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...

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 the Trans-Caspian/South Caucasus corridor in light of the presumably harmful effect...

A number of studies in the academic and policy literature suggest that resource-rich countries with democratic political systems are more likely than their resource-rich counterparts with less democratic systems to enjoy prudential governance of natural resources, which, in turn, makes inclusive...

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,...

This article offers a contextual analysis of the Azerbaijani October 2013 presidential elections making a number of arguments: (1) during good times (when economic and political shocks are absent), elections are unlikely to induce incumbent defeat or democratic breakthrough; this explains why...

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....