Ideology and Politics Journal

Special issue
(In)stability in the Caucasus: Local Trends vs. Global Impact
issue 4, 2022

Call for papers

The Ideology and Politics Journal (IPJ) aims to develop an interdisciplinary platform for debates of informed and non-partisan researchers in the fields of political science, sociology, political economy, social philosophy, intellectual history, and cultural studies. Devoted to the advancement of the understanding of socio-political processes in contemporary societies around the world, the IPJ publishes special issues aimed at specific regions. In 2022, the chosen region is the Caucasus (both Northern and Southern parts of region).

Instability manifestations that swept the region of the Middle East during the Arab Spring launched a series of waves of destabilization around the world. Thus, the Arab Spring led to the spread of global Occupy protest movement and triggered destabilization in various countries of the world from the USA to Azerbaijan and from Albania to New Zealand. An important characteristic of these processes was not only the spread of protest activity, but also the borrowing of patterns of destabilization even in regions that are far from each other in terms of political culture.

At the same time, we can talk about the strongest conflict potential of this type in the so-called Afrasian macrozone of instability that covers the regions of the Sahel, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. According to the type of socio-political instability reproduction, some parts of the post-Soviet space, including the North Caucasus and South Caucasus fall into the peripheral parts of this macrozone. In last two decades we can talk about the “easternization” of Caucasus which means that it was slowly drifting towards the Middle East in terms of culture and geopolitics and becoming of part of the Greater Middle East.

South Caucasus has experienced a revolution and military confrontation in recent years. The Muslim population of Azerbaijan and Georgia is involving in the same processes as in Middle East such as a fragmentation of Sunni groups, the growth of Sunni-Shi’i tensions etc. The North Caucasus remains one of the most turbulent regions of Post-Soviet Russia, as the risks of radicalization of ordinary Muslims and their involvement in terrorist activities remain. Negative trends reappeared in the mid-2010s with the rise of the Islamic State. In addition, the Russian Aerospace Forces launched an operation in Syria, which led to a reaction from terrorist groups.

Global trends are superimposed on regional specifics. And in this case, the factor potentially associated with destabilization may be the continued increased demand for religion, in particular Islam, which appeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union as a response to the suppression of religiosity by the Soviet authorities.

In a special issue of Ideology and Politics Journal, we call researchers of social studies, including politics, religion, and history of the Caucasus to submit their articles devoted to these regional tendencies. In particular, we seek to address the following aspects of this overarching topic:

• The influence of the Middle East on the destabilization processes in the Caucasus: “Wahhabism” as an umbrella designation of radical phenomena
• Cultural and geopolitical “easternization” of the Caucasus
• Socio-demographic characteristics of modern Caucasian societies: modernization and erosion of the “traditional” way of life
• The role of Iran, Russia, and Turkey in the Caucasus
• Regional conflicts in a global dimension: strategies of conflict resolution and conflict management
• Trans-national and trans-regional ethnic and religious networks in the Caucasus
• Islamic education as a tool of (de)radicalization of youth
• Gender aspects of social and political transformations in the Caucasus
• Confessional Heterogeneity and Secular Trends in Caucasian Societies

Articles submitted to the issue are expected to address the proposed topic from the perspectives of political science, sociology, history, philosophy as well as Islamic law. Comparative and interdisciplinary studies are welcome.

Articles in English with not less than seven thousand words each should be sent to the e-mail addresses of Dr. Alisa Shishkina (at: alisa.shishkina@gmail.com) and Dr. Akhmet Yarlykapov (at: a.yarlykapov@gmail.com).

We will accept to the review only those articles that will have been submitted by midnight of May  20, 2022. The IPJ issue 4 (2022) will be published no later than December 31, 2022.

All articles submitted to the IPJ are subject to double-blind peer review, which results in a decision on publication. Review and publication in Ideology and Politics Journal is free of charge. For more about the terms of publication of articles see: https://www.ideopol.org/instructions-for-authors/. By submitting an article for the IPJ review, the author agrees to all the terms of cooperation between the authors and the IPJ editorial board specified in this section.

The editors of the issue are

• Alisa Shishkina (HSE University, Moscow, Russia) and
• Akhmet Yarlykapov (MGIMO University, Moscow, Russia).

The editor-in-chief of Ideology and Politics is Mikhail Minakov (Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars).

Submission guidelines can be seen here: https://www.ideopol.org/instructions-for-authors/

More on the IPJ can be seen here: https://www.ideopol.org/about-journal/