Informal networks as sources of human (in)security in the South Caucasus

Abstract

In contrast to numerous studies on exogenous mechanisms of human security – such as the provision of human security by international actors – this study examines the role of informal networks in providing ‘freedoms from want’ and ‘freedoms from fear’ to the population. With the primary focus on post-communist South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) this article conducts a rigorous examination of informal networks’ critical function as sources of human (in)security since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Based on a combination of open-ended elite (expert) interviews, field observation and closed-ended survey data, this study demonstrates that apart from the informal networks’ crucial role in generating social capital and functioning as indispensable social safety nets, they also exacerbate human insecurity by cementing the traditions of clientelism and corruption that are deeply entrenched in the region.

Keywords:

• South Caucasus
• informal networking
• human security
• ‘freedom from fear’
• ‘freedom from want’

Acknowledgements

Interviews were conducted under university ethics approval reference number 12/037 (University of Otago; Primary investigator: Dr James Headley).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Huseyn Aliyev is an Alexander von Humboldt Scholar at the Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen. Huseyn earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. He is author of Post-Communist Civil Society and the Soviet Legacy: Challenges of Democratisation and Reform in the Caucasus (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in April 2015). He also co-authored (with Emil Souleimanov) Individual Disengagement of Avengers, Nationalists and Jihadists: Why Ex-Militants Choose to Abandon Violence in the North Caucasus (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Notes

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12 Piciotto et al., Global Development and Human Security, 32.

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15 Eriksen et al., A World of Insecurity .

16 Gerald M. Easter, ‘Personal Networks and Postrevolutionary State Building: Soviet Russia Reexamined’, World Politics 48, no. 4 (1996): 551–78.

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19 Mark Granovetter, ‘The Strength of Weak Ties', American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973): 1360–80.

20 Endre Sik and Barry Wellman, Network Capital in Capitalist, Communist, and Post-communist Societies (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).

21 Richard Rose, ‘Russia as an Hour-Glass Society: A Constitution without Citizens', East European Constitutional Review 4 (1995): 34–42.

22 Alena Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Larissa Lomnitz, ‘Informal Exchange Networks in Formal Systems: A Theoretical Model’, American Anthropologist 90, no. 1 (1988): 42–55; Markku Lonkila, Social Networks in Post-Soviet Russia Continuity and Change in the Everyday Life of St. Petersburg Teachers (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 1999).

23 Yang Mei-hui Mayfair, Gifts, Favors and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (London: Cornell University Press, 1994); Larissa Lomnitz, ‘Reciprocity of Favors in the Urban Middle Class of Chile’, in Economic Anthropology, ed. George Dalton (Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1971), 93–106; Fernanda Duarte, ‘Exploring the Interpersonal Transaction of the Brazilian Jeitinho in Bureaucratic Contexts', Organization 13, no. 4 (2006): 509–27; Aseel Al-Ramahi, ‘Wasta in Jordan: A Distinct Feature of (and Benefit for) Middle Eastern Society’, Arab Law Quarterly 22, no. 1 (2008): 35–62; Christian M. Rogerson, ‘“Second Economy” versus Informal Economy: A South African Affair’, Geoforum 38, no. 6 (2007): 1053–7; Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, eds., Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America (Baltimore: JHU Press, 2006).

24 Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy, Human Security, 173.

25 Ibid.

26 Alejandro Portes and Kelly Hoffman, ‘Latin American Class Structures: Their Composition and Change during the Neoliberal Era’, Latin American Research Review 38, no. 1 (2003): 41–82.

27 Dennis O'Hearn, ‘The Consumer Second Economy: Size and Effects', Soviet Studies 32, no. 2 (1980): 218–34.

28 Steven L. Sampson, ‘The Second Economy of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 493, no. 1 (1987): 120–36.

29 Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours.

30 Rose, ‘Getting Things Done in Anti-modern Society’, 164.

31 John Round and Colin C. Williams, ‘Coping with the Social Costs of “Transition”: Everyday Life in Post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine’, European Urban and Regional Studies 17, no. 2 (2010): 189.

32 Rose, ‘Getting Things Done in Anti-modern Society’, 147.

33 Eriksen et al., A World of Insecurity, 14.

34 Sik and Wellman, Network Capital; Byung-Yeon Kim, ‘Poverty and Informal Economy Participation. Evidence from Romania’, Economics of Transition 13, no.1 (2005): 163–85.

35 Michael McFaul, ‘The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World’, World Politics 54, no. 2 (2002): 212–44; Valerie Bunce, ‘Rethinking Recent Democratization: Lessons from the Postcommunist Experience’, World Politics 55, no. 2 (2003): 167–92.

