POL 405 Nations and Borders of Middle East Balkans and Caucasus

POL 405 Nations and Borders of Middle East Balkans and Caucasus; Weekly hours: 2+1, ECTS: 4
This course is designed primarily to respond to the increasing need for information and analysis on these regions and to help bring them out of the shadows of the Western consciousness to which fate and decades of ideological dominance had consigned them.  The focus is on the comparative analysis of political, ideological and institutional factors affecting the stability of these  newly independent states; peculiarities of the power struggle and role of clans in local politics. The regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, and the Middle East will be analyzed from political and cultural points. Defining the “Balkans:” Another Europe; Balkan nationalisms: Serbia and Greece; The Balkans in the age of bi-polar politics; The Region of the Former Yugoslavia after 1990: New States and a New Situation; The Caucasus: a region in conflict; The Soviet legacy: Leninist nationality policy and the structure of the Soviet Union; A structural instability?; The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno- Karabakh; Georgia: from unitary dreams to an asymmetric federation?