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This paper criticizes the epistemic foundations of democratic state-building, which are derived from a model of political transitions according to which liberal democratic institutions will transform a hitherto authoritarian and troubled country into a more prosperous and stable society and, therefore, foreign interventions to establish these institutions are realistic and worthy investments, provided they are properly planned based on knowledge of what has worked elsewhere. This expectation is based upon two epistemological premises. The first premise, linearity, is that social and institutional change exhibits identifiable input–output relations connecting socioeconomic conditions and outcomes. The second premise, ergodicity, is that these relations, inferred from past samples, provide reliable probabilistic projections about future outcomes, which can guide the focus of policy interventions. Drawing from the study of complex systems, the paper indicates why these two premises offer a flawed conception of political transitions and why radical and large-scale interventions, such as state-building, will tend to generate unintended consequences rather than the planned effect.

International Relations (IR) scholars uncritically accept the official narrative regarding the events of 9/11 and refuse to examine the massive body of evidence generated by the 9/11 truth movement. Nevertheless, as calls for a new inquiry into the events of 9/11 continue to mount, with the International 9/11 Consensus Panel and World Trade Centre Building 7 Evaluation inquiries having recently published their findings, and with a U.S. Federal Grand Jury on 9/11 having been announced, now would be an opportune moment for IR scholars to start taking the claims of 9/11 truth seriously. A survey of the 9/11 truth literature reveals that the official 9/11 narrative cannot be supported at multiple levels. Two planes did not bring down three towers in New York. There is no hard evidence that Muslims were responsible for 9/11 other than in a patsy capacity. Various U.S. government agencies appear to have had foreknowledge of the events and to have covered up evidence. Important questions regarding the hijacked planes need answering, as do questions about the complicity of the mainstream media in 9/11. IR scholars avoid looking at evidence regarding the events of 9/11 for several reasons. They may be taken in by the weaponized term, “conspiracy theory.” A taboo on questioning the ruling structures of society means that individuals do not wish to fall outside the spectrum of acceptable opinion. Entertaining the possibility that 9/11 was a false flag requires Westerners to reject fundamental assumptions that they have been socialized to accept since birth. The “War on Terror” has created a neo-McCarthyite environment in which freedom to speak out has been stifled. Yet, if IR scholars are serious about truth, the first place they need to start is 9/11 truth.

Recent scholarship has expanded upon the concept of populism as performance to include a focus on how it employs digital technologies (Baldwin-Philippi, 2018). However, a relatively unexplored dimension is the consideration of the relationship between political and ‘artistic’ or theatrical performances of populism. If the latter appropriate right-wing populist discourse to potentially parody how it frames its nationalist rhetoric as an ‘appeal to “the people,”’ how do the relationships between performers and spectator-participants differ from those forged through the public manifestations of populist politics? (Canovan, 1999) How have artists who engage with populism employed technology to increase the reach and interactivity of their performances, and how does this seek to undermine, and/or generate a troubling ‘belief’ in, the supposed ‘reality’ of such projects? In 2000, the late German artist Christoph Schlingensief created an international controversy with his performance event Please Love Austria–first European coalition week! in which a group of asylum-seekers were transported to a container located in the centre of Vienna where they would reside for seven days. Via a dedicated internet website, Austrians were invited to vote out the foreigner they wished to see ‘deported’ the most. This public action, which sought to mirror the anti-immigration policies of Jörg Haider’s populist, far-right Freedom Party Austria (FPÖ), was reported worldwide to the detriment of Austria’s preferred centre-right, bourgeois national image. In 2010, Tallinn-based theatre company, Theatre NO99, began a 44-day-long project with a press conference announcing a new political party called ‘Unified Estonia.’ Resonances with United Russia went beyond the title: Theatre NO99’s performance as a party emulated the nationalist, populist, ‘catch-all’ public image of the Russian Federation’s ruling party. Although Unified Estonia incorporated obvious satire, its infiltration of real news media led to real polls indicating that it would take 25% of the national vote. These projects drew on ‘diverse popular cultures and digital media,’ and this ‘transmediality’ significantly amplified their scale and reach. This article critically reassesses such transmedial strategies from a postdigital perspective informed by current understandings of populism and post-truth politics.

