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Digital sovereignty has emerged as a central concept in contemporary debates on state power, governance, and regulation, particularly in regions undergoing rapid political and economic transformation. In Central Asia, governments increasingly rely on legal frameworks to assert control over digital spaces, data flows, and emerging technologies, reshaping the relationship between the state, market actors, and society. This paper examines Uzbekistan as a case study to analyze how digital sovereignty is constructed and exercised through law as a form of legal and political power.

Since the mid-2010s, Uzbekistan has pursued wide-ranging reforms aimed at digitalization, innovation, and economic liberalization, while simultaneously strengthening regulatory oversight over data governance, digital trade, and information infrastructure. Drawing on an analysis of legislation, policy documents, and regulatory practices, this paper explores how legal instruments are used to balance competing objectives: fostering technological development and foreign investment, maintaining state control over digital spaces, and protecting national interests. Particular attention is paid to data localization requirements, digital platform regulation, and the evolving legal treatment of cross-border data flows.

The paper argues that Uzbekistan’s approach reflects a distinctive model of state-led digital sovereignty, in which law functions not merely as a technical regulatory tool but as a mechanism of power that reconfigures digital spaces and redistributes authority among public and private actors. While formally aligned with global discourses on innovation and digital economy development, these legal reforms also embed strategies of control and governance that are characteristic of broader Central Asian political and legal traditions.

By situating Uzbekistan within the wider context of Central Asia and Central Eurasia, this study contributes to ongoing discussions on how states in the region rethink sovereignty, space, and power in the digital age. The findings highlight the importance of legal frameworks in shaping digital transformation and offer insights into how emerging regulatory models in Central Asia may influence regional governance, digital trade, and state-society relations.

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Japan’s recent reaffirmation of nuclear energy represents a significant policy shift, particularly following the Fukushima Daiichi Accident in 2011, when the Japanese government announced a gradual reduction in its dependence on nuclear energy due to a loss of public trust. I employ the neoclassical realist framework and use rich data sources such as expert interviews, elite speeches, policy statements, government reports, and economic indicators, and explain Japan’s policy capacity for renewed commitment to nuclear energy. Deeply embedded institutional support, comprising formal guidelines, regulatory practices, and elite leadership, shapes nuclear policy continuity. Meanwhile, geopolitical developments such as energy supply chain risks from conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, emerging multilateral financing mechanisms, and global climate consensus on accelerating nuclear deployment set the timing for pursuing nuclear energy policy agendas in Japan. This paper is a timely, theoretically driven empirical contribution to public policy and international political economy, offering valuable insights for policy audiences on how geopolitical developments and the institutionalization of nuclear energy have revitalized policy capacity in Japan.

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Among the constants of Morocco's foreign policy is openness to the world, as we have seen since the coming of the King Mohammed 6. Morocco's geographical position, its belonging to Africa, and its proximity to Europe constitute a strategic option for the country, where it represents a point of access to the African continent, allowing it to forge relationships with different spaces.

Morocco's geographical position, its location in Africa, on the Mediterranean coast, and its proximity to Europe, constitutes a strategic advantage for the country, serving as a gateway to the African continent. This position allows Morocco to forge relationships with various geographical areas. For a long time, Morocco has pursued a strategy of openness to the world in order to better benefit from globalization.

It is in this context that Morocco considers Asia a strategic option in its foreign policy, based on historical, political, economic, and cultural ties. Morocco has embarked on a process of strengthening these relations with the countries of the region, recognizing the importance of the human, financial, economic, and technological potential of Asian nations.

Indeed, Morocco began diplomatic relations with Central Asian countries in 1990, including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Each country in this group works with Morocco to further strengthen bilateral relations in all areas, particularly in the economic sphere, as they consider Morocco a gateway to Africa.

Aims and Objective: The objective of this work is to study the evolution of relations between Morocco and Central Asian states, as a part of the Morocco’s openness to the world.

Keywords: foreign policy, Morocco-Central Asie relations, economic Partnership

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The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has long been a central player in maintaining security and stability in Central Eurasia, particularly among former Soviet republics. However, the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict has tested the organization’s relevance and effectiveness in the current geopolitical climate. This paper seeks to examine the future of the CSTO in the post-Ukraine war context, focusing on its capacity to address regional security challenges and maintain influence in an era of shifting alliances. With Russia’s increasing isolation from the West and its strained relationships with neighboring countries, the CSTO’s role has come under scrutiny. By analyzing recent developments within the organization and the geopolitical realignments occurring within Central Eurasia, this paper explores whether the CSTO can remain a cohesive security structure or if regional powers will seek alternative security arrangements. Furthermore, the paper discusses the potential impact of Russia’s weakened influence on CSTO member states and how these nations may navigate new security dynamics.

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The paper examines the evolution of relations between the European Union and the states of Central Asia after 2022, identifying Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a critical juncture that reshaped the post-Soviet order. The year 2022 constitutes not only a geopolitical watershed but also a turning point in the region’s perception of security, as Central Asian states refrained from recognizing the annexation of Ukrainian territories and intensified policies of economic diversification and multi-vector foreign engagement.

In this context, the European Union has shifted from a peripheral actor to a strategic partner, as reflected in the 2023 “Roadmap,” a joint document outlining the framework for enhanced cooperation. This framework encompasses the deepening of trade and investment ties, the institutionalization of regular economic dialogues, efforts to prevent sanctions circumvention, and expanded cooperation in the fields of energy and climate policy, including energy diversification and support for the transition toward renewable energy sources.

A crucial dimension of this new phase of partnership is the EU’s role as an “architect of corridors.” Particular importance is attributed to the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor (Middle Corridor), which offers an alternative to the northern route passing through Russia. Investments under the Global Gateway initiative—targeting the modernization of ports, railways, and border infrastructure—aim to increase transit capacity and reduce transportation time between Asia and Europe.

Critical raw materials and nuclear fuel have also become central pillars of cooperation. Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, is increasingly perceived as a strategic reservoir of rare earth elements, manganese, chromium, copper, cobalt, and uranium—resources indispensable for the EU’s green and digital transitions. Strategic memoranda provide for cooperation across the entire value chain, from geological exploration and extraction to local processing and the integration of supply chains into European industry.

The paper argues that after 2022, EU–Central Asia relations have undergone a structural transformation: from a partnership of limited political relevance to one with pronounced geopolitical, infrastructural, and resource-based significance, embedded within the broader processes of fragmentation and reconfiguration of the contemporary international order.

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Why do authoritarian leaders reform judiciaries they have spent decades constraining? I argue that strategies of judicial containment can produce overly deferential cultures that frustrate the regime's own objectives — legitimation, economic predictability, bureaucratic oversight — creating pressure to alter the composition of the bench. I investigate Kazakhstan's 2021 Administrative Procedures and Process Code, which established specialized administrative courts as part of President Tokayev's "Listening State" agenda. The reform staffed these courts partly with judges recruited from outside the career judiciary — bokoviki ("laterals") — to break what reformers described as an entrenched culture of judicial passivity. Analyzing over 7,000 Supreme Court administrative decisions (2021–2025) and interviews with judges, government lawyers, and litigants, I find that lateral presence on panels is associated with higher reversal rates of lower-court decisions favoring agencies, particularly against cabinet-level ministries and agencies rather than local bodies. This pattern complicates expectations that administrative courts in authoritarian settings primarily serve the center's interest in disciplining peripheral agents. Interview evidence reveals how this orientation was transmitted downward through informal mentorship, practice bulletins, and strategic sanctions, but also its limits: courts that aggressively scrutinized agencies exhibited marked caution in politically sensitive cases. By 2026, the political rhetoric had shifted toward "Law and Order," several lateral judges had departed, and agencies continued pursuing legislative rollbacks, raising questions about the durability of reforms

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This research examines the legal dimensions of international cooperation within the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) as an evolving model of contractual regionalism among Turkic-speaking countries. In the contemporary international system, law functions not only as a regulatory mechanism but also as a central driver of institutionalization, predictability, and sustainable cooperation. Against this background, the OTS represents a distinctive form of intergovernmental cooperation grounded in shared linguistic, cultural, and historical ties, while firmly embedded in the principles of international law, state sovereignty, and equality.

The study explores the formation and development of the OTS’s legal framework, with particular attention to its foundational treaty—the Nakhchivan Agreement of 2009—and subsequent legal instruments, declarations, and strategic documents that define the organization’s institutional structure and functional scope. It argues that the OTS has gradually transitioned from a symbolic and cultural platform into a rule-based organization with expanding legal, political, economic, and humanitarian competencies. This evolution reflects broader trends in international and regional law toward legalization, norm creation, and institutionalized cooperation.

Special emphasis is placed on the legal cooperation mechanisms operating within the OTS, including treaty-making practices, memoranda of understanding, sectoral agreements, and emerging initiatives in judicial cooperation, legal harmonization, and mutual legal assistance. The research highlights the role of Uzbekistan’s accession to the OTS as a catalyst for strengthening the organization’s legal dimension, demonstrating how national legal reforms and regional engagement mutually reinforce one another. Uzbekistan’s participation illustrates how OTS membership contributes to domestic legal modernization while supporting the development of a shared regional legal agenda.

Methodologically, the research employs qualitative analysis based on primary and secondary legal sources, comparative-legal and normative analysis of international agreements, and a survey of experts and practitioners. The survey results reveal strong professional consensus on the importance of legal cooperation for regional integration, particularly in areas such as trade and investment law, human rights protection, criminal justice, and digital regulation. At the same time, respondents identify challenges related to differences in national legal systems, limited enforcement mechanisms, and institutional capacity.

The study concludes that the OTS embodies an emerging regional legal order characterized by flexibility, intergovernmentalism, and respect for sovereignty. Strengthening legal cooperation through framework agreements, institutional mechanisms, and academic exchange is essential for enhancing the OTS’s effectiveness and international legal personality. Overall, the OTS provides an instructive case of how law can transform shared cultural heritage into sustainable, rule-based regional governance in the Eurasian context.

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Central Asia’s role as a site of geopolitical importance and foreign influence is not new, but the form that influence takes has shifted significantly in the past decade. For youth, foreign engagement is no longer a distant geopolitical abstraction; it appears in everyday life through education programs, cultural exchanges, migration networks, and social media. As today’s youth represent future decisionmakers and voters, they undergo a critical period of political identity and belief formation. Yet despite Central Asia’s strategic importance and youth’s unique position as recipients of soft power initiatives, there is limited quantitative research examining how young people are willing to engage with initiatives carried out by actors such as China, Russia, and the United States.

This study examines how different mechanisms of U.S. soft power—particularly direct interpersonal contact and media exposure—shape Afghan and Tajik youths’ perceptions, trust, and intended engagement with the United States and international organizations. Using original pilot survey data collected from Afghan and Tajik youth residing in Tajikistan, the study quantitatively maps relationships among perceptions, trust, and both immediate and future intended actions.

Findings indicate that trust has a stronger and more statistically significant correlation with future action (r = .615, p = .004) than perception alone (r = .510, p = .021). Perception and trust are not significantly correlated (r = .376, p = .103), suggesting that favorable attitudes do not necessarily translate into institutional confidence. Direct interpersonal contact demonstrates a stronger association with trust and with higher-commitment behavioral intentions than media exposure, which is more closely linked to familiarity and affective responses. These findings suggest the presence of a “Familiarity–Action Gap,” in which positive perceptions do not consistently translate into active engagement.

By providing rare quantitative data on Afghan and Tajik youth residing in Tajikistan, this study contributes to Central Eurasian scholarship by shifting analysis from elite geopolitical strategy to youth-level political socialization.

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Since 2016, Central Asia has experienced an unprecedented intensification of regional interaction. Informal consultative summits of Central Asian leaders, dense bilateral agreements, particularly between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and the expansion of sectoral cooperation in transport, trade, and security have generated renewed debates about regional integration. Simultaneously, the region remains deeply embedded in overlapping external frameworks, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and various “C5+1” formats. This paper examines how internal coordination and external tracks interact to shape the nonlinear dynamics of regional integration in Central Asia.

