Political Regime, Political Stability and the Role of the Economic Elites in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan: The Example of the Energy Sector

By looking at the examples of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan from 1992 until 2008, the project analyses the influence of the economic boom on the relationship between political and economic elites and the resulting impact on the political regime. It will scrut inise how the revenues of the energy sector are redistributed among the actors involved and how the energy sector thereby contributes to the stabilisation of the political regimes. The project?s main focus lies on the analysis of informal networks. Detail ed case studies on the interaction between the relevant elites will identify the mechanisms through which the energy sectors in the countries under review influence the political systems.