This article bridges the gap between referenda and foreign policy, emphasizing the role of non-state entities as (f)actors of change in the formulation of foreign policy. Using a multi-layered (rather than a normative) analysis, it examines the Kurdistan Region of Iraq as a novel, non-state case in the international relations and foreign policy analysis literature. It argues that referenda can be pursued by non-state entities, not just state actors, and analyses the parameters of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG’s) unilateral declaration and conduct of the 2017 referendum. It perceives referenda as tools for the formulation and possible facilitation of foreign policy objectives and, in particular, claims to the formation of statehood undertaken by a non-state entity. The study, therefore, pursues a multi-level analysis looking at the contributing dynamics at the domestic, regional and international levels which demonstrate the impact of referenda on foreign policy-making and examines the catalyst role of the unit level that stands out as a determining factor.

Populists have often seemed influential in the securitization of migration, in great part through pressuring non-populist governing elites into “mainstreaming” more hardline immigration positions. This article asks why, given the presumption in securitization literatures that elite insiders possess strong authority in defining security, non-populist governing elites often in fact cede ground to populist challengers who paint immigration as a threat. Securitization and political science literatures paint very different pictures of elite–challenger dynamics, but populist and securitization claims possess key ideational similarities, in relation to the holism and autonomy of the political community, and the apoliticism of pursuing purportedly self-evident goals. However, populism articulates securitarian concepts through a moralized anti-elitism that impugns elite authority, portraying governing elites as corruptly inert toward threats facing “the people.” This article explores how this ideational relationship may affect securitization processes through a process-tracing study of the populist radical right's successful pressuring of governing elites to securitize migration in the US state of Arizona. There, populists’ moralized accusations of corrupt elite inaction toward urgent security threats moved governing elites to adopt positions intended to demonstrate responsiveness to public border-security anxieties, thereby inscribing securitization. Taking an “ideational” view of both concepts shows how they can form a politically influential account of “common sense.” By undermining elite security authority—thus inverting the typically theorized power dynamics of securitization—populism may open new pathways for securitized policies to emerge.

There has been increased focus on atrocity prevention and the preventative elements associated with Pillar ii of the Responsibility to Protect. Policymakers and academics have offered a range of short-term preventative measures available so that the international community can better fulfil its Pillar ii responsibilities. This article challenges this current R2P thinking by arguing that its short-termism insufficiently focuses on de-escalation of risk within already present cycles of violence while dealing superficially with long-term causes and the ways in which the international community is a contributing factor in underwriting systemic and structural determinants of violence which erode state resilience against mass atrocity. As an alternative, this article examines a number of ways in which key actors of the international community contribute to determinants of mass violence and further offer recommendations for how they could better discharge their long-term preventative responsibilities by first reforming their own practices.

What role do political parties play in Central Asian authoritarianism? Typically understood as being irrelevant, this article argues to the contrary that parties play an important role in the mosaic of authoritarian rule via the articulation of private interests. Examining Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan this study identifies two models of party interest articulation: a leveraging model where a party is utilized to protect the financial and political interests of elites; and a coordinating model where a party serves to integrate presidential assets. Neither model is uniform and party dynamics are dependent upon the specific nature of each personalist regime.

Purpose This paper aims to explore how regional organizations manage its affairs, peace-building and economic development focussing on a crucial analytical dimension: the link between global order, regional integration and multi-culturally diverse stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper focusses on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) by grounding the arguments based on the conceptualization of regional integration and “stakeholder management”. It offers an exploration of concepts of the “new global order”, “multilateralism”, “institutions”, effective stakeholder collaboration and cross-cultural management. Findings Defined in terms of EU-style institutionalization’ ECOWAS is one of the modes of regionalism classified as failed. The organization has struggled with the member-states internal crisis, inter-state border crisis, a growing army of unemployed youths, high political-instability, militant terrorism, cybersecurity and farmers-herders conflict. Also, it has a poor implementation of treaties and poor cultural communications. Originality/value Besides contributing to the emerging interest in the understanding of how regional organizations improve organizational efficiency, this study develops an interest in stakeholder management from the perspective of political, economic and peace-building organizations with different national, cultural and political experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether, after 16 years or more of its development, R2P has emerged as an international norm of intervention. As an idea, it is clear that R2P has a considerable degree of prominence within international discourse. As we will come to see, there has been much work undertaken in the development of its language and conceptual framework over the years. But, whilst this architecture is important to the process of its development as an international norm, it will be argued that more is needed to support the claim that R2P has fully emerged as an international norm, i.e R2P’s capacity to influence and shape the decision-making of states.