Drawing on semi-structured expert interviews, qualitative document analysis, and event-based process tracing of key summits and agreements after 2016, the study applies insights from complex systems theory and competing regionalism scholarship. Rather than conceptualizing integration as a linear accumulation of institutions, the paper treats Central Asia as an adaptive regional system structured by feedback loops, threshold effects, and path dependencies.

The central argument is that bilateral “axis partnerships,” especially between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, function as stabilizing cores that generate emergent regional effects beyond formal institutionalization. Internal coordination mechanisms, such as leader-driven consultative summits, create a platform for agenda harmonization, while external tracks provide resources, strategic leverage, and infrastructural connectivity. However, these external frameworks also introduce institutional overlap and strategic competition, producing nonlinear outcomes: periods of acceleration, temporary fragmentation, and adaptive rebalancing.

The findings suggest that competing regionalisms do not necessarily undermine regional cohesion. Instead, they produce a dynamic balancing structure in which internal coordination mitigates fragmentation risks while preserving strategic autonomy. The paper introduces the concept of “nonlinear regional coordination” to explain how Central Asia’s integration trajectory differs from classical models of regional institutional deepening.

By reframing Central Asian regionalism through a nonlinear systems perspective, this study contributes to broader debates on post-Soviet transformation, adaptive regionalism, and the interaction between small-region agency and great-power institutional architectures.

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The Russia-Ukraine war has triggered the fragmentation and reorganization of power on the Eurasian continent. This war also had a profound impact on the domestic politics and foreign policies of Russia's Central Asian neighbors. The article constructs an analytical framework for elite preferences, domestic politics and public opinions. Then, the article measured the public opinion of the Kyrgyz people on the Russia-Ukraine war and official voting data at the United Nations General Assembly, while collecting materials from Central Asia, and finds that the Kyrgyz people's attitudes towards the war are complex compared to the preferences of official elites. On the one hand, contrary to the official abstention vote in the UN General Assembly condemning Russia, a large number of Kyrgyz people do not support Russia's military action. On the other hand, a considerable proportion of Kyrgyz people hold a neutral attitude towards the Russo-Ukrainian war. The consensus of neutrality among the public and elites stems from a consideration of individual and national interests, including factors such as migration workers, geopolitical security, and Western sanctions. Kyrgyzstan's pluralistic discourse society after its democratic transition provides space for accommodating both consistency and differences in public opinions and elite preferences.

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The main argument of this research posits that armed conflict not only leads to a major reframing of national identity for the belligerents, but also has a noticeable effect on national identity in nearby states. Such an argument is supported by the use of securitization theory, which frames national identity as a referent object under “the threat of extinction” as framed by the securitizing actors. By employing comparative discourse analysis of presidential addresses in Ukraine and Kazakhstan from 2019 to 2024 this study aims to examine the transformation of rhetoric, whether and how the two leaders securitize national identity. The research attempts to systematize the study of war and its effect on identity in and out of the conflict zone, as well as attempt to shed light on previously understudied subject of official identity rhetoric in Kazakhstan post-2022 and discern the effect of inward-bound securitization around the January events and outward-bound securitization around the conflict in Ukraine.

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This project examines Central Asian cooperation on transboundary water governance through the lens of water diplomacy and political communication. Shared river basins, particularly the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, remain vital for agriculture, energy production, and human security across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Yet competing national priorities, climate change, glacier melt, and growing water demand continue to strain regional coordination.

The central argument of this study is that Central Asian water cooperation should be analysed not merely as a technical or hydrological matter, but as a negotiated diplomatic process in which communicative practices, media visibility, and stakeholder perceptions shape political outcomes. Drawing on water diplomacy theory (Islam & Susskind 2012; Wolf 2007), framing and agenda-setting approaches (Entman 2007; Iyengar 1987), and image and perception theories (Holsti 1970; Hermann 1995; Soroka 2015), the paper conceptualizes water governance as a multidimensional arena of negotiation embedded in both formal diplomacy and public discourse.

Empirically, the study applies a qualitative and quantitative comparative design. It combines document analysis of main agreements, semi-structured interviews with regional expert stakeholders conducted during the Regional Environment Summit (Astana, April 2026), and media content analysis in Kazakhstan (Kazinform.kz), Kyrgyzstan (24.kg), Tajikistan (Asiaplustj.info), Turkmenistan (Turkmenportal.com) and Uzbekistan (Kun.uz) from the period of the first Consultative meeting of Central Asian states in 2018 to 2025. The analysis integrates political discourse in regional documents with qualitative insights from experts and quantitative assessment of local media framing.

Preliminary findings suggest that while water diplomacy is emerging as a constructive mechanism capable of accelerating regional cooperation, its public visibility remains limited due to the local media bias predominantly framed within official, top-down narratives reflecting governmental positions. This controlled communicative environment constrains broader societal engagement and reduces public awareness of transboundary water governance processes. At the same time, interviews reveal the process is also seen as strategically blurred, lacking a clearly articulated and consistently communicated regional water policy identity.

These findings contribute to the literature on international environmental governance by demonstrating that the effectiveness and legitimacy of transboundary water cooperation depend not only on institutional design and resource allocation, but also on communication structures and perception dynamics. By bridging political science, communication studies, and environmental diplomacy, the project underscores that successful water diplomacy in Central Asia requires both negotiated institutional mechanisms and enhanced public visibility to foster trust, awareness, and long-term sustainability.

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In the context of the digitalization of political communication, public authorities increasingly use social media to inform citizens about electoral processes and to shape public interpretations of institutional reforms. This trend is particularly visible during periods of constitutional and electoral change, when state institutions seek not only to communicate procedural information but also to legitimize reforms in the public sphere.

This paper examines the communication strategies of electoral authorities on social media during constitutional reform processes, focusing on the cases of 2020 Russian constitutional referendum and 2022 Kazakh constitutional referendum. The study analyzes how official accounts of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation and the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Kazakhstan construct narratives aimed at explaining and legitimizing institutional reforms.

The research addresses the following question: how do electoral authorities use social media to frame and legitimize electoral and constitutional reforms during periods of institutional change? The paper hypothesizes that electoral authorities primarily rely on informational and procedural frames that present reforms as technical and administrative processes rather than political decisions. It also assumes that communication strategies shift closer to the voting period, placing greater emphasis on citizen participation and the legitimacy of the electoral process.

Methodologically, the study combines qualitative and quantitative content analysis of posts published on official social media accounts of the electoral authorities. The empirical dataset includes posts published in the period preceding and during the reform campaigns, allowing the analysis of dominant themes, legitimation frames, and communication formats used in digital political communication.

By comparing the Russian and Kazakhstani cases, the paper seeks to identify similarities and differences in how electoral institutions frame institutional reforms in digital environments. The findings contribute to the broader discussion on the role of social media in the communication strategies of state institutions and in the public legitimation of political reforms.

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The US-Israeli war on Iran poses many theoretical and empirical questions related to alliances and balance theory in IR as well as the restructuring of regional power balance between the US and Russia in the minor Asia region encompassing the post-soviet republics. While this region has been subject to Russian and American competition for influence, the war on Iran paves the way toward tilting the power balance in favor of Russia, notably with the US shifts in foreign policy making and public opinion move away from a pro-Israeli US policy. Examining the context of the war, the factors influencing the US decision-making and the opportunity structures it opens for Iran and Russia in the region, this study reevaluates the traditional tenets of the power balance theory through the prism of the rising identity politics and structural transformations in US, Russia, and Iran foreign policies.

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For those researchers interested in Central Eurasia, locals’ hospitality has long ago become proverbial, almost a truism. Perhaps so obviously so that it has gathered only very little direct scholarly attention despite being such a central value to those who live in this region, not to mention to those abovementioned researchers who come to rely on locals’ traditions of welcome. At the same time, the soft power implications of hospitality remain unexplored, particularly in relation to Central Eurasia, despite evidence that this region’s geopolitics are shaped by relational forces of attraction, legitimacy, and influence by both hosts and guests. How then can the hospitality paradigm help analyse how host countries manage the political diversity of guest countries and generate soft power in this central region? This article aims to dialogue with these points through the onto-epistemological nexus of space, hospitality, Central Eurasia, and soft power, by exploring how these four concepts can work hand in hand to further theorise the relational politics that shape the centre of the Eurasian continent. To reach this aim, the paper first theorises or rather spatialises Central Eurasia as a historical, geographic, and geopolitical space of soft power hospitality. The second part then empirically presents and discusses in the interdisciplinary perspective of the local paremiological fund, the broad travel literature (religious missionaries, diplomatic envoys, foreign travellers), international relations, and geopolitics, some of the most salient data of soft power hospitality past and present collected in the region. Synthesized together, these sections will provide a useful analytical tool to map out the dynamic soft power relations and exchanges that take place in this region, and reinforce the epistemic justice, openness and semantic sensitivity called for by the emerging decolonial strand of Central Eurasian studies.

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Problem Statement: In the evolving legal landscape of Central Asia, particularly in Uzbekistan, criminal law has traditionally been viewed through a formalistic and dogmatic lens, focusing primarily on the mechanics of the Penal Code and state-mandated retribution. However, as the region undergoes profound social and political transformations, this narrow approach fails to account for the complex interaction between penal practices and social structures. This paper argues for the institutionalization of the "Sociology of Punishment" as a necessary theoretical framework to understand how justice, power, and society intersect in modern Uzbekistan.

Methodology and Objectives: Drawing on the sociological traditions of Émile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, and David Garland, this research analyzes the transition of the Uzbek penal system from a purely punitive model to a more socially integrated approach. The study utilizes a qualitative analysis of recent judicial-legal reforms (2022–2026) and examines how social cohesion and public policy influence the state's "right to punish." The objective is to demonstrate that punishment is not merely a legal consequence of a crime but a dynamic social institution that reflects the collective conscience and cultural values of the nation.

Key Arguments: The paper explores three critical dimensions of this emerging theory:

Social Control and Legitimacy: How the shift toward "humanization" in criminal law serves as a tool for state legitimacy and social stability in a rapidly changing Central Eurasian context.

The Communicative Function of Punishment: An analysis of how penal sanctions communicate societal boundaries and moral norms to the public.

Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration: Examining the necessity of moving beyond incarceration toward a socio-psychological model that prioritizes the offender’s return to society, aligning with the proposed "Social-Psychological Legal Clinics" in the region.

Conclusion and Significance: The research concludes that integrating sociological insights into criminal jurisprudence is essential for the success of legal reforms in Uzbekistan. By understanding punishment as a social phenomenon, legal scholars and policymakers can develop more effective strategies for crime prevention and social rehabilitation. This paper contributes to the conference theme by rethinking the "Spaces of Power" within the courtroom and the prison, offering a fresh perspective on how societies in Central Eurasia define justice and maintain social order in the 21st century.

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Following the leadership transition in Uzbekistan resulting from the death of the first president, Karimov, and the election of Mirziyoyev as the new president in 2016, the new government came with a renewed vision of domestic affairs and direction for external relations. Prioritising the Central Asian region in its foreign policy, Mirziyoyev tried to mend strained relations with the neighbouring countries that led to the thaw in relations. The advent of a new leader marked a transformative phase in Uzbekistan's foreign policy, as evidenced by a series of strategic modifications that considerably shaped the trajectory of its external relations, diverging notably from the foreign policy pursued under Karimov's administration, orienting toward more regionalism policy. This policy caused more positive outcome in addressing regional issues such as water management, border demarcation and delimitation, and climate change.

This paper aims to examine Uzbekistan’s regional foreign policy in addressing regional cooperation in security, economic, and transport connectivity in Central Asia in Mirziyoyev’s Presidency. In this study, I will focus on the main research question: Why do new leaders choose regionalism. My hypothesis is focused on the argument that for understanding of recent shift in Uzbekistan’s foreign policy it is vital to examine political elites’ perception and reputation building. My methodology for this research is based on conducting semi-structured interviews with the Uzbek political elites and content analyse of 71 speeches of President Mirziyoyev.

