certain cases even inventing traditions), religion has often provided legitimacy to the state and has contributed to the nation and state-building processes, as well as accommodating post-Soviet modernity. On the other hand, after the collapse of the USSR, and especially since the early 2000s, religion has become the locus in which political dissent and cleavages can be expressed.

Conflicts are at the core of the political developments and should not be equated only with wars and open violence, but also with dissent, contest and counter-hegemony. Our research on religion and politics has shed some light on cases where these have led to violence and/or repression as well as cases where antagonism has been successfully turned into agonism, and an arena where conflicts and differences can be confronted. We do not assume that conflicts per se jeopardize democratization processes. Hence, religions can play a positive role in democratization not only by contributing to inclusion, creating a community and linking people together, but also by voicing or even engendering conflicts.

Conflict, Violence and Peace-Building
The South Caucasus has continued its militarization trend with the deployment of increased numbers of weapons and with more advanced capacities. This development has notably raised the risk of flaring up of the long running armed dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Conflict in the North Caucasus has been transformed in recent years with a significant fragmentation of the organized insurgency, even though incidents of violence persist and Russian federal and local authorities react to local dissent with harsh security measures. Against the background of the demise of the Caucasian Emirate -the previous dominant insurgency group, as a result of the large-scale emigration of fighters and Russia's counter-insurgency measures, the major concern now is whether international violent Islamist movements (such as ISIS) will emerge as a significant force in the North Caucasus.

Conflict Regionalization: There is a growing connection between the protracted conflicts of the North and South Caucasus and the developments in the neighboring regions, notably a spread of insurgent fighters in the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. For the Russian Federation these developments mean a shift of the security concerns away from the Caucasus and its protracted conflicts and linking the Caucasus to the security in the Black Sea region and the wider Middle East.

The Caucasus and the Wider Neighborhood
In recent years, the South Caucasus has increasingly been analyzed through a geopolitical prism. A common view is that the region has more than ever become a bone of contention between powerful actors, first and foremost Russia and EU/NATO. Tensions between external actors have indeed increasingly shaped events in the South Caucasus. Crises between external actors only add to existing fragilities in the region and therefore bear a strong destabilization potential. In addition, the South Caucasus now seems durably divided between competing integration projects, namely the Russia-driven Eurasian Economic Union and the EU's DCFTAs as part of its Eastern Partnership Project.

The prevailing geopolitical reading, however, ought to be nuanced. It shows that, at a mid and micro-level, domestic actors seek to exploit the opportunities offered by multifaceted interdependences and existing loopholes with the view to mitigating the consequences of the competition and tensions between external actors.

Perceptions of the EU in the Caucasus
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have strong expectations from the EU, however, these do not necessarily always coincide with the EU's vision of its own role in the region. The EU's role as a driver for modernization is widely acknowledged and overall well received in the region. Yet the EU's conception as a 'normative power' acting as a force for democratization only resonates with specific categories of actors, i.e. amongst the political elites in Georgia and Armenia, civil society actors in Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, EU policies are also often criticized for being fraught with contradictions and subject to double standards.

Despite their different expectations from the EU, there is a certain level of frustration and disappointment vis-a-vis the EU in all three countries. Where there is demand for engagement (for instance, in Georgia, especially in regards to conflict settlements), the EU's role is perceived as too weak. Where there is no demand (for instance, in Azerbaijan), the policies of the EU are perceived as imposition. However, all three South Caucasus countries are eager for increased differentiation and greater EU attention to their particular circumstances and needs.

There are strong expectations vis-a-vis the EU's possible role as a balance, or a counterweight, to Russia's influence as well. Therefore, in the Caucasus, the images of the EU are not only informed by normative considerations, but also by realist accounts. This is in contrast with the EU's conception of its own role as a normative power.