Norm contestation by local actors has emerged in recent years as an explanation for the failure of norm diffusion. This article contributes to the literature on norm contestation by analysing how norms diffused by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) pertaining to election observation and free and fair voting are re-constituted and contested by domestic actors in Kazakhstan. The study contributes to the idea of ‘constitutive localisation’ by emphasising a more fundamental level of disagreement beyond just congruence between the diffused norm and local beliefs; by demonstrating contestation can occur in the later stages in the norm diffusion cycle; by focusing on the micro-politics of contestation by local actors involved in the implementation of diffused norms; and by revealing how norm contestation is not necessarily a process of emancipatory politics, but a strategic act to serve authoritarian consolidation. Utilising a four-fold framework, the analysis illustrates how norms, while initially accepted by Kazakhstani authorities, are reconstituted through political discourse and/or practice, creating the moment of contestation. While this contestation is instrumentalised by political elites for their own advantage, it also remains an important element of agency within a normative order which they had little previous control over.

The intellectual discourse of any state can function within two broad paradigms: consensual and pluralistic. In the first case, political elites, intellectuals, and the public agree on the base parameters of what constitutes “the good life” and argue about the methods of application. In the second case, participants hold radically different, incommensurable views, which coexist in society. This essay argues that the Western political system broadly rests on the politics of liberal consensus, formed throughout the period of capitalist modernization. But Russia's history took a different turn, following a path of alternative modernization. This engendered the politics of paradigmatic pluralism, in which a number of radically different politico-intellectual frameworks struggle for the dominant discourse. This essay examines these paradigms and argues that, due to the nature and substance of these models, fundamental change of Russia's dominant discourse, along with its main politico-institutional parameters, is unlikely.

It is now commonly accepted that internal displacement and other forms of forced migration are multifaceted issues involving intersecting humanitarian, human rights and development concerns. To examine the topic without being cognisant of these multiple facets would be to produce an incomplete picture of the issues posed. Traditionally, however, it has been the case that while the humanitarian and the human rights aspects of forced displacement have been of intense concern, development matters have been to some degree neglected. Now, as we mark over twenty years since the publication of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, we see development concerns beginning to be given the equal attention they deserve.

It has frequently been observed that irregular migration is a common object of symbolic policy-making: the use of cosmetic adjustments to signal action, rather than substantive measures that achieve stated goals. Yet there is little research analysing the considerations driving policy actors to adopt such approaches. Drawing on existing literature, we distinguish three theoretical accounts of symbolic policy-making: manipulation, compensation, and adaptation. We explore these accounts through examining the emergence of symbolic policies in UK immigration control in the 1960s. Through detailed archival research, we reconstruct the deliberations leading to a series of Home Office decisions to crack down on irregular entry – decisions which officials felt were not operationally sensible, but which were based on popular political narratives of the problem. We conclude that the UK’s adoption of symbolic policy was a clear case of adaptation: a series of concessions to simplistic notions of control that did not chime with official views of what would work, and which were reluctantly embraced for reasons of political expediency. In conclusion, we suggest the need for more fine-grained analysis of the deliberations underpinning decision-making in bureaucracies, in order to produce more nuanced accounts of political rationalities in the area of immigration policy.