Key words: Central Asia, Uzbekistan's foreign policy, regional security, regionalism, water management, border disputes.

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This paper intends to shed light on and analyze the soft power strategy initiated by Uzbekistan since 2017. Tashkent has set a roadmap to increase its political capital and visibility by forging an Uzbek soft power. This strategy is primarily focused on culture and tourism. By focusing on these two areas, Uzbekistan's strategy not only aims to strengthen its recent multilateral shift but also enables the construction of a 'national brand'. In this process of steady 'nation-branding' efforts, it can rely on the experience and cooperation with the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula who already possess credentials in the targeted fields. The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation—established in 2017—has skillfully proceeded to apply the toolkit used by its three main partners: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Key demonstrations of the implementation of the 'Arabian Peninsula model' include the establishment of art biennales and the materialization of 'shared desired futures' through the construction of museums and civilizational centers. The scheduled opening of the Islamic Civilization Center in Tashkent to mark the end of Ramadan (March 2026) exemplifies what STS scholar Sheila Jasanoff terms 'sociotechnical imaginaries'.

The sociotechnical imaginaries produced by Arabian Peninsula countries in the fields of art and culture are firmly rooted in Western museological models—particularly American, British and French institutions. While this framework enabled the production of relatively homogeneous definitions of nationhood across the Arabian Peninsula, its adoption remains uneven among Central Asian states. Whereas Uzbekistan has comprehensively embraced this cultural model since 2017, Kazakhstan initiated similar nation-branding processes earlier but focused primarily on the educational sphere rather than cultural institutions. Kazakh higher education institutions—particularly Nazarbayev University—have produced a distinct version of Kazakh modernity, suggesting that sociotechnical imaginaries can manifest through different sectoral pathways across Central Asia.

This paper contributes to the emerging field of Arabian Peninsula-Central Asia cultural relations by shifting focus from religious dimensions to strategic cultural diplomacy and nation-branding. While existing studies have examined energy partnerships, the deliberate transfer of Gulf soft power models to Central Asia remains understudied. Drawing on field observation (Sharjah-Samarkand exhibition, April 2024) and institutional documents, this paper demonstrates how sociotechnical imaginaries manifest through sector-specific pathways. The asymmetric adoption reveals how heritage endowment and developmental priorities shape distinct modernization trajectories across post-Soviet Central Asia.

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During the 2024 parliamentary election campaign, the ruling party, Georgian Dream, used billboards depicting destroyed Ukrainian cities alongside peaceful Georgian towns. The visual contrast reinforced the party’s narrative that Georgia could become a “second front” in the context of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Government representatives linked this scenario to the risk of deteriorating relations with the European Union and argued that avoiding tensions with Russia required maintaining a cautious or neutral political stance. The possibility of a “second front” became widely debated in public discourse and played an important role in shaping political attitudes during the election campaign.

This paper examines how collective memories of war and crisis shape contemporary political narratives in Georgia. The research draws on in-depth interviews conducted in 2018 in the regional towns of Borjomi and Telavi and forms part of my doctoral dissertation, “Generations in Transition: The Interplay of History, Trust, and Activism in Georgia’s Social Attitudes.” The study explores how different generations remember key traumatic experiences, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, the conflicts of the 1990s, and the Russo-Georgian War.

Building on the theory of generations developed by Karl Mannheim, the research demonstrates that these historical experiences continue to shape political perceptions and emotional responses across age cohorts. Older respondents often recall the economic collapse and social insecurity of the early 1990s as a defining trauma, while younger generations more strongly associate national vulnerability with the 2008 war. Despite generational differences, memories of war and instability remain central to the collective understanding of political risk.

The Georgian case demonstrates how collective trauma can function as a political resource. By mobilising memories of past conflicts, political actors frame electoral competition through narratives of security and existential threat. The paper argues that such strategies illustrate how memory politics operate in post-Soviet societies and may offer insights for understanding similar dynamics in other parts of the region, including Central Asia.

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Recent events demonstrate the alarming rise of radicalised Central Asian individuals involved in global terrorism, including the 2024 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow, the 2017 New York truck attack and a series of lone-wolf incidents across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. While terrorism was once dominated by actors from the Middle East, it has become increasingly internationalised, with Central Asia emerging as a significant source of recruitment. While scholarship has examined the regional drivers of radicalisation, less attention has been given to how educational disruption and state-led religious control shape these trajectories. Drawing on securitisation theory, this paper examines how the collapse of formal education and the securitisation of religious education in Uzbekistan have fostered ‘underground religious learning’. Far from being ad hoc, these networks appear popular among ‘uneducated’ or ‘undereducated’ youth and cultivate loyalty to insurgent movements, contributing to global manifestations of violence. Using the case of Uzbekistan, the study explores the interaction between state and non-state education, analysing how restrictive policies inadvertently legitimise underground religious education. Using qualitative methods, including discourse analysis, review of underground education cases and interviews from the region, the paper sheds light on the role of education in radicalisation and the implications for counterterrorism.

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Migrant remittances have proven markedly resilient through global crises. At the same time, international financial institutions routinely invoke the notion of ‘remittance dependency’ to warn of structural distortions in states reliant on these flows. While celebrating remittance-driven increases in GDP, they simultaneously diagnose the risks of economic specialisation around labour export and advocate institutional reforms to harness and discipline remittance markets. Despite sustained reliance on migrant transfers, however, the Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have been slower than other migrant-sending states to adopt the policy prescriptions of the so-called ‘remittances-to-development’ agenda. As remittances account for a growing share of GDP relative to other sectors, this presents a puzzle: when remittances are central to economic survival, why do states not pursue stronger mechanisms to manage and institutionalise them? Moreover, does ‘remittance dependency’ reside at the level of the state alone, or should it be located within a broader set of transnational relations linking migrant households, financial infrastructures and state-bound actors?

This paper addresses this puzzle through two lines of inquiry. Firstly, it traces the emergence of remittance dependency as a policy construct among international, national and local actors, with particular attention to Central Asia. Secondly, it interrogates the normative assumptions underpinning the remittances-to-development paradigm, identifying contradictions that render a coherent regime of remittance-led development politically and institutionally illegible. Drawing on expert interviews conducted in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and analysis of policy documents and ‘grey’ literature, the chapter advances a situated political economy account of remittance dependency. It argues that migrant remittances in Central Asia are embedded in multiscalar power relations that connect international financial institutions, moral economies of obligation and quasi-formal networks, thereby exposing the limits of state-centred accounts of dependency.

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This paper examines how supranational institutions evolve under authoritarian regionalism by analysing the competition policy of the Eurasian Economic Union. While existing scholarship portrays the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) as a weak and subordinate administrative body, this paper argues that the EEC nevertheless engages in incremental forms of institutional agency. It examines how the EEC adapts, expands, and restraints its competition policy competences under conditions of limited delegation, strong sovereignty constraints, and politically connected market structures. Drawing on historical institutionalism, the paper investigates three episodes of institutional change via the framework of conversion, drift, and layering. It shows that the EEC pursues conversion through activism on extraterritorial jurisdiction, experiences drift in its strategic restraint regarding investigative powers such as dawn raids, and engages in layering through the formalisation of soft law instruments. The paper conceptualises these dynamics as bounded supranationalism and contributes to debates on institutional change in former Soviet and non-democratic regional organisations.

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Drawing inspiration from scholarship on resource affects and resource frontier making, this paper examines the ideological fantasies that surround the European Union's engagements with Central Asia’s critical raw materials. Based on an analysis of EU documents, speeches, and related policy materials, we analyze the dynamics of resource frontier (re-)making in the context of EU-Central Asia relations and critical raw materials.

We show how a set of fantasies emerges to suture what we call the critical raw materials paradox: the tension between advancing a green transition and the fact that its realization demands ever‑greater amounts of critical raw materials leading to a deepening of extractive relations and reproduction of what we refer to as the extractive symbolic order. We focus on three intertwined fantasies: "diversification", "Central Asia as a solution space", and the "chosen partnership". We show that these fantasies are riddled with paradoxes and inconsistencies, yet the EU’s affective investment sustains them, eclipsing counter‑logics and foreclosing alternative futures.

We also detail how contradictions seep in and destabilize fantasies and how such disruptions are quickly folded back into the extractivist symbolic order. This is a symbolic order consisting of a set of justificatory narratives that – while proposed as a solution to the climate crisis – continue to organize life around the extraction of natural resources: nature is imagined as a resource, the "periphery" as a supplier, and the "center" as a value adder.

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This paper examines Turkey's evolving strategic positioning at the intersection of Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, with a particular focus on its role in the Black Sea region. In the context of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and escalating tensions in the Middle East, Ankara has pursued a policy of "strategic depth" and "balanced neutrality. By leveraging its control over the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits and its historical ties to Crimea, Turkey seeks to establish itself as an autonomous regional power and energy transit hub. This research analyzes the geoeconomic and security pillars of Turkish strategy, identifying four potential alignment scenarios ranging from pro-Western integration to regional leadership. The study concludes that Turkey's success depends on its ability to reconcile internal economic instability with complex external security objectives in a shifting global order

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This paper attempts to analyse the complex interplay of geopolitics within Eurasian connectivity. Focusing on key themes such as India's role in contesting the idea of BRI, China's expanding influence, and the evolution of a new Eurasian connectivity paradigm. It investigates the dynamics of infrastructural aid and alliances, China's emerging role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the potential establishment of a Sino-centric order in the region. Additionally, it explores cross-border infrastructure projects in the Eurasian neighbourhood and evaluates logistical alternatives amid changing connectivity dynamics.

Focusing on an alternative and a “New Eurasian Connectivity” based on the natural demands of the market, people-to-people connections, digital connectivity, and connectivity of the service sectors. I attempt to understand the rising concern over the debt trap that China has led to many beneficiaries of the BRI and also concern over the rise of the Sino-Centric Eurasian Order, as is visible in Pakistan and parts of Central Asia. It investigates the formation of infrastructural alliances and their role in shaping connectivity initiatives, both regionally and in a larger Eurasian landscape.

This paper relies on secondary literature and has taken insights from work by Bhumitra Chakma and Xiudian Di (eds.), “Belt and Road Initiative and the Politics of Connectivity”. My study goes beyond the book’s central idea. It emphasises that China’s connectivity projects must be based on universally recognised international norms, good governance, the rule of law, openness, transparency and equality and must be pursued to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states in Eurasia. It tries to supplement and provide an alternative to the studies done by Western scholars and institutions, which try to project China’s BRI as a strategic overreach enabled by deep pockets through which they exploit Eurasian states’ natural requirements of the emerging markets.

By delving into these key themes, this conference paper aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the geopolitics surrounding Eurasian connectivity. The study will contribute to the academic knowledge of the complex interactions between geopolitics and connectivity in Eurasia, bridging gaps in the existing literature. It contributes to ongoing academic discussions, informs policy debates, and offers insights into the strategic decisions of nations navigating the complexities of this dynamic and evolving region.

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This paper explores why constitutional reforms in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have failed to ensure the independence of the judiciary and to curb the activities of the prosecution service, despite three decades of reform of the judicial and prosecutorial systems. Drawing on an analysis of contemporary constitutional and institutional trends, this study examines the courts and the public prosecutor’s office as an interlinked sphere of authoritarian legal governance, a legacy of the Soviet period that continues to shape institutional standards.

