Politics of the Caucasus

This course tracks the trajectories of politics in the Caucasus, focusing on the political development of the independent states of the South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. While the focus is on contemporary political dynamics, the course considers the mechanisms through which the legacies of Imperial Russian expansion and Soviet structures interact with current mechanisms of interest articulation and power. Students in this course will examine the contours and mechanisms of the collapse of Soviet hegemony in the South Caucasus, spending some time examining the conflicts that accompanied this process and persist today. The course will address the country contexts both individually and comparatively, thereby encouraging students to delve deeply into the politics of each state, but then also enabling them to find continuities and contrasts across major thematic considerations.