Suchergebnisse

1. Chapter 1 Introduction: Territorial National Identity in Russia's "Buffer Zone" -- 2. Chapter 2 The Academic Setting -- 3. Chapter 3 The Historical and Institutional Settings -- 4. Chapter 4 Citizenship Policy Highlights -- 5. Chapter 5 Frozen Conflicts and Politics of Territorial Citizenship -- 6. Chapter 6 Historical Collective Identity -- 7. Chapter 7 The "Fifth Column": Jus Soli and Geopolitics of Dual Citizenship -- 8. Chapter 8 Georgian Azeris: Victims and Beneficiaries of Territorial Nationalism -- 9. Chapter 9 Abkhazia: A View from a De-Facto State -- 10. Chapter 10 Theoretical Analysis -- 11. Chapter 11 Conclusion: Toward Territorial Nationalism?

This report discusses citizenship in Azerbaijan. It explores the history of citizenship in this country, modes of acquisition and loss, and current debates and reform plans regarding citizenship policy. ; Research for the 2019 GLOBALCIT Reports has been supported by the European University Institute's Global Governance Programme, and the British Academy Research Project CITMODES (co-directed by the EUI and the University of Edinburgh).

AbstractThe term 'civic nationalism' as it is used today in nationalism studies is misleading because it combines territorial collective identity with liberal‐democratic values. As such, for example, it does not provide much insight into the comparison of Azerbaijani and Georgian concepts of national identity. Azerbaijan, arguably an authoritarian country, has used unconditional citizenship by birth on territory (jus soli) and refused to naturalize Azeri co‐ethnics from Georgia. Georgia, seemingly a developed liberal democracy, hasn't practiced any jus soli, has bestowed citizenship on Georgian co‐ethnics abroad and refused it to its ethnic minorities. These two cases testify to the need to revise the term 'civic nationalism', inapplicable to many, especially non‐Western, empirical cases of national identity. By establishing distinct historical narratives based on premodernist sources, the article argues that the ethnic/territorial tension is premodern, which explains why civic nationalism has a premodern (territoriality) and a modern (liberal‐democratic values) component. Territorial collective identity, in its contrast to an ethnic one, has deep historical roots and needs to be separated from the overall umbrella of civic nationalism. Such an approach resolves many current theoretical objections to ethnic/civic dichotomy, a ubiquitous, but still insufficiently understood, heuristic tool.

Civic, rather than ethnic, definition of the nation is typically associated with Western liberal democracies. Yet post-Soviet states Azerbaijan and Moldova have used laws bestowing citizenship on anyone born on their territories. Such policies, known as unconditional jus soli, are found mostly in the Americas. No such law exists in Georgia, the third "buffer zone" country between Russia and the West. Unresolved, or "frozen", separatist conflicts, perpetuated by Russia, prevent the buffer zone states from forging stronger links to the West and place them at the epicenter of a potentially explosive tension between Russia and the West. A theoretical proposition separating "territorial" from "civic" nationalism and almost 100 interviews reveal that nationalism in these brand-new states was conditioned by centuries-old history, namely a historical context that had thwarted or exacerbated ethnic collective identity. The resulting territorial (but not civic) concept of national identity was used by both authoritarian (Azerbaijan) and liberal (Moldova) regimes to combat ethnic separatism and interethnic strife. The resulting ethnic concept of national identity (Georgia) negatively influenced integration of national minorities and refugees. Moreover, when geopolitical fears of foreign interference via dual citizen "double agents" arose (Azerbaijan) in the post-Crimean panic, territorial nationalism was undermined breaking the sense of historical continuity and threatening to rekindle interethnic strife. The tension between ethnic and territorial definitions of the nation in Russia's "buffer zone" downplays the role of liberal development in defining the nation by placing it in a larger historical context. At the same time, it demonstrates the importance of geopolitics and thus provides another insight into Russia's own struggle to define its nation, which may help explain its actions in Ukraine and its ideological differences with Western-style civic nationalism. Beyond the post-Soviet space, the ethnic/territorial tension is also behind many other political developments in the globalized world, where millennia-old, but little-noticed, struggle to define collective identity by blood or territory continues.