The study proposes the concept of strategic constitutional layering as an explanatory framework. Constitutions adopted following independence enshrined the formal independence of the judiciary and limited the role of the public prosecutor’s office to legal oversight . However, subsequent reforms have added new layer of judicial councils, qualification commissions, constitutional courts and mechanisms for overseeing the activities of the prosecution service, which are supposed to strengthen autonomy whilst maintaining the dominance of the executive branch in matters of appointments, discipline, budgets and case allocation. Examples of this include the constitutional referendum in Kazakhstan after 2022 and the judicial reforms in Uzbekistan in 2023. The new powers of the Supreme Judicial Council coexist with the president’s right to veto appointments, whilst the hierarchy of the public prosecutor’s office retains priority in investigations. From an empirical perspective, the analysis highlights differences between the two countries. Kazakhstan exhibits greater institutional proliferation (multiple judicial bodies, a stronger rhetorical commitment to independence), yet prosecutorial dominance persists in politically sensitive cases, where prosecutorial discretion and judicial deference aligned with executive interests. Uzbekistan shows a more streamlined structure post-Mirziyoyev, with prosecutorial reform emphasising “human rights compliance”, but similar patterns emerge in cases such as that of Akmaljon Shukurov, where courts deferred to the prosecution’s framing despite procedural innovations. Both systems maintain structural advantages for the prosecution over the courts in pre-trial phases, with judges positioned as administrative implementers rather than adversarial checks.

The paper argues that, in the context of Central Asian studies, strategic constitutional multi-layering mimics judicial power without actually granting it, thereby maintaining the coordination of executive power through the courts and the prosecution service. This explains why discourse on the rule of law has not led to an institutional break in these post-Soviet states.

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The former Soviet republics share a common imperial legacy and remain entangled with Russia through trade, energy, and political alliances. Yet the extent to which this entanglement affects foreign direct investment (FDI) from third countries has received little empirical attention. This paper examines whether trade with Russia influences FDI inflows into thirteen post-Soviet economies from 1992 to 2023, using panel data and instrumental-variable methods to account for endogeneity.

The results reveal a clear asymmetry: dependence on Russian imports significantly deters FDI. A one-percent increase in per capita imports from Russia reduces FDI (as a share of GDP) by approximately 1.15 percentage points in the short run, with effects concentrated in non-European countries (Central Asia and the Caucasus). This finding suggests that import reliance signals to international investors a structural vulnerability—an exposure to a dominant supplier whose economic and political leverage creates uncertainty about future policy stability, supply-chain resilience, and institutional autonomy. In contrast, exports to Russia show no significant aggregate effect, but regional disaggregation uncovers striking heterogeneity: exports from European post-Soviet states (the Baltics, Moldova) harm FDI, while exports from non-European states attract it. The former likely reflects investor perceptions of political alignment with Russia; the latter probably captures Russian outward investment into dependable partner economies.

These results underscore that Russia is not an ordinary trade partner in the post-Soviet space; it embodies geopolitical weight that shapes investment climates. The paper contributes to debates on regional integration, dependency theory, and the political economy of FDI in transition economies. It also speaks directly to the conference theme of “Power” by demonstrating how asymmetric economic ties translate into perceived risk for global capital. For policymakers, the findings highlight the importance of diversifying trade partners and strengthening institutional safeguards to mitigate geopolitical risk and enhance investment attractiveness.

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Transportation cooperation has emerged as a central pillar of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), framed by member governments as essential for strengthening Turkic connectivity and operationalizing the ‘Middle Corridor’ as an alternative East-West route. Yet despite increasing political attention and frequent summit declarations, the depth and coherence of OTS transport cooperation remain limited. This article argues that these outcomes are best understood through the lens of regime complexity, which highlights how states operate within a crowded institutional environment composed of overlapping and competing connectivity frameworks, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the EU’s Global Gateway programs, and various bilateral agreements. Drawing on documentary analysis and elite interviews with diplomats, public officials, and experts across the region, the study shows that OTS members selectively engage with OTS initiatives while simultaneously pursuing national transport priorities through more resource-rich or strategically advantageous regimes. Rather than representing institutional weakness, this selective engagement reflects deliberate strategies of hedging, forum shopping, and layering. The article further demonstrates that transport cooperation within OTS serves not only instrumental goals, such as diversifying transit routes and improving resilience, but also important symbolic and narrative functions, reinforcing discourses of Turkic solidarity and regional identity. By situating OTS transport cooperation within broader Eurasian regime complexity, the study offers a new explanation for the uneven institutionalization of OTS connectivity initiatives and provides a nuanced account of how middle and small states navigate competing transport regimes in a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape.

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This paper explores the concept of civic identity and its implementation in Kyrgyzstan and compares it with approaches in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. After gaining independence Central Asian states have started to build new forms of national identities for their diverse societies. The focus of the study is how Kyrgyzstan has conceptualized civic identity through the recent official document The Concept for the Development of Civic Identity “Kyrgyz Zharany” (2021–2026). This document promotes equality, diversity, social cohesion and civic responsibility. Using discourse and content analysis this research examines how the concept of civic identity is institutionalized in education, media and youth policy. In comparative analysis, the thesis shows similarities and differences with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan approaches. By analyzing official discourses and documents, this research contributes to understanding how these three post-Soviet states use civic identity as a tool of nation-building and social integration in Central Asia.

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This chapter investigates the effect of the Ukraine war on political system in Kazakhstan. Since January unrest in 2022 various democracy indices and human rights watchdogs have been reporting rise of repressions and deterioration of civil liberties. How did the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine affect increasing authoritarianism in Kazakhstan? By utilizing a process-tracing technique author builds a timeline of events and political developments since January 2022 until 2025. Findings show that soon after the war broke out, the government ramped up prosecution of civic activists, independent journalists and media on charges of spreading disinformation and inciting interethnic hatred. In addition, it adopted Law on Online Platform, amended Law on Media and established Anti-Information Warfare Division to exert stricter control of media and internet space. These developments illustrate how Kazakhstan framed Ukraine war as an external threat to public order thereby justifying repressive measures and deepening self-censorship.

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Education in Afghanistan is a highly politicised field which has been going through a radical change since the return of the Taliban in 2021. Although the focus remains on the ban on female education, what is at stake here is education at large, which is becoming more and more complicated under the current regime. Taliban’s approach to education concentrates on three policies: (1) official bans, (2) curriculum change, and (3) proliferation of madrassas for boys and girls. Taliban have already banned courses like “Civic Education,” while introducing courses like “Emirate Studies” and ordering teachers not to teach Western values like human rights, democracy and even national symbols of Afghanistan. According to resources, Taliban’s curriculum change for primary level (Grades 1-6) is complete, while that for the intermediate level (Grades 7-9) is ongoing. It has also been announced that work is underway for a single curriculum for madrassas and schools at the primary level. It means that soon there will be no difference between schools and madrassas. This is line with Taliban’s policy of establishing “3-10 madrassas in every district,” which has exploded the number of madrassas in Afghanistan from 5.000 in 2021 to 21.000 in 2025. All these developments point to a process of “madrassafication of education” which is a multi-faceted issue involving; (1) establishment of madrassa education as the only legitimate way to employment and receiving aid; (2) indoctrination of new generations with Taliban’s ideology; (3) reproduction of a system of “governance by mullahs;” and (4) exploitation of education as a tool for regime survival. As a scholar working on politics of education in Afghanistan in the last fifteen years, I intend to analyse the ongoing “madrassafication” process in this paper which is a work-in-progress where I will be including new data as it comes up in due course.

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Following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions, the economic relationships between Russia and its two largest Central Asian trading partners - Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - have undergone substantial transformation. This paper presents a comparative analysis of how Russia's adapted economic policies and international isolation have influenced these two strategic economies, examining trade patterns, policy responses, and economic diversification efforts from 2022-2024.

The study reveals distinct adaptation strategies by both nations. Kazakhstan, as a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), has faced greater exposure to secondary sanctions risks while benefiting from increased leverage in energy export negotiations. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan's non-EAEU status has allowed it greater flexibility in balancing Russian economic engagement with Western compliance, though at the cost of reduced access to preferential trade arrangements.

Both countries have experienced significant growth in re-export activities and financial services, particularly in response to Russia's parallel import needs. However, their approaches to managing associated risks have diverged significantly. Kazakhstan has implemented stricter compliance mechanisms to protect its international banking relationships, while Uzbekistan has pursued a more flexible approach focused on capturing new market opportunities while maintaining plausible deniability.

Analysis of bilateral trade data and policy responses suggests that rather than reinforcing Russian economic influence, sanctions have accelerated both countries' economic diversification efforts, particularly toward China, Turkey, and the European Union. This paper concludes that the post-2022 environment has paradoxically strengthened these nations' economic autonomy while maintaining surface-level cooperation with Russia, fundamentally altering the regional economic power dynamic. These findings contribute to broader discussions about the effectiveness of sanctions and the evolution of economic sovereignty in post-Soviet states.

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Afghanistan is a multiethnic, multinational, multicultural, and multilingual state composed of diverse national, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups, each possessing distinct histories, identities, and cultural traditions. However, since the consolidation of the modern nation-state of Afghanistan in the late nineteenth century, nation-building policies pursued by successive Afghan governments have largely been shaped around a centralized unitary state, and unitary ethno-national identity, and homogenization. These policies have sought to homogenize the country’s diverse ethnocultural identities into a singular national identity of “Afghan,” a term historically associated with the dominant Pashtuns. Consequently, official narratives of history, culture, language, art, and national symbols have largely reflected a Pashtun-Afghan perspective, while the identities and contributions of other ethnocultural groups, such as Uzbeks and Turkmens, have often been ignored, marginalized, and misrepresented or vilified. Following the return to power of the Taliban in August 2021, the political and cultural marginalization of non-Pashtun communities has intensified. Turkic groups, particularly Uzbeks and Turkmens, have faced further exclusion from political power and public life, while their languages and cultural expressions have increasingly been removed from official narratives, educational institutions, media, and state publications. In addition, Turkic communities, like other minority groups, have experienced significant human rights violations, including land confiscations, forced evictions, and displacement from their homes and villages in northern Afghanistan, with their lands and pastures reportedly occupied by Pashtun settlers.

This paper examines the nation-building process and ethnocultural policies of successive Afghan governments and their impact on the ethnocultural identity, cultural expression, and linguistic rights of Turkic peoples, particularly Uzbeks and Turkmens in Afghanistan. Drawing on historical analysis and policy review, the study demonstrates how eliminationist, assimilationist, exclusionary, and integrationist approaches adopted by Afghan governments toward ethnocultural diversity have intensified interethnic tensions and hostilities and transformed Afghanistan’s ethnocultural diversity into deeper divisions and undermined inclusive state formation in Afghanistan. By analyzing these developments, the paper argues that long-standing assimilationist and ethnonationalist state-building strategies have contributed to persistent structural inequalities and the political marginalization of Turkic communities. The study concludes that sustainable stability and meaningful political participation in Afghanistan require a shift toward multicultural governance and accommodationist policies that recognize and protect the cultural and linguistic rights of all ethnocultural groups, including Turkic peoples.

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The paper examines hate speech directed at international migrants within Russian political discourse. Populist politicians and far right primarily deploy such rhetoric, according to a common assumption. However, in the Russian context, hate speech functions as a tool actively deployed by the authorities to legitimise the tightening of migration policy. While in Western democracies hate speech remains largely a resource for oppositional and far right seeking to enter the political mainstream, contemporary Russia exhibits a fundamentally different configuration: the rhetoric of exclusion towards migrants is systematically reproduced by actors representing institutional political discourse including federal officials, and members of parliament. Drawing on the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and securitisation theory, and utilising an empirical corpus comprising transcripts of State Duma sessions, official statements by government members, and public addresses by governors, the author demonstrates that hate speech against migrants is not a peripheral phenomenon but a component of the policy of migration securitisation. The analysis reveals that this discourse is (a) articulated by political actors holding formal authority; (b) constructed upon the collective representation of migrants as a source of criminal, economic, and sociocultural risks; and (c) grounded in stereotypes that frame migration as an existential threat. Russian research on hate speech has traditionally focused on the linguistic analysis of discriminatory speech tactics and strategies, primarily as they appear in media, Telegram channels, and the regional press. Western scholarship, by contrast, tends to embed the phenomenon of hate speech within macro-political theories of securitisation and welfare chauvinism, examining anti-migrant rhetoric as a tool for legitimising power and channelling social discontent in contexts of illiberalism. However, both Russian and Western studies exhibit a persistent research gap: empirical analysis has largely been confined to either media discourse or oppositional rhetoric, while the statements of institutional actors wielding formal authority remain insufficiently studied. By focusing on official sources, this paper aims to close that gap. Through this analysis, the study not only provides empirical evidence of how xenophobic rhetoric operates within Russia's institutional discourse, but also refines the application of securitisation theory to illiberal regimes. On a practical level, these findings could inform the work of NGOs, human rights advocates, and policymakers seeking to develop effective counters to migrantophobia, for instance, by identifying the specific discursive patterns that need to be challenged or by highlighting the mechanisms through which discriminatory practices in the public sphere can be addressed.

