ARMENIA TO CUT ITS BUDGET NEXT YEAR DESPITE EXPECTED ECONOMIC RECOVERY
By Haroutiun Khachatrian (11/11/2009 issue of the CACI Analyst)
The Armenian government’s draft budget for next year is reduced by over five percent compared to that of 2009. It envisages cuts in most important public expenditures (including military ones), but leaves social payments and salaries intact. A twelve percent cut in the military budget is unlikely to disrupt the military balance in the region, although Azerbaijan, Armenia’s only military adversary, will keep its military expenditures high.
MANAGED VERSUS ELECTORAL POLITICAL CHANGE: LESSONS FROM ASIA
By Peter J. Winglee (10/28/2009 issue of the CACI Analyst)
With the recent efforts to make President Nazarbayev president for life, it is useful to compare the Central Asian approach to governance to that in the single party states, China and Vietnam. Despite criticism about their deficiencies in democracy and human rights, these two countries have made great progress in developing their economies, opening up their societies, and finding a political system that both works now and can also evolve. Since democracy is slow to take root in Central Asia, analysis of other political systems that local elites accept may produce better outcomes than are now prevailing.
CENTRAL ASIAN WOMEN MIGRANTS DEAL WITH GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS
By Rafis Abazov (10/28/2009 issue of the CACI Analyst)
The global economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 has intensified the public discourse over the migration of a very important and vulnerable group of the population in Central Asia – women migrant workers – and over public policy choices. The debates often focus on the merits of competing policy approaches and policy actions: should the national governments, NGOs and international donors in Central Asia continue supporting migrant workers by negotiating regional free trade and a free migration zone, and by collaborating on developing the regional labor market in the CIS? Or should Central Asian governments accept a greater responsibility for the well-being of their citizens, especially women, and work to create a better business environment and more jobs locally?
BACKGROUND: The 2008-2009 global financial and economic crisis has had a massive labor-adjusting effect on the labor markets in the CIS in general and on women-clustered segments of the labor market in particular. This impact reversed a decade-long trend in job creation across the region.
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Staff Publications
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, Greater Central Asia as A Component of U.S. Global Strategy, October 2024.
Analysis Laura Linderman, "Rising Stakes in Tbilisi as Elections Approach," Civil Georgia, September 7, 2024.
Analysis Mamuka Tsereteli, "U.S. Black Sea Strategy: The Georgian Connection", CEPA, February 9, 2024.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell, ed., Türkiye's Return to Central Asia and the Caucasus, July 2024.
Book Svante E. Cornell, ed., "The Changing Geopolitics of Central Asia and the Caucasus" AFPC Press/Armin LEar, 2023.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr, Stepping up to the “Agency Challenge”: Central Asian Diplomacy in a Time of Troubles, July 2023.
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, U.S. Policy in Central Asia through Central Asian Eyes, May 2023.