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Re-Inventing Citizenship in South Caucasus

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Re-Inventing Citizenship in South Caucasus re-inventing citizenship in south caucasus : exploring the dynamics and contradictions between formal definitions and popular conceptions final research report JRP 7AZPJ062373 SCOPES : Scientific Co-operation between Eastern Europe and Switzerland Swiss National Science Foundation Carine Bachmann CIMERA Christian Staerklé University of Geneva Willem Doise University of Geneva in collaboration with Ghia Nodia and team Tbilisi, Georgia Javad Efendi and team Baku, Azerbaijan Gevorg Poghosyan and team Yerevan, Armenia october 2003 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 5 1.1 THE TRANSITION FROM THE SOVIET ERA TO INDEPENDENCE ..................................................6 1.2 WHY STUDY POPULAR CONCEPTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP?.........................................................10 1.3 RESEARCH TEAM AND PROCESS............................................................................................11 2 THE MEANINGS OF CITIZENSHIP: FROM STATUS TO SOCIAL PROCESS............ 14 2.1 THE ORIGIN AND HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF CITIZENSHIP ...................................................14 2.2 MODERN CITIZENSHIP AND THE NATION-STATE....................................................................16 2.3 CITIZENSHIP AS SOCIAL PROCESS: CLAIMS AND GROUPS ......................................................21 2.4 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY OF CITIZENSHIP AS SOCIAL PROCESS ................23 3 POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND NATION-BUILDING IN THE POST-SOVIET SOUTH CAUCASUS....................................................................................................... 25 3.1 TRIPLE TRANSITIONS WITH UNCERTAIN OUTCOMES .............................................................25 3.2 THE FIRST STAGE OF TRANSFORMATION: FORMULATING THE AGENDAS...............................26 3.3 THE SECOND STAGE: CATASTROPHIC CHANGE......................................................................27 3.4 THE THIRD STAGE: STABILIZATION.......................................................................................29 3.5 THE NEW REGIMES ...............................................................................................................31 3.6 THE EXTENT AND CONTENT OF POST-SOVIET CITIZENSHIP....................................................34 3.7 MAJOR CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS..................................................................................37 4 CITIZENSHIP REGIMES IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS................................................. 40 4.1 THE CITIZENSHIP REGIME IN GEORGIA .................................................................................40 Background ..............................................................................................................................40 Citizenship as a status ..............................................................................................................42 Citizenship in practice..............................................................................................................45 Citizenship as a contested issue................................................................................................48 Concluding remarks .................................................................................................................54 4.2 THE CITIZENSHIP REGIME IN ARMENIA.................................................................................56 Background ..............................................................................................................................56 Citizenship as status .................................................................................................................57 Citizenship in practice: major challenges ................................................................................59 Recent public debates around citizenship issues ......................................................................63 Concluding remarks .................................................................................................................64 3 4.3 THE CITIZENSHIP REGIME IN AZERBAIJAN ............................................................................66 Background ..............................................................................................................................66 Citizenship as status .................................................................................................................67 Citizenship in practice..............................................................................................................69 Concluding remarks .................................................................................................................75 5 THE SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF CITIZENSHIP: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND EMPIRICAL APPROACH........................................................... 77 5.1 SOCIETAL REPRESENTATIONS...............................................................................................78 Relations between and within groups.......................................................................................79 Symbolic versus material differentiation..................................................................................80 Social order and disorder.........................................................................................................81 Market and inefficiency ............................................................................................................82 Diversity and discrimination ....................................................................................................83 Social justice and domination ..................................................................................................84 5.2 OVERVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL APPROACH TO LAY CONCEPTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP ................85 6 CROSS-NATIONAL COMPARISON OF POPULAR CONCEPTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS .................................................................. 87 6.1 COMPARING NATIONAL CONTEXTS......................................................................................87 6.2 METHOD...............................................................................................................................91 Samples.....................................................................................................................................91 Questionnaire ...........................................................................................................................93 6.3 OVERVIEW OF STATISTICAL ANALYSIS .................................................................................97 6.4 RESULTS.............................................................................................................................100 Cross-national organising principles of opinions ..................................................................100 Correlations between organising principles ..........................................................................107 Organising the dependent variables.......................................................................................109 Predicting attitudes towards political organisation in the three contexts ..............................113 Predicting attitudes towards government responsibility in the three contexts .......................117 Correlations between attitudes to government responsibility and political organisation......120 Predicting attitudes towards ethnic citizenship, religious tolerance, women’s participation and liberal democracy in the three contexts................................................................................................121 7 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 124 Organising principles and societal perception model............................................................124 Comparing positions of Georgian, Armenian and Azeri students on organising principles ..126 Convergences in the origins of opinions and attitudes...........................................................127 Active and process-oriented citizenship .................................................................................128 Toward a post-soviet citizenship? ..........................................................................................130 8 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 133 4 9 APPENDIX..................................................................................................................... 139 9.1 COMMENTS ON THE RESULTS FROM NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ...........................................139 Preliminary remarks...............................................................................................................139 Notes on the results of the quantitative survey: The Georgian national perspective .............140 Citizenship or Nationality? Post-soviet ambiguities in Armenia............................................148 Azerbaijan: Social-psychological survey of popular concepts of citizenship.........................156 9.2 RESULTS I: ATTITUDES TO GOVERNMENT POLICIES BY NATIONAL CONTEXTS ....................172 Expectations from the state (welfare, poverty, disciplinary measures) ..................................172 Ethnic and
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