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This paper examines whether Türkiye’s activism within the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) may unintentionally weaken, rather than deepen, political cohesion among its Central Asian members. It asks under what conditions Turkish leadership within the OTS generates cooperation, and under what conditions it instead produces hedging and shallow institutionalization.

I argue that Türkiye’s OTS strategy contains an internal contradiction. While Ankara seeks to transform cultural affinity into geopolitical influence, the more assertively it promotes identity-driven and politically sensitive initiatives, the greater the likelihood that member states will respond cautiously rather than align more closely. In multilateral institutions, cohesion depends not only on shared identity, but also on perceived equality, low political costs, and voluntary buy-in. When an organization appears to advance the priorities of one dominant actor, cooperation often remains symbolic rather than substantive.

The paper focuses on several dynamics that illustrate this tension: efforts to promote a common Turkic alphabet, attempts to elevate the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus through OTS platforms, leadership practices that may be perceived as hierarchical, and strategic assumptions that treat Central Asia as more geopolitically open than it actually is. These initiatives increase sovereignty costs for Central Asian states whose foreign policies remain shaped by multi-vector diplomacy, sensitivity to recognition issues, and structural constraints imposed by Russia, China, and other external partners.

Methodologically, the paper draws on discourse analysis of official declarations, policy statements, and public positions taken by OTS member states and relevant outside actors. Its central claim is not that the OTS is fragile or doomed, but that its future depth depends on whether functional cooperation can be separated from contested identity and recognition agendas. The paper thus contributes to broader debates on power, hierarchy, and regional order in Central Eurasia.

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The paper examines the re-establishment of the Constitutional Court in Kazakhstan as a part of broader constitutional reforms initiated after the January 2022 events. Institutional changes in the constitutional control body are aimed toward democratization and the transparency of judiciary institutions, as well as the protection of fundamental human rights. As a result of reforms, the Constitutional Court declared that more than 5000 appeals were received by the Court annually. Currently, over 70 decisions have been issued by the Court regarding the constitutionality of enacted legislation.

The research explores whether the re-establishment of the Constitutional Court in Kazakhstan marks a genuine reform toward democratization or serves merely as a tool for autocratic survival. It will also assess whether constitutional review in Kazakhstan is consistently effective across all legal issues or if effectiveness varies by category.

Following this, the research design will follow a qualitative case study approach with a constructivist philosophy. The data collection techniques involve content analysis, document and statistical analysis, semi-structured interviews, and process tracing of the judicial review process to understand causal mechanisms and test hypotheses about constitutional reforms in Kazakhstan.

The study will contribute to scholarship on courts in hybrid regimes and develop new measurements for the Court's functions across three dimensions: independence, power, and efficiency. It also offers policy-relevant recommendations to strengthen constitutional review and improve legislative accountability in Kazakhstan and the broader Central Asian region.

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This paper explores the extent to which pan-nationalist myths in the political areas of Kazakhstani society interrelate and reinforce trust in governmental institutions. On a theoretical level, the paper aims to address gaps in contemporary pan-nationalist literature and trust and distrust in Central Asia. Moreover, juxtaposing the pan-nationalist literature with the literature on institutional trust is another theoretical contribution of this work. To investigate pan-nationalism and institutional trust at the empirical level, the author analyses these aspects in the context of pan-Turkist myths and narratives expressed and configured by Kazakhstani governmental institutions and officials. The empirical database includes public speeches, statements, and publications available online on governmental websites such as the Official website of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Gov.kz, and media sources such as “Kazinform” International News Agency, Liter, InAstana.kz, and Kapital. The sources are in English, Russian, and Kazakh that were published from 2010 to 2026. To analyse the empirical data, abductive thematic analysis is used to identify themes derived from the existing literature and discover new themes that shed light on the interrelation between pan-Turkist identity and trust in political institutions. Situated between induction and deduction, abductive thematic analysis allows to intimately analyse the emerging empirical data, which further critically refines the theoretical bodies of literature. The central argument of this paper is that officials configure pan-nationalist myths and narratives to reinforce the policies and regime’s legitimacy and authority by narrating the nation’s continuation and embodiment in the contemporary institutions. Focusing on the official strategies for upholding institutional trust, the paper argues that official interpretations of pan-nationalist myths and narratives are vital for reinventing beliefs in national pride that translate into trust in political institutions, which are narrated as embodiments of the nation’s continuity. Particularly, pan-Turkist myths and narratives transmit conceptions of the national antecedent might and glory, such as the Turkic periods and nomadic past, that further create social legitimacy and trust in institutions that express and address these identity conceptions.

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Why does repression sometimes suppress anti-government protest and at other times catalyze mass mobilization against the state? Existing accounts conceptualize repression primarily as an increase in the cost of dissent, yet they offer limited insight into the mechanisms through which state control reshapes citizens' political behavior. This paper develops an access-based framework that shifts the focus from how much repression a state employs to how repression restructures the channels through which citizens interact with the state and with one another. The framework distinguishes two dimensions of political access: vertical access, the institutionalized pathways linking citizens to state authorities, and horizontal access, the communicative and associational linkages among citizens themselves. Vertical closure transforms the direction of grievances by breaking down the state's grievance absorption mechanism, redirecting dissatisfaction from specific policies toward the regime as such. Yet this reattribution alone does not produce anti-government protest; mobilization requires horizontal access that enables coordination and collective action. Anti-government protest is therefore most likely under a specific configuration: restricted vertical access combined with open horizontal access. The framework further theorizes how the sequence and tempo of access closure generate distinct protest trajectories, including an inverted-U pattern at intermediate levels of repression. These expectations are tested through cross-national time-series analysis and a process-tracing case study of Kazakhstan's January 2022 protests. The findings contribute to debates on the repression-dissent nexus, political opportunity structures, and democratic backsliding by specifying the configurational logic through which repression produces regime-directed contention.

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This paper explores the origins of sinophobia in contemporary Kazakhstan by analyzing the evidence from Kazakh Soviet historical novels. Despite the general statements regarding the role of literature in building anti-China sentiment in Kazakh society during the Sino-Soviet split, there has been no in-depth analysis of such works and discourses. Thus, I attempt to address this gap in the scholarly literature by undertaking a thematic and critical discourse analysis of two famous Kazakh novels, comprising four books, from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Namely, the trilogy Koshpendiler (Nomads) by Ilyas Esenberlin and Gonetz (Rider) by Anuar Alimzhanov were investigated for their rhetoric on China and the Chinese. I reveal anti-China or sinophobic narratives from these historical fiction pieces and, consequently, argue that they coincide with the Soviet colonial discourse strategies towards Soviet Asia and ethnic minorities that instrumentalize China as the historical “other”. I demonstrate that Soviet-Russian notions of "lesser evil", "besieged fortress", and "Chinese lebensraum" were the main pillars of the anti-China rhetoric in the novels. I conclude that otherization of China can be seen as one of the trade-off strategies that allowed for the ethnic nationalist rhetoric in these novels to get through Soviet censorship. The paper applies critical constructivist theory and treats the concept of sinophobia as a social construct. The work is based on my 2024 undergraduate thesis and is being reformulated for the conference.

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The twenty-first-century transformation of Eurasian geopolitics has sparked renewed scholarly interest in regional institutions and their contributions to security management. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is one such organization, a multilateral cooperation platform in Central Eurasia. SCO was established in 2001 by China, Russia, and four Central Asian states and was originally used to build confidence and secure borders, but over time, it has adopted a more institutional approach to regional security, economic unity, and political stability. This paper will examine the role of the SCO in the re-engineering of Eurasian regionalism, focusing on changes in security cooperation mechanisms and institutional adjustments.

In the analysis, the SCO security architecture is given special consideration, with a focus on the institutional role of the Regional Anti-terrorism Structure (RATS), which coordinates intelligence sharing, counterterrorism activities, and joint operations among member states. RATS has also become a centre of fighting the so-called three evil forces, which are terrorism, separatism, and extremism, through reactionary databases, operational cooperation and shared counterterrorism exercises. With these efforts, it is evident that the organization has enshrined security collaboration in the region, which has been distressed by fragmented rules and competing geopolitical interests.

The SCO is also placed in the context of Eurasian regionalism and multipolarity in the paper. Nowadays, Eurasia has become a central figure in the development of global power relations, particularly following the conflict in Ukraine and the shift in the pace of relations among Russia, China, and Western countries. The present SCO summit declarations signal the organization’s wish to contribute to an equal and indivisible security architecture in Eurasia, with a normative perspective that questions the West’s approach to security and promotes the ideals of sovereignty and non-intervention.

This paper argues that SCO is a distinct type of regionalism due to its institutional development and security cooperation mechanisms, and will address contemporary geopolitical processes and mechanisms of security cooperation. The organization demonstrates the responses of regional institutions in Central Eurasia to the most complex geopolitical environment and the ways they may promote collaboration among states with diverse strategic priorities. Lastly, the study has also shed light on ongoing debates over regional politics and power relations by illuminating the SCO’s evolving role in shaping security processes and institutional order in Central Eurasia.

Keywords- Eurasian Regionalism, SCO, RATS, Multipolar, Three Evil Forces, Geopolitics

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The re-emergence of Central Eurasia as a strategically important geopolitical area under the new conditions of great power competition and changing world power structure can be observed. Being at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, the region has become a growing concern for the strategic interests of major players such as Russia, China, the United States, and the European Union. Kazakhstan stands at the heart of this changing geopolitical landscape due to its central geographic location, significant mineral and energy reserves, and aggressive international relations. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how Kazakhstan’s foreign policy has changed in response to the dynamics of the geopolitical landscape and how it is coping with the challenges posed by the great powers’ rivalry in Central Eurasia. In the multifaceted approach to diplomacy, Kazakhstan has sought to avoid over-reliance on any particular actor and to occupy a middle ground between various geopolitical spheres in Eurasia.

The regional strategic environment has been changing rapidly due to recent geopolitical developments. The effects of the Russian-Ukrainian War have brought emerging economic and security issues to Central Asian states, forcing Kazakhstan to re-evaluate its foreign policy orientation. Though its historical and economic relationship with Russia is close, Kazakhstan has also increased its interactions with partners in the West and its economic cooperation with China, especially in energy, trade, and infrastructure connectivity. The developments underscore the growing significance of Central Eurasia as a transcontinental trade route and a strategic power.

It is against this background that the foreign policy of the Kazakhstan state is becoming more reminiscent of a balanced, hedged approach between conflicting powers. Kazakhstan aims to increase its strategic independence by supporting dialogue, economic diversification, and regional connectivity programs, while stabilising the situation across the region. This paper argues that the middle power strategy, as evident in Kazakhstan, demonstrates the role of middle powers in negotiations with the great powers and in creating regional order.

Finally, the study views Central Eurasia not as a peripheral geopolitical region but as a space of increasingly contested strategic politics in world politics. The foreign policy of Kazakhstan illustrates how regional players are shaping the dynamics of changing power relations, thereby contributing to the emergence of new trends in collaboration, competition, and rule in Eurasia.

Keywords: Central Eurasia, Kazakhstan, Great Power Competition, Multi-Vector Foreign Policy, Regional Geopolitics, Strategic Balancing, Multipolarity, Eurasian Connectivity.