36 Colin C. Williams, John Round, and Peter Rodgers, The Role of Informal Economies in the Post-Soviet World (Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis, 2013), 21.

37 Jeremy Morris and Abel Polese, eds., The Informal Post-Socialist Economy. Embedded Practices and Livelihoods (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 1.

38 Transparency International, ‘Corruption Perceptions Index’, http://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview (accessed December 20, 2014).

39 Christopher Walker and Sylvana Habdank-Kołaczkowska, Nations in Transit. Fragile Frontier: Democracy's Growing Vulnerability in Central and Southeastern Europe (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2013).

40 Ibid.

41 Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2014 (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2014).

42 In 1993 GDP of Armenia (in current US dollars) was $356, Azerbaijan's GDP was $530 and Georgia's $550.

43 CRRC, Caucasus Barometer, 2013 (Tbilisi: Caucasus Research Resource Centres (CRRC), 2013).

44 Armine Ishkanian, Democracy Building and Civil Society in Post-Soviet Armenia (New York: Routledge, 2008).

45 Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy, Human Security, 172.

46 Ibid.

47 WVS, WVS 1990–1994, WVS 1995–1998 (Lueneburg: World Values Surveys, 2014).

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Interview at the CRRC, Tbilisi, September 2013.

52 Interview with Professor, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, September 2013.

53 Interview with Professor, Baku State University, Baku, August 2013.

54 Leslie Hough, ‘Social Capital in Georgia’, Caucasus Analytical Digest 31 (2011): 2–5.

55 Barbara Misztal, Informality: Social Theory and Contemporary Practice (New York: Routledge, 2002), 215.

56 Interview at FRIDE, Brussels, July 2013.

57 Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours.

58 Huseyn Aliyev, ‘Post-Communist Informal Networking: Blat in the South Caucasus', Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 21, no. 1 (2013): 89–112; Huseyn Aliyev, ‘Civil Society in the South Caucasus: Kinship Networks as Obstacles to Civil Participation’, Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 14, no. 2 (2014): 263–82.

59 EVS, EVS 2008 – 4th Wave (Tilburg: European Values Study, 2008).

60 Interviews at CIPDD, Tbilisi and APRODEV, Brussels, July–September 2013.

61 CRRC, An Assessment of Social Capital in Georgia (Tbilisi: Caucasus Research Resource Centres, 2011).

62 Only 27% of respondents to the Caucasus Barometer 2013 survey in Azerbaijan believed that most people can be trusted. In Armenia, the level of social trust was even lower: 15% of survey participants. And in Georgia 30% of the public had trust in people.

63 Interview at CRRC, Tbilisi, September 2013.

64 Interview at ISET, Tbilisi, September 2013.

65 CRRC, Caucasus Barometer, 2013.

66 According to the World Bank, the poverty headcount ratio at national poverty line in Armenia is 35.8% (2010), in Azerbaijan it is 15.8% (2008) and 24.7% (2009) in Georgia.

67 EBRD, Life in Transition. After the Crisis (London: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2011), 10.

68 CRRC, Caucasus Barometer, 2013.

69 Interview at ISET, Tbilisi, September 2013.

70 CRRC, Volunteerism and Civic Participation 2011 Survey in Georgia (Tbilisi: Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), 2011).

71 Interviews at several NGOs in Tbilisi and Baku, August–September 2013.

72 CRRC, Caucasus Barometer, 2013.

73 Ibid.

74 Interview at EPC, Brussels, June 2013.

75 Interview at APRODEV, Brussels, July 2013.

76 CRRC, Caucasus Barometer (Tbilisi: Caucasus Research Resource Centres (CRRC), 2012).

77 Ibid.

78 CRRC, Caucasus Barometer, 2013.

79 According to the Caucasus Barometer survey in 2013, less than 30% of the public across the region trusts local governments, and less than 20% trusts court systems and the mass media.

80 Interview at CRRC, Tbilisi, September 2013.

81 Interview at APRODEV, Brussels, July 2013.

82 Misztal, Informality, 207, 215.

83 Interviews with NGO staff in Baku, August–September 2013.

84 Interview at Ilia State University, Tbilisi, September 2013.

85 Interview at Baku State University, August 2013.

86 Interview at EPI, Brussels, June 2013.

87 Interview at CRRC, Tbilisi, September 2013.

88 Tanja Börzel and Yasemin Pamuk, ‘Pathologies of Europeanization Fighting Corruption in the Southern Caucasus', West European Politics 35, no. 1 (2011): 79–97.

89 Interviews at European Commission, Brussels, July 2013.