Since 2010, the Hungarian Government has increased its stake in the country’s energy sector at the expense of foreign-owned energy companies. This ‘soft re-nationalisation’ is driven by both exogenous and endogenous factors, especially the country’s external dependence on gas imports, its previous commitment to a European model of energy liberalisation, public dissatisfaction with high energy prices and the emergence of an ‘illiberal state’. The case of Hungary’s ‘soft re-nationalisation’ yields two central findings. Firstly, conceptually, there is a need to move away from just focusing on the radical re-nationalisation of energy in the form of resource nationalism, and instead understand re-nationalisation as consisting of a broad spectrum of state interventions into the energy market. Secondly, Hungary’s recent ‘statist turn’ in the energy sector highlights inherent tensions within EU energy policy as it threatens attempts to establish a fully liberalised and marketised energy market across the ...

Mainstream analyses of Tunisia’s post-2011 democratic transition have been largely divided along two mutually exclusive narratives. There are those hailing the country as ‘the Arab Spring’s only success story’ on the one hand and those sounding sensationalist alarms about the country’s democratization failure and return to authoritarianism on the other. This is consistent with, and perpetuates, a problematic zero-sum binary in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) scholarship between either a linear democratization process or authoritarian resilience. Furthermore, these reductionist representations highlight the failure of predominant democratization theories to account for the nuances and complexities of democratic transition. This paper critically examines the binary discursive representations of Tunisia’s democratization and explores their underpinning in two competing Orientalisms: the classic Orientalism underscoring an ontological difference (and inferiority) of the ‘Arab world’ to the West, and a liberal civilizing Orientalism which, while acknowledging an ‘essential sameness’ between the West and the ‘Arab world’, places the West as the temporal pinnacle of democracy and the normative monitor of democratic success. This paper thus rejects the binary discursive representations of Tunisia’s transition and advocates for a more nuanced narrative which accounts for the patterns of continuity with and change from authoritarian structures within the democratization process.

Nation-building is a process which is often contested, not just among different ethnicities within a nation-state, but also among the titular ethnic majority. This article explores the contested nature of the nation-building process in post-Soviet Kazakhstan through examining cinematic works. Utilizing a post-modern perspective which views nations and national identity as invented, imagined and ambivalent it identifies four discursive strands within recent post-Soviet Kazakh cinema pertaining to nationhood and national identity (ethno-centric, civic, religious and socioeconomic). Rather than viewing government-sponsored efforts of identity formation in cinema as a top-down process in which the regime transmits its version of nationhood and identity, the discursive strands revealed in this article illustrate there are varying understandings of what constitutes the nation and national identity in Kazakh cinematic works. Furthermore, the strand which focuses on the socioeconomic tensions of modern nation-building in Kazakhstan uncovers how film is used as a site for dissent and social critique of Kazakhstan's modern political condition. What the article illuminates is how discourses related to nation-building can be both competing and complementary and that nation-building is a fluid and transgressive process in which among the titular majority there is no fixed unambiguous understanding of nationhood and national identity.

Much of the existing literature on nation-building in Central Asia offers a statist top-down approach which focuses on how the nation and nationhood is “imagined” by political elites. In this special issue the contributors provide an analysis which seeks to explore the process of nation-building in Central Asia by addressing the other side of the state-society relationship. The case studies in this collection examine the “grey zone” between “imagined” and “real” differences between state-led policies and discourses related to nationhood and identity and how they are received by different audiences at different levels (regional, national and international). The authors bring to the fore the contested nature of nation-building in Central Asia as well as focusing on new or less conventional analytical tools for the study of nation-building such as cinema, construction projects and elections. This article provides the introduction to the special issue and lays out the contribution the articles make to the existing literature on nation-building in Central Asia. It also sets out the rationale and aims of the collection.

Since Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996, the question of whether human reproductive cloning should be banned or pursued has been the subject of international debate. Feelings run strong on both sides. In 2005, the United Nations adopted its Declaration on Human Cloning to try to deal with the issue. The declaration is ambiguously worded, prohibiting “all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life”. It received only ambivalent support from UN member states. Given this unsatisfactory outcome, in 2008 UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) set up a Working Group to investigate the possibility of a legally binding convention to ban human reproductive cloning. The Working Group was made up of members of the International Bioethics Committee, established in 1993 as part of UNESCO’s Bioethics Programme. It found that the lack of clarity in international law is unhelpful for those states yet to formulate national regulations or policies on human cloning. Despite this, member states of UNESCO resisted the idea of a convention for several years. This changed in 2015, but there has been no practical progress on the issue. Drawing on official records and first-hand observations at bioethics meetings, this article examines the human cloning debate at UNESCO from 2008 onwards, thus building on and advancing current scholarship by applying recent ideas on global governance to an empirical case. It concludes that, although human reproductive cloning is a challenging subject, establishing a robust global governance framework in this area may be possible via an alternative deliberative format, based on knowledge sharing and feasibility testing rather than the interest-based bargaining that is common to intergovernmental organizations and involving a wide range of stakeholders. This article is published as part of a collection on global governance.