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Kazakhstan has a crucial role in international educational migration hosting thousands of students from the neighboring nations, which makes it the biggest educational hub in Central Asia. In particular, a high proportion of inflow of students actively immigrate into the western regions of Kazakhstan. The student flow into Kazakhstan is ranked by Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, north-west of Russia, key original countries, and interconnected components of the Middle Corridor. Apart from major cities like Almaty, Astana and Shymkent, there are the other regional cities, the one referring to Aktau city of Magystau region, hosting international students owing to its geopolitical landscape.

Due to shifting politics, analyzing the contribution of Kazakhstan in the educational migration is a key question of this paper. The relevance of the study is determined by the rapid growth of inflow of youth for educational purposes. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the motives of educational migration into Kazakhstan and identify the main trends of educational migration on the oblast level. In order to get more precise results, we have organized a questionnaire tending to cover more than 50 international students currently studying at Yessenov University located in Aktau city, Mangystau region.

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In this article I examine the persistence and transformation of the hydraulic mission--the drive to control and modify natural water flows to meet human needs--in post-independence Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. My central argument is that large-scale water development remains central to processes of state-building and territorialization. Contrary to claims that the hydraulic mission has declined, I show that in Central Asia it has endured, not despite political and economic ruptures, but through its capacity to be rearticulated in new discursive forms. While fiscal and institutional constraints have limited implementation, ruling elites have consistently maintained a strong commitment to hydraulic development.

Conceptually, I view the hydraulic mission as both a driver and outcome of state territorialization. Infrastructure such as dams, canals, and irrigation systems materializes state power by transforming abstract territorial claims into concrete control over biophysical space. In this sense, the state is not only an actor directing water development but is itself constituted through these infrastructural interventions.

Drawing primarily on document analysis supplemented by interviews with farmers, development practitioners, and government officials, I trace the evolution of the hydraulic mission from its Soviet origins to its contemporary reconfiguration. I demonstrate how Soviet-era irrigation and hydropower projects established enduring hydrosocial territories that continue to shape governance in both countries. In the post-independence period, the mission has been sustained through overlapping discourses: a productivist logic that frames water as an underutilized economic resource; hydronationalist narratives that cast water infrastructure as a symbol of sovereignty; neoliberal reforms that enable private-sector participation; and more recent "green" framings that align hydropower development with climate agendas.

Finally, I show that, despite being justified in terms of the national interest, the hydraulic mission frequently facilitates elite capture and accumulation. Through case studies from irrigation and hydropower sectors, I demonstrate how infrastructure is selectively mobilized to benefit politically connected actors, reinforcing uneven access to water and energy.

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The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is frequently analysed through institutional design, geopolitics, and aggregate trade outcomes, yet less is known about how integration is experienced by firms within member states. This article examines the consequences of EAEU membership for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kazakhstan’s manufacturing sector. Drawing on 17 semi-structured interviews with SME owners and managers and a qualitative analysis of 121 newspaper articles, it traces how integration is translated into everyday business practice. The findings show that outcomes are unevenly distributed and structured by asymmetric power relations within the EAEU. Kazakhstani SMEs face intensified competition from Russian producers, higher input costs linked to tariff harmonisation, and recurrent non-tariff barriers that restrict access to partner markets. These constraints are reinforced by discretionary enforcement and transit dependencies, generating rule-based uncertainty for firms with limited administrative and political capacity. Geopolitical shocks, particularly sanctions-related disruptions and currency volatility, further transmit instability through integrated supply chains and trade routes. By foregrounding firm-level experiences, the article contributes to debates on Eurasian integration and authoritarian regionalism, showing how formal rules interact with informal hierarchies to generate dependency for peripheral member states.

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How should post-Soviet nation-building in Kazakhstan be analysed: as a project driven by state elites from above, or as a process negotiated from below through everyday identities, language practices, and citizen responses? This paper argues that the opposition between top-down and bottom-up approaches is analytically limiting. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory, and engaging Rogers Brubaker’s concept of the nationalizing state, it reconceptualises post-Soviet nation-building in Kazakhstan as a single hegemonic field in which official state projects, minority responses, and citizen-level perceptions are articulated together rather than operating as separate domains.

The paper examines three interrelated dynamics. First, it analyses how Kazakh state elites constructed a hegemonic project in the 1990s around language policy, citizenship, demographic restructuring, and diaspora repatriation. Through these processes, Kazakhness was articulated as the core signifier of post-Soviet restoration and legitimate statehood. Second, it shows how this project was later reformulated through broader and more incorporative discourses of national unity, Kazakhstaniness, and Eurasianism, enabling the state discourse to widen its legitimacy without relinquishing the privileged position of the titular nation. Rather than displacing the earlier project, these discourses reworked and stabilised it under changing domestic and international conditions. Third, the paper investigates why Russian and Russophone minority actors failed to consolidate a durable counter-hegemonic project despite early resistance to language reform, bureaucratic restructuring, and demographic change. Their claims remained fragmented, while state strategies of selective accommodation, depoliticisation, and symbolic inclusion limited the emergence of a coherent rival discourse.

Rather than separating elite projects from everyday negotiations, the paper reads legal and political texts, minority responses, and citizen-centred studies within a single hegemonic field. In doing so, it argues that the top-down/bottom-up distinction obscures the processes through which “the nation,” “the people,” and legitimate belonging are constructed in Kazakhstan. More broadly, the paper suggests that discourse theory offers a useful way to rethink post-Soviet nation-building beyond static analytical binaries.

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How do states construct and negotiate identity, role, and status under conditions of strategic asymmetry? This article examines how Russia articulates its identity, role, and international status vis-à-vis China in the Russian Far East (RFE) following the launch of the Special Military Operation (SVO) in February 2022. Treating the RFE as a critical regional arena where domestic and foreign policy intersect, the study analyzes how Russian political elites discursively manage cooperation with China while asserting sovereignty, regional authority, and great-power recognition. The analysis is grounded in constructivist International Relations theory, which conceptualizes identity, role, and status as co-constitutive and performatively enacted through discourse. Empirically, the article employs a computational–constructivist framework that integrates large language models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and density-based semantic clustering to analyze a corpus of 499 official statements, speeches, and social media posts produced by senior Russian political actors between 2022 and 2025. Rather than treating computational tools as theory-neutral, the study explicitly aligns them with constructivist epistemology, using them to operationalize interpretive concepts at scale while preserving contextual grounding and theoretical coherence.

The findings reveal a highly consistent elite discourse in which Russia presents itself simultaneously as a cooperative and reliable partner to China, a sovereign and independent regional power, and a stabilizing actor in Northeast Asia. Cooperation in infrastructure, energy, and regional development is foregrounded, yet framed as a strategy for managing asymmetry rather than accepting subordination. Russia’s status claims oscillate between assertions of equality and implicit recognition of China’s growing economic and demographic weight, producing a relationship best characterized as managed interdependence. Historical memory and civilizational narratives are repeatedly mobilized to legitimize cooperation and mitigate status anxiety, stabilizing an otherwise indeterminate hierarchy. The article contributes to constructivist scholarship by demonstrating how identity, role, and status can be empirically operationalized through computational discourse analysis without sacrificing interpretive depth. Methodologically, it advances debates on text-as-data in International Relations by showing how generative AI can enhance, rather than replace, theoretically grounded qualitative analysis. Substantively, it offers new insights into how great powers reproduce global identities through localized regional discourse under conditions of geopolitical constraint.

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The China-Central and Eastern European Countries (C-CEEC) framework, launched amid the European debt crisis in the early 2010s, serves as a vehicle for economic, political, and socio-cultural cooperation between China and the CEE region. Formalized in 2012 as the "16+1" (later "17+1" with Greece’s participation), the initiative initially included 16 CEE nations: 11 from the European Union (EU)–Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania (subsequently withdrew), Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, and five non-EU states–Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. Multi-level cooperation is facilitated and coordinated by a Beijing-based Secretariat with representatives from C-CEEC member states.

The C-CEEC’s objectives center on fostering trade, investment, and infrastructure development. The framework facilitates CEE countries to attract Chinese investments in transport, energy, and technology, and to diversify export destinations. Integrating this framework into China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative also advances the country’s goals of increasing its exports and geopolitical influence in Europe. Chinese enterprises have invested over $16 billion in CEE countries (2012–2019), while CEE investments in China totaled about $1.5 billion. The China-CEE Investment Fund, launched in 2012 and later expanded, supports joint infrastructure projects, often utilizing Chinese equipment. A Chinese state-owned shipping company notably purchased a majority share of Greece’s port of Piraeus, Europe’s second-largest container port. For some states like Hungary and Serbia, Chinese funding fills investment gaps left by the EU and drives growth in ICT and manufacturing sectors.

Despite these promising developments, the framework faces significant economic and security challenges which deserves further study. I will investigate what are the concerns raised by CEE countries on their massive and increasing trade deficits with China, as well as slowing or disproportionate Chinese investments in various CEE states. I will analyze how the United States-China trade “war” starting in 2018 and subsequent technological conflict has divided CEE/European perspectives on cooperation with China, particularly on data security regarding the use of Chinese digital infrastructure, and Chinese adherence to EU rules concerning environmental and procurement standards. I will also scrutinize the extent to which the Russia-Ukraine war and Iran’s war with the U.S. and Israel affects CEE relations with China, in terms of alignments in foreign security and economic policies. As the CEE region is a core area of interest to China, as well as Russia, the U.S., and the rest of Europe, Beijing’s continuing involvement in the C-CEEC and the framework’s ability to overcome challenges merit our attention.

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This article is devoted to analyzing the role of the spiritual and ecological heritage of Nowruz in promoting green diplomacy in Tajikistan. Nowruz, as one of the oldest celebrations in human history, rooted in the millennial civilization of the Persian and Tajik peoples, embodies not only a cultural phenomenon but also a system of values that reflects a harmonious and responsible relationship between humanity and nature.

The article, using qualitative analysis methods, including discourse analysis, a review of scientific sources, political documents, and official speeches, as well as a study of the cultural experiences of the Tajik people related to Nowruz, examines the spiritual and ecological aspects of this celebration. At the same time, the Nowruz traditions of the mountainous people and the forms of transmission of ecological knowledge from generation to generation are used as important sources of analysis.

The article argues that Tajikistan, relying on the spiritual and ecological values of Nowruz, develops a unique form of green diplomacy, leveraging culture as a tool of soft power and cultural diplomacy to promote environmental sustainability, foster social cohesion, and enhance regional and international cooperation. Unlike traditional models of diplomacy, which rely mainly on political and economic interests, this approach uses intangible cultural heritage as a key element in shaping the country’s international image and as an effective mechanism for environmental governance

The results of the study show that the values embodied in Nowruz, such as respect for nature, environmental purification, social cohesion, and rational resource management, can strengthen the solid foundation of Tajikistan’s environmental policy and international diplomacy. These values strengthen both national policies and regional cooperation within Central Asia and beyond.

From an academic perspective, the article contributes to the development of contemporary debates on the relationship between intangible cultural heritage, ecology, and diplomacy, demonstrating how folk and historical traditions can serve as a source of policy innovation for addressing global challenges, including climate change and sustainable development.

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Since the death of Islam Karimov in 2016, Uzbekistan has embarked on a series of pro-market reforms under

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, accompanied by rapid urban redevelopment, privatization initiatives, and efforts

to attract foreign investment. These reforms are frequently presented by the state as part of the construction of a

“New Uzbekistan,” yet they unfold within institutional structures inherited from the Soviet period and under

conditions of continued authoritarian governance. This paper examines how market-oriented reforms reshape

urban landscapes in the capital of Uzbekistan and how these processes intersect with path-dependent governance

practices.

The paper analyses how neoliberal policies are selectively implemented through presidential decrees, institutional

enforcement, and everyday practices. Empirically, it focuses on urban restructuring in Tashkent, where large-scale

redevelopment projects and real estate expansion have led to widespread demolitions, evictions, and new forms

of commodification of urban space. The state extracts value from land and infrastructure through: demolition,

redevelopment, and investment projects. While these transformations are framed as modernization, they often

reproduce hybrid arrangements in which market logics coexist with coercive governance, informal mediation,

and patronage networks.

