Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- List of Abbreviations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- The aim of this book -- Methodology/case studies -- Outline of this book -- 1. New Great Game in the Caspian Sea -- Introduction -- The original concept of the Great Game -- From Old to New Great Game -- Actors -- Objective: Survival of the fittest -- Environmental conflicts -- Naval advancement -- What is presented as new and who is presented as the winner? -- Critiques: Where does the New Great Game literature lead us? -- Conclusion -- 2. Revisiting functionalism -- Introduction -- Underlying assumptions -- State fixation -- Sharing interests through functionalist agencies and elites -- The ramification or spill-over approach -- Critiques of classical functionalism -- Functionalism revised via social constructivism -- Social constructivist insights -- Mediating interfaces: Cross-border and transnational infrastructure -- Functionalist networks -- Economic leverage -- Transnational corporations -- Avoiding Utopic thinking: The ill-fitting European benchmark -- Conclusion -- 3. Environmental issues: Conflict and cooperation potential for the Caspian Sea -- Introduction -- The Caspian Environmental Program and the Legal Status Convention -- Environmental cooperation -- The long journey to the Legal Status Convention -- The New Great Game explanation for the Caspian environmental cooperation and the Legal Status Convention -- Economic leverage, networking and technical expertise -- Economic leverage -- Networking and socialization under the CEP -- Technical expertise and construction of environmental protocols -- From environmental cooperation to the Legal Status Convention -- Conclusion -- 4. Cooperation around post-Soviet transnational infrastructure projects in the Caspian Sea.

The Caspian Sea region has hitherto largely been investigated from a `New Great Game' perspective that depicts the region as a geopolitical battleground between regional and external great powers, where tensions have been exacerbated by the sea's rich natural resources, strategic location, and legal disagreements over its status. This book, by contrast, portrays a new image of the region, which still acknowledges the difficulties and problematic starting situation of power politics there. It, however, seeks to show that there are ways forward by identifying mechanisms and means to transform the `New Great Game' into processes of functional co-operation. Drawing on theoretical insights from a functionalist framework, this book examines three intertwined case studies, namely the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC), the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), and the Caspian Environmental Program (CEP). It shows that lessons learned from environmental co-operation have influenced the discussion over the uncertain legal status of the sea, which culminated in the signing in 2018 of the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. This book analyzes the three phases of the BTC and the SGC projects: the planning of the pipeline, its construction, and its use, none of which have been adequately addressed yet. This book illustrates the increasing role of actors beyond and besides the states in the Caspian Sea region, such as transnational corporations, non-governmental organizations, and intergovernment organizations.

This article critically reviews the New Great Game image of the Caspian Sea region and the assumptions, concepts, and mechanisms (revolving around actors, aims, and motivations) this image is based on. More specifically, this review essay answers the following questions: How does the academic literature interpret the impact of competition between great powers on social, political and economic developments in the Caspian Sea region? Which actors are presented as the dominant players? The essay also introduces the existing criticism of the New Great Game concept and alternatives to it that have already been put forward. By identifying the gaps and limits of existing scholarship, this article offers new avenues for alternative theoretical and empirical interpretations. More specifically, this article argues that the New Great Game literature promotes unsystematic and shallow discussion as it ignores and misunderstands historical, material, political, economic, and normative differences in the Caspian Sea region. Within this discussion, actors, interests, identities, social contexts, and principles are taken to be fixed, i.e. not prone to change or to any sort of adjustment

This article looks at Azerbaijan's renewable energy developments. Existing research and media coverage of international energy politics in the South Caucasus is overwhelmingly dominated by a focus on oil and gas pipelines, especially in Azerbaijan, due to its central place in traditional hydrocarbon fuels markets. This article aims to expand the scope of the literature on energy to bring more attention to Azerbaijan's renewable energy sector, investigating the potential of and challenges to renewable energy development in the country. The key questions are: why would a small oil and natural gas-rich country seek to develop renewable energy? Who is promoting renewable energy in Azerbaijan and with what effects? And finally, how do low oil prices and Covid-19 affect the progress of renewable energy in Azerbaijan?

Using insights from classical functionalism, this article analyses the complex relationship between the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea and the Caspian Environment Programme (CEP). The article pursues three objectives. First, it shows how shared ecological issues challenged individual littoral states and brought their respective governments under the CEP umbrella in 1998. Second, it shows how key actors (UNEP, UNDP, GEF, and World Bank – besides states) are involved in shaping the politics of the Caspian Sea region and how their preferences, both political and economic, and networks affect the capacity, opportunity and will of governments (e.g., ministries, parliaments and presidents) to cooperate. Third, it explains the link between low environmental politics and the uncertain legal status of the Caspian Sea. I find that lessons learned from environmental cooperation spilled over into the discussion of the legal status of the sea, which culminated in the signing of the Convention.

The Caspian Sea region has hitherto largely been investigated from a New Great Game perspective that depicts the region as a geopolitical battleground between regional and external great powers because of its rich natural resources, strategic location, environmental issues and the legal disagreement. This dissertation, by contrast, looks at the Caspian Sea region through the lens of classical functionalism, which still acknowledges the difficulties and problematic starting situation of power politics in the region. This dissertation, however, seeks to show that there are ways forward by identifying mechanisms and means to transform the New Great Game into functional cooperation. The core aim of this thesis is to portray an alternative image of the Caspian Sea region. The dissertation examines three intertwined case studies, namely the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC), the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) and the Caspian Environmental Program (CEP).

This article argues that the complexities of the Caspian Sea region and of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline are only narrowly understood and explained by the geopolitical literature. In an attempt to address these shortcomings and to propose an alternative reading of transnational infrastructures, the BTC pipeline is revisited. Theoretically, the article uses insights from functionalism to explain the three phases of the BTC project: planning of the pipeline; construction of the pipeline; and, use of the pipeline. The core argument made is that the BTC project is much more than a power resource; it is the core medium of interaction for international and regional actors (governmental, non-governmental and intergovernmental) because of the number of connections that it makes possible in a highly contingent world. In contrast to Great Game assumptions, it is argued that transnational infrastructures are not necessarily negative or positive; rather, what is important is to view their contribution, mixed impacts and limitations from a broader perspective. In this sense, the article aims to situate the BTC infrastructure within the wider political, economic and social analyses of the Caspian Sea region.

This article explains the Convention of the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which was signed in August 2018. More specifically, it focuses on the environmental articles of the legal agreement. In doing so, it argues that the existing scholarship overestimates the influence of the environmental requirements (Articles 1, 11, 14, and 15) on the construction perspective of the Trans-Caspian Pipeline. While it has been constantly claimed that Russia and Iran could use ecological requirements to oppose the pipeline in the future, this is not the case at the present. Rather, the Caspian littoral states have been cooperating with environmental protocols and regulations under the Tehran Convention since 2003; therefore, the recent ecological requirements of the legal agreement are not new. This article serves as a response to the relevant debate on ecological issues and infrastructure cooperation across the Caspian Sea.