Neopatrimonialism has emerged as the central conceptual label applied by scholars to understand the politics of the Central Asian republics. Like the use of neopatrimonialism in other regional settings, this article argues that the concept has become susceptible to concept misinformation and stretching. Adopting a critical perspective, this article highlights three significant problems with the application of neopatrimonialism in the study of Central Asian politics: its appropriateness and operationalisation; the difficulty in ontologically and empirically untangling the formal and informal; and an inherent normativity in its application. While not advocating an abandonment of the concept, the article considers instead how it can be used better in conjunction with additional analytical approaches and/or concepts. The article proffers that a focus on either formal-institutional structures; discourses of power; and the concept of ‘multiple modernities’ would aid comprehension of the region and resolve the three issues highlighted in this work.

Cosmopolitans often argue that the international community has a humanitarian responsibility to intervene militarily in order to protect vulnerable individuals from violent threats and to pursue the establishment of a condition of cosmopolitan justice based on the notion of a ‘global rule of law’. The purpose of this article is to argue that many of these cosmopolitan claims are incomplete and untenable on cosmopolitan grounds because they ignore the systemic and chronic structural factors that underwrite the root causes of these humanitarian threats. By way of examining cosmopolitan arguments for humanitarian military intervention and how systemic problems are further ignored in iterations of the Responsibility to Protect, this article suggests that many contemporary cosmopolitan arguments are guilty of focusing too narrowly on justifying a responsibility to respond to the symptoms of crisis versus demanding a similarly robust justification for a responsibility to alleviate persistent structural causes. Although this article recognizes that immediate principles of humanitarian intervention will, at times, be necessary, the article seeks to draw attention to what we are calling principles of Jus ante Bellum (right before war) and to stress that current cosmopolitan arguments about humanitarian intervention will remain insufficient without the incorporation of robust principles of distributive global justice that can provide secure foundations for a more thoroughgoing cosmopolitan condition of public right.

The authors of this paper introduced an assessed Model United Nations simulation as a core component of the undergraduate politics and international relations programmes at the University of Lincoln. The authors use their experience of creating and delivering this module to reflect upon the institutional implementation of a student as producer agenda to guide curriculum development and pedagogy. They conclude that many existing trends within the teaching and learning of politics and international relations are congruent with the emerging focus within British higher education on research engaged teaching and learning and the development of students as producers of knowledge. They conclude by suggesting that these priorities are perhaps best implemented at degree programme level and that they should take greater account of a broad notion of internationalisation and the value of simulation-driven teaching and learning.

La représentation de la "glorieuse Révolution" dans les émissions d'histoire factuelle en Grande-Bretagne s'est développée parallèlement à des évolutions plus larges, dans l'audiovisuel, mais aussi en politique, notamment par rapport à l'histoire bien connue et tourmentée d'Irlande du Nord et sa mémorialisation, à la fois à l'intérieur et à l'extérieur des communautés catholique et protestante de la province. En suite de quoi, cet article propose une étude de cas montrant les influences potentielles sur les représentations d’une histoire traumatisante et controversée qui continue à résonner sur la vie politique et culturelle actuelle. Il en évoquera aussi les limites. Les événements sont ceux qu’a connus l’Irlande du Nord et la République d'Irlande du XVIIe au XXIe siècles. Peu avant l'achèvement de cet article, en septembre 2012, des violences avaient repris entre républicains et loyalistes pendant la saison des parades orangistes, période pendant laquelle bien des événements étudiés ici sont commémorés ; cependant, il faut également noter que certains spécialistes suggèrent que de telles crises ne vont pas à l'encontre du processus de paix, mais participent plutôt de la complexité d'un processus en cours qui prend comme point de départ le terrain même .