By tracing the trajectory from policy formulation to lived experience, the paper highlights the tensions between

formal reform narratives and the realities of everyday governance.

It contributes to debates on (post)industrial transformation in the post-Soviet region by showing how neoliberal

reforms are layered onto socialist-era institutions, producing distinctive hybrid regimes of urban development.

The Uzbek case demonstrates how post-industrial restructuring in post-Soviet contexts must be analysed through

the interaction of inherited socialist structures, authoritarian governance, and global economic pressures.

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This paper studies the Chinese ethnic policy and cultural ecological imbalances in Xinjiang. This paper examines the adversities of China’s governance strategies in Xinjiang which can be seen as  various mechanisms of political control to restructure and reshape socio-cultural landscapes and ecological balance. This study focuses on Xinjiang both as  geopolitical and historical continuum of Central Asian region. The study examines the intersection of various methodological approaches like spatial reconfiguration,  demographic engineering,  cultural assimilation and environmental degradation. 

China’s Ethnic policy in Xinjiang is primarily focused on national building, securitization,  economic restructuring  and cultural  standardisation.  This led to adverse impact on minority ethnicities prominently part of pastoralism and oasis dependent agriculture.  The state promoted development models have intensified pressure on fragile ecosystems contributing to ecological exhaustion and imbalance. Here, the concept of ‘cultural ecological imbalance’ is applied to understand the power hierarchies. It is eroding traditional knowledge systems as well as exploitation natural resources. 

This paper used the combination of  methodological frameworks from political ecology, critical geopolitics and geoeconomy. Ethnographic insights from secondary sources.  The central argument of the paper is China’s Ethnic policy in Xinjiang is characterized by militarization in the name of securitization,  cultural assimilation and disruptions in traditional economic processes.  This led to weakened balance between culture and livelihoods of ethnic minorities.  This paper concludes that the China’s governance strategies like demographic engineering,  increased forced labor and camps, expansion of colonial agriculture,  surveillance and restrictions on cultural expression led to large scale ecological degradation.

This paper coincides with the conference theme by finding that reconfiguration of space as power contestations. Societies are restructuralised along  side if cultural landscapes.  This paper tries to fill the literature gap by following interdisciplinary approach including political science,  human geography and environmental studies.  The findings are relevant to contemporary issues and challenges faced by Xinjiang and it calls for rethinking of governance and development models so that integration of cultural diversity,  local knowledge systems and ecological sustainability. 

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The paper examines the extent to which the amendments introduced to Article 6(3) of the Constitution of Kazakhstan through the national referendum of June 8, 2022, and subsequently replicated in Article 8(3) of the new Constitution of March 15, 2026, reflect the realities of ownership and governance of natural and energy resources in the country. The constitutional provision that existed during the Nazarbayev era, stating that ‘natural resources are in state ownership’, was, during the presidency of Tokayev, replaced with the formulation that ‘natural resources belong to the people.’

The sovereignty of the people over natural resources is particularly important for a resource-supplying country such as Kazakhstan. Overall, the notion that natural resources belong to the people is consistent with Article 1 of the ICCPR and the ICESCR, which recognize the collective right of peoples to freely dispose of their natural wealth and stipulate that they shall not be deprived of their means and subsistence.

This paper analyzes the laws, government actions, and policies adopted following the introduction of amendments to Article 6(3) of the Constitution in order to assess whether this shift signifies a substantive transformation in resource governance or whether it remains largely declaratory and symbolic. Based on the analysis of policies concerning natural and energy resources in contemporary Kazakhstan, as well as an examination of the constitutions of the Soviet Union, which promoted an ideology and economic system based on the people’s ownership, the paper argues that these constitutional amendments are largely populist. They were adopted to gain political recognition and public support, while shaping public expectations of a better life. Furthermore, it argues that the powers of ministries have been narrowed and the management of natural resources has increasingly been transferred to the private sector.

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This paper examines the role of civil society actors during periods of destabilization, using the events in Zhanaozen (Kazakhstan, 2011–2012) as an instrumental case study. It represents the final stage of a broader research project and tests a hypothesis derived from an original analytical model developed by the author.

The Zhanaozen case is conceptualized as a “destabilizing event,” operationalized through the official declaration of a state of emergency. This approach allows for the empirical observation of how a political system responds to acute internal shocks. The research draws on a wide range of sources, including official documents, reports of international organizations, media materials, and selected digital content, enabling methodological triangulation and strengthening the reliability of the findings.

The paper is grounded in a conceptual distinction between a “stable state” (the absence of destabilizing events) and “stability” as a system’s capacity to withstand destabilizing pressures. It further develops a typology of civil society actors—systemic, non-systemic, and anti-systemic—based on their relationship with the state. The analysis also identifies two key mechanisms through which civil society may contribute to stabilization: communicative processes of dialogue and compromise (Habermas) and the production and diffusion of values, narratives, and discourses (Gramsci).

Importantly, the role of civil society actors is assessed not only in terms of its stabilizing or destabilizing character, but also in terms of its degree of significance, distinguishing between critical and non-critical forms of influence.

The central hypothesis, tested through a case study approach, argues that the role of civil society varies depending on both the stage of destabilization and the type of actors involved.

The findings contribute to broader debates on state–society relations, the dynamics of political stability, and the role of civil society in hybrid political regimes, offering a nuanced understanding of how different types of actors shape trajectories of destabilization and stabilization.

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Historically a crucible of Islamic civilization, Uzbekistan underwent a profound transformation under Russian and Soviet colonization, resulting in the establishment of a secular legal order and the exclusion of Shari’a and customs from the public sphere. Following independence in 1991, Uzbekistan began moving away from socialism toward capitalism. At that time, the ruling class and intellectuals believed it appropriate to transplant norms from advanced legal systems in order to create new laws and regulations compatible with the emerging economic system. This tendency toward legal transplantation, often grounded in Eurocentric assumptions as well as the Soviet legacy, continues to shape contemporary lawmaking and has generated tensions in areas such as family, criminal, and civil law.

At the same time, post-independence Uzbekistan has experienced a significant Islamic revival within a predominantly Muslim society. Despite this, non-state normative orders, such as customary practices (adat) and Shari’a, remain marginalized within the formal legal system, where statutory law is dominant and exclusively applied by state courts. Prominent Uzbek jurists also emphasize that, as a secular state, statutory law takes precedence and that all residents are required to follow it exclusively. Even law school textbooks rarely mention the significance of religious rules and customs in legal practice, with legal education seemingly disconnected from societal realities. While existing scholarship on legal pluralism acknowledges the coexistence of state and non-state legal orders in Uzbekistan, it often stops at descriptive analysis and offers limited normative guidance on how to address this plurality within formal institutions.

This paper argues that the persistence of this hierarchy reflects not only legal positivism but also deeper patterns of epistemic and institutional dominance that can be understood through a decolonial lens. Drawing on decolonial theory, this paper proposes a shift from attempting to eliminate legal pluralism toward managing it. It advances a theoretical framework for incorporating forms of hybrid decision-making within state courts, aimed at recognizing the social significance of non-state norms while maintaining institutional coherence. In doing so, the paper contributes to ongoing debates on legal pluralism and decoloniality in post-Soviet contexts.

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This paper examines why digital transformation in Central Asia produces uneven gender-related outcomes despite the growing prominence of inclusion and skills development in official reform agendas. Focusing on Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, the study explores how state capacity, institutional coordination, and political priorities shape the incorporation of gender concerns into digital reform. Rather than treating women’s digital education as a separate policy field, the paper situates it within broader state-led modernization strategies and asks why gender priorities remain inconsistently embedded across sectors. Drawing on a comparative analysis of national policy documents, digital strategies, education reforms, and gender equality frameworks, the paper argues that uneven digital reform reflects not only differences in administrative resources but also distinct political choices about whose inclusion matters in development. While governments increasingly frame digitalization as a pathway to competitiveness and modernization, gender-sensitive implementation remains fragmented and often secondary. The paper contributes to debates on governance, power, and development in Central Eurasia by showing how digital reforms reveal broader hierarchies of state attention, institutional strength, and social inclusion.

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This paper examines the everyday experiences of “digital sojourners” (remote-income foreigners without permanent residency) in Turkey and Georgia, focusing on Istanbul, Tbilisi, and Batumi amid the emergence of digital nomad mobility regimes. I argue that the figure of the sojourner is analytically useful for understanding temporary cross-border mobility that is not well captured by migration frameworks centered on settlement, integration, or long-term incorporation. Grounded in individuals’ mobility plans rather than legal categories alone, the concept of digital sojourn makes it possible to analyze how rights, obligations, and belonging are negotiated under conditions of temporality, relationality, and uncertainty. In doing so, the paper disentangles categories of analysis from bureaucratic and everyday practice and rethinks temporary mobility beyond the migrant-as-settler model.

Empirically, the paper draws on 30 semi-structured interviews combined with interactive mapping, conducted in person in September-October 2025, as well as participant observation in online contexts over the past year. It shows that Turkey and Georgia pursue different legal and regulatory strategies toward foreign mobile populations, yet these differences produce strikingly similar outcomes at the level of lived experience. In both cases, digital nomad regimes and adjacent transformations in mobility governance simultaneously generate privileges for a very specific type of foreigner: an ideal figure imagined mainly as politically and socially disconnected, digitally enabled, and primarily valuable as a consumer. At the same time, these regimes intensify the securitization of other forms of foreign presence and limit mobility and belonging opportunities for those who do not fit this model. Rather than simply facilitating mobility, these arrangements selectively distribute access, recognition and livability through a subscription-like logic.

By focusing on everyday emplacement, conviviality, and relations with local communities, the paper demonstrates how mobile foreigners navigate both inclusion and exclusion alongside, and sometimes against, state-assigned migration labels and classifications. It contributes to scholarship on migration, mobility, and belonging by showing how privileged temporary mobility regimes restructure inclusion through selective desirability rather than settlement, and how digital nomadism is sustained through unequal distinctions among foreigners themselves. More broadly, the paper shows that divergent legal strategies can converge in practice, producing similar hierarchies of mobility, belonging, and emplacement.

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The paper draws on historical institutionalism to examine how asymmetric institutional structures between China and Kazakhstan shape the outcomes of BRI-led infrastructure development. It uses the concept of asymmetrical interdependence to explain unequal power relations and their implications for state-society relations. Broadly, situating the study within discussions of how Central Eurasia is evolving as an interconnected region, the paper aims to explain how BRI-led infrastructure development is reshaping Kazakhstan’s strategic space. This primarily includes key infrastructure corridors across the border region between Kazakhstan and China, which are central to connectivity. The paper aims to analyse, first, how these developments shape state-society relations through local responses; second, how infrastructure initiatives highlight the asymmetrical institutional structure and power relations between Kazakhstan and China.

The paper further argues that these power relations generate new socio-spatial vulnerabilities. The large-scale connectivity projects reconfigure not only economic geographies but also social hierarchies and local perceptions of risk and security. Therefore, the flagship Chinese connectivity initiative- BRI- can be seen not merely as an economic initiative but as a strategic instrument through which China seeks to stabilise its western periphery, particularly in relation to Xinjiang and transnational ethnic linkages involving Uyghur communities, thereby embedding security logics within development practices.

The paper further examines how China’s BRI interacts with Kazakhstan’s domestic infrastructure development program, Nurly Zhol, highlighting the 2016 alignment between the two. This alignment shows how Kazakhstan balances external projects with its own development priorities. By examining the connection between infrastructure development and power hierarchies, the paper locates large connectivity projects like the BRI within increased dependence of Kazakhstan on external actors, which shapes its position in Central Eurasia.

