Azerbaijan’s social assistance and income support schemes adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic need to be seen within the context of the country’s existing social protection system and safety nets. While the existing system is operational and has the technical capacity to respond and deliver...

The present paper examines both domestic and international actors, involved in the westward oil shipment of Kazakhstani oil, and their interests. It demonstrates that while foreign companies have been backed by their governments, national firms have also enjoyed considerable state support,...

The recent resource curse literature suggests that oil promotes authoritarian regime stability. Yet the causal linkages underpinning the political resource curse remain less well understood. Using a case study of Azerbaijan, this article first examines how oil revenues benefited the existing...

European energy policy faces challenges. Among these are gas supply security and competitiveness of the gas market. Gas supply security is at risk from presently high and increasing European import dependence on a limited number of large foreign suppliers, notably Sonatrach, Statoil and Gazprom....

Twenty-first century authoritarian regimes manage and deter dissent in less overt forceful ways than in the past, instead using more creative methods for repression of those that oppose them. Some argue that information and communication technologies can provide new opportunities for...

The oil price shock that began in mid-2014 has continued to reverberate in Azerbaijan, sending the economy into deep recession and negative real GDP growth rate (-2.4 percent in 2016). Declining volumes of oil production, which peaked at 1 million barrels a day (b/d) in 2010, and impending...

This article discusses several mechanisms by which oil wealth has sustained authoritarian rule in Azerbaijan. While the prevailing focus on patronage spending and repression is undoubtedly accurate, it is nevertheless incomplete because it does not account for oil's adverse effects that can...

The article delineates the major national, regional and international level stakeholders in the westward Trans-Caspian transportation of Kazakh oil, supplemented with a discussion of the prospect of expansion of theTrans-Caspian/SouthCaucasus corridor in light of the presumably harmful effect of...