The principal objective of the proposed research is to discern the practices through which the national representations and constructions of post-Soviet Central Asia as an international political region came into being and to trace out the implications of these practices for political decision-making and policy implementation. In particular, the research seeks to look at the emergence and evolution of national communities of experts on Central Asia; to outline and analyze their shared beliefs and expectations about the object of their studies; to reveal the roles of epistemic communities in the national policies towards Central Asia and in the international interactions in and around the region.

Dead-letter regimes are a subcategory of international regimes distinguished with a high degree of formalization of relevant principles, norms and rules and low expectations that the norms would be observed. A striking feature of international politics in the post-Soviet space is the proliferation of dead-letter regimes, sets of norms and institutions with low efficiency and few expectations of tangible output. The main objective of the research is to reveal the functions fulfilled by Eurasian dead-letter regimes and to evaluate the prospects of their evolution into full-blown regimes. Methodologically, regimes will be studied through the lens of Habermasian dissection of social action into strategic, communicative and dramaturgical. The project will involve an analysis of a number of post-Soviet international regimes, with the focus on the emerging Eurasian Economic Union.

A full-length study is available here.