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Smooth and seamless connectivity between land-locked Central Asia and South Asia may foster growth and enhance development significantly, not only in these two regions but also in the wider Central Eurasian region. That is how it has been, historically, but not so during the seven decades of the Soviet Union. Several proposals have come up, initiatives unfolded and measures taken over yester years aimed at realizing this long-held inter-regional dream. Economic corridors, roads and bridges, ports and airports, transmission lines and pipelines have routinely been making the headlines. These moves, seen with increased intensity over past half a decade have been there off and on since the dissolution of USSR and emergence of five independent Central Asian states. However, practically, we see situation on the ground only marginally different today than it was, say, some two to three decades ago. Several issues -- unending instability in Afghanistan, inter-state conflicts and geo-strategic rivalries, major power competition, competing developmental strategies and approaches, as well as financial and technical constraints -- act as ostensible obstacles. This intended paper -- drawing from published sources as well as author's direct explorations in the form of field visits, surveys and interviews over past several; years -- seeks to take a comprehensive look at the rood travelled so far in this connection; shed light on the broader state of affairs today; flag the issues and problems that hamper the journey towards this goal, and more importantly come up with specific policy-relevant recommendations for countries, inter-governmental organizations, international financial institutions, businesses and other stakeholders.

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Monograph chapter part of my PhD thesis

Thesis research question: How regime security shapes China's foreign policy in Central Asia

This chapter is the second analytical section of the thesis, in which I discuss the connection between China's own domestic supply line concerns and its foreign policy in Central Asia.

The root cause is the 'Malacca Strait Dilemma', a maritime channel in the Indo-Pacific, through which most of China's trade flows, including vital imports of energy, agricultural goods, precious metals, and rare earths. China is not self-sufficient in many key areas, so in the eventuality of a conflict between the US and China, the closure of the Malacca Strait (which is also surrounded by US military bases) would essentially represent an existential threat in a long, drawn out conflict.

The Chinese elite are very aware of this dilemma, and the concept was already introduced back at the turn of the millennium by then president Jiang Zemin in a speech to the National Congress. He emphasized the need for China to prioritizing building trade routes elsewhere, so as not to be fully reliant on maritime trade in the Indo-Pacific. This is the backdrop of China's 'Great Western Development Program' and later, the Belt and Road Initiative, first announced at Nazarbayev University in 2013. In an attempt to recreate the classical silk routes, China seeks to connect itself to the important European market by creating new trade routes, logistical hubs, extraction mines, and pipelines in Central Asia to de-risk their overall trade-flow. This gives an alternative dimension to the typical framing of Chinese infrastructure projects in Central Asia.

This chapter is based on CCP primary literature (white papers, speeches, China-Central Asia events), and from my own interviews conducted in China in late 2025 with prominent scholars at Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Northwest University, and Lanzhou University - and also a previous fieldwork conducted in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 2024.

The chapter is not completed yet, but will be at the time of the conference, my deadline being the end of May.

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This study explores how the proverbs in Kyrgyz language function as a form of vernacular heritage that shapes and reflects state tradition in contemporary Kyrgyzstan – in particular, during the current presidency since 2021. While the extant scholarship on Central Asian political legitimacy has extensively focused on formal institutions, elite narratives, and nationalist/populist symbolism, this research examines how everyday linguistic heritage -specifically proverbs, макалдар - involves in constructing political meaning and moral authority in the public sphere. Consistent with the calls to analyse heritage as an active social process, this research treats proverbs as a form of intangible heritage that reconciles relations between tradition, authority, and governance in Kyrgyz society. The analysis draws on a qualitative corpus of Kyrgyz proverbs often included in political speeches, social media discussions, and public commentary during the current presidency. Special emphasis is given to the proverbs that accentuate unity, justice, social responsibility, and resilient leadership. These expressions are interpreted as cultural repertoires that political elites mobilize to frame their ruling in parallel with historical Kyrgyz statehood. The paper claims that proverbs serve three key features. First, they provide culturally resonant language by which political authority can be legitimized. Second, they connect contemporary governance to the narratives of historical Kyrgyz leadership and nomadic state traditions. Finally, they operate as a discursive platform in which citizenry interpret, criticize, and reaffirm state narratives. Utilizing proverbs as political heritage, the study depicts how vernacular cultural forms engage in the reimagining of Kyrgyz statehood.

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The fragmentation of global supply chains, which has been intensified by great-power rivalry and sanctions, has elevated the strategic importance of transport corridors of intermediary states. In this global political economy, Kazakhstan has actively sought to position itself as a key connectivity hub that links Europe and Asia via investments in transport infrastructure and participation in trans-Eurasian corridors. While existing analyses often explain this strategy in terms of geography and logistical necessity, this paper argues that such accounts can be supplemented by the following idea. Kazakhstan’s connectivity strategy is also shaped by deliberate status-seeking behavior.

The article addresses the research question: What role does status-seeking behavior play in Kazakhstan’s efforts to position itself as a connectivity hub in emerging global supply chains? The paper conceptualizes connectivity as both a material and symbolic foreign policy instrument by building on status-seeking theory and the literature on emerging middle powers. As an aspiring middle power that is operating under material constraints, Kazakhstan uses connectivity initiatives to signal responsibility, thereby seeking international recognition as a constructive intermediary.

Methodologically, the study employs qualitative content analysis of strategic policy documents and connectivity-related initiatives. It examines how connectivity is framed in official discourse through responsibility narratives and multilateral signaling. The analysis demonstrates that material infrastructure development is consistently accompanied by symbolic and diplomatic efforts to reinforce Kazakhstan’s international standing. The paper contributes to debates on middle-power agency by showing how connectivity initiatives function as status-enhancing strategies in a fragmented global order, while remaining constrained by structural and geopolitical limitations.

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This study questions the regionness of the ‘Turkic World’ and examines its construction as a region within the framework of multilateral cooperation and integration efforts among Turkic states from the early 1990s to the present. The ‘Turkic World’, conceptualized here as a space comprised of independent Turkic states, lacks geographical contiguity. While traditional International Relations theories consider geographical contiguity a constitutive feature of an international region, this study utilizes constructivist, cognitive, and functional regionalism theories. These frameworks suggest that regions can be constructed through shared identities, networks, and functional integration rather than strictly through physical proximity. Within this theoretical context, the study traces the shared region-building process among Turkic states by specifically examining the joint declarations of summits of the heads of Turkic states held since1992, which were institutionalized as the Turkic Council in 2010 and later as the Organization of Turkic States. The research observes the frequency of specific spatial and regional terms to map conceptual changes over time. The findings demonstrate a distinct conceptual shift in official discourse. A shared regional vision was largely absent in the declarations until 2015; however, the data reveals a striking increase in the use of the concept ‘Turkic World’ starting from the 2015 Astana Summit. We associate this rise with growing functional regionalism resulting from the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as the same declarations began to emphasize the Middle Corridor more frequently around 2014. We argue that the development of the Middle Corridor has enhanced the functional integration of Turkic states, thereby accelerating the need for, and the discourse surrounding, the construction of a shared region. Furthermore, Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and the subsequent economic sanctions since 2014 have increased the geopolitical significance of the Middle Corridor, acting as a critical alternative to the BRI’s Northern Route, and of the Turkic states along this transit corridor as a regional bloc. Ultimately, as reflected in the examined declaration texts, these logistical networks have the potential to transform the ‘Turkic World’ from a purely cultural and cognitive construct into a dynamic and functional region rooted in mutual economic interdependence.

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This paper examines how uncertainty is deployed as a deliberate tactic of governmentality within the emigration regimes of Kazakhstan and Türkiye. While conventional policy analysis often views legal ambiguity and administrative inconsistency as 'failures,' this study argues that both states strategically utilize uncertainty to manage 'desired' versus 'undesirable' overseas citizens. In both countries, emigration governance includes a wide range of policies, from setting conditions for exit to sending students abroad via state-sponsored programs, and from engaging with citizens abroad - for instance, through extraterritorial voting- to the facilitation of return and reintegration. These policies are constructed through domestic priorities, bilateral affairs and agreements, and international legal frameworks, all of which are shaped by geopolitical and security concerns, economic opportunities, and the international political climate.

The theoretical approach and empirical foundation of this research are drawn from the Emigrant Policy Regimes (EMIGPOL) Project. Launched in 2022, the project comprehensively examines the policies of 21 countries - selected from the top 25 globally with the highest number of emigrants according to UN DESA Population Statistics- to analyze how home states manage their citizens abroad, regulate mobility, and promote return. The project embraces a multi-tier approach, establishing a dialogue between national policies, bilateral agreements, and multilateral cooperation frameworks on one hand, and exit, emigrant engagement, and return policies on the other.

This paper demonstrates that both states navigate the tensions between national security and transnational identity politics, suggesting that uncertainty is not a lack of governance but a sophisticated instrument of power. By maintaining a landscape of unpredictable and/ or silent regulations, Kazakhstan and Türkiye exercise 'sovereign caprice' to filter 'desired' emigrants according to shifting political, economic, and demographic needs. Ultimately, this study contributes to Central Eurasian studies by highlighting how emigration governance serves as a site where state power is reasserted through the management of human mobility and the strategic manufacturing of desirability.

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Changing global developments serve as key incentives for states to reassess and redefine their bilateral relationships. This study examines the ongoing efforts of Pakistan and Kazakhstan to enhance their connectivity through various initiatives, including the construction of a railway line. Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in the world, whereas Pakistan has a maritime outlet. Pakistan can facilitate Kazakhstan's access to ports on the Arabian Sea. As the second quarter of the 21st century begins, global and regional constraints have made it increasingly difficult for states to rely solely on traditional partners and trade routes. Consequently, states have been reassessing and redefining their bilateral relationships. Middle powers have recognized the necessity of reducing dependence on major power hubs to strengthen economic resilience. They have begun seeking alternative export corridors to diversify trade and stabilize their economies. Kazakhstan looks towards Pakistan to secure a more reliable southbound trade route. Pakistan serves as the primary maritime gateway to Kazakhstan, providing the shortest geographical access to the Arabian Sea. Kazakhstan aims to diversify its trade routes, moving away from traditional reliance on Russia and China. Conversely, Pakistan is also seeking to expand trade links beyond conventional Western and Gulf markets to bolster foreign exchange inflows amid a fragile economic recovery. The partnership between Pakistan and Kazakhstan would be mutually beneficial. Kazakhstan would gain access to ports on the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, while Pakistan would access European markets through the Middle Corridor via Central Asia.

The paper analyses the geopolitical and logistical challenges that increase the importance of north-south connectivity. These global changes raise the strategic value of north-south corridors. It justifies Pakistan’s inconsistent history of completing large-scale infrastructure projects on time, due to shifting geopolitical landscapes, financial constraints, and security concerns. Additionally, it argues that such delays are structural rather than unique to Pakistan and do not necessarily indicate failure; instead, they often reflect the inherent complexity of transnational infrastructure projects. The paper emphasizes that geographical factors often have a more significant impact on long-term infrastructure outcomes than temporary political delays.

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This article examines how memorial sites of Soviet political repression in hybrid authoritarian contexts function as arenas of negotiated memory production. Focusing on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, it analyzes two understudied sites: the Zhanalyq mass execution burial site near Almaty and the Ata-Beyit memorial complex in Kyrgyzstan. The article engages with the concept of authorized heritage discourse, which privileges state-sanctioned narratives while marginalizing alternative voices, as well as scholarship on difficult or dark heritage. While existing research has often emphasized either state control or oppositional memory activism, this article argues that memorialization in hybrid authoritarian contexts is neither fully monopolized by the state nor purely oppositional. Instead, it emerges through processes of negotiation and co-production among state institutions, memory activists, and religious actors. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of commemorative practices, the study demonstrates how vernacular memory and religious forms of remembrance create alternative spaces of meaning within politically constrained environments. In particular, religious rituals enable the articulation of memory beyond formal state frameworks. By foregrounding negotiation and interaction, the article contributes to debates on heritage politics by showing how memory in non-democratic contexts is shaped through accommodation, contestation, and co-production among diverse mnemonic actors.