This article examines the genesis and influence of informal politics on non-democratic outcomes in Central Asia. As opposed to current scholarship which explains the emergence of informal politics as a result of kinship-based cultural legacies, this work uses the broader analytical framework of neopatrimonialism to understand informal political phenomena while emphasizing the role of uncertainty and contingent actor choice in explaining its appearance. The article also assesses how informal political behaviour (patronage and patron-client relations) was used to consolidate authoritarianism. Using Kazakhstan's (1990–95) early transition period as a case study this article notes how three processes central to transition (institutional conflict, emerging pluralism, and electoral competition) elicited a degree of uncertainty which destabilized prior institutional equilibrium. The president of Kazakhstan applied informal forms of politics to manage this uncertainty to re-assert his power and consolidate his personal authoritarian rule at the expense of emerging democratic institutions. The article illustrates how the uncertain and contingent process of transition is instrumental to the emergence of informal politics and the durability of authoritarianism in Kazakhstan, and that informal political relations and behaviour are important to understanding non-democratic and democratic paths in former Soviet states.

External energy relations are essential components of both the European Union’s search for an overall energy strategy, an Energy Policy for Europe (EPE) and the development of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). In this article questions are posed about the role for the use of nuclear technology as the means of meeting some of the objectives of both areas of policy. As both the EPE and the ENP are dependent on the negotiation of international agreements with third parties for their effectiveness the focus of analysis presented will be on the EU’s legal and constitutional framework for action and in particular the EURATOM Treaty which established the European Atomic Energy Community in 1957.

Any observer looking at Russian politics at the end of 2014 cannot fail to be struck by the magnitude of change over the course of that year. 2014 saw Russia expand its territory by the absorption of Crimea, taking to itself the land of a neighbouring state against the wishes of that state’s government. It saw Russians fighting in a conflict against the Ukrainian armed forces on the territory of Ukraine. It saw Russia’s relatively stable, albeit fractious, relationship with the western powers dramatically worsen, with sanctions imposed by the US and the EU on many of those close to President Putin. It saw economic decline, as the rouble and oil prices fell dramatically and official Russian forecasts posited recession in 2015. Few, if any, analysts predicted these developments. A year earlier, in December 2013, the headlines from Russia were different. An official amnesty in December 2013 mandated the release of the highest profile prisoners in Russia – oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina – all of whom had been the subjects of sustained campaigns for their freedom in the West. A few months earlier, in September 2013, leading opposition figure Aleksei Navalny performed strongly in Moscow’s mayoral election, as other opposition candidates across the country gained a handful of seats and mayoralities, including that of Russia’s fourth largest city, Yekaterinburg. Even in early 2014, Russia’s global image was burnished by a successful Winter Olympics in Sochi in February. The ominous turn of events in 2014 reveals the complexities of forecasting Russia’s path of development. A tendency to polarisation and preconception can lead to insufficient attention to nuance and competing voices within Russia. My recent research has focused on two particular approaches to assessing political developments within Russia, namely, political narratives and political forecasting (Bacon 2012a; Bacon 2012b). This article sets out how narrative analysis helps us to discern Russia’s key interests from the perspective of the ruling regime, and then draws on these findings to consider the complexities of scenario building as Russia moves into the second half of this century’s second decade.

Vladimir Putin's United Russia and Nursultan Nazabayev's Nur Otan represent a distinctive type of dominant party due to their personalist nature and dependence on their presidential patrons. Such personalism deprives these parties of the agency to perform key roles in authoritarian reproduction typically expected of dominant parties, such as resource distribution, policy-making and mobilizing mass support for the regime. Instead United Russia and Nur Otan have contributed to authoritarian consolidation by securing the president's legislative agenda, stabilizing elites to ensure their patron's hold on power, and assisting in perpetuating a discourse around the national leader. However, because these parties lack the agency to reproduce themselves, to entrench their position, and to play more than a supportive role in regime consolidation, the lifespan of such personalist dominant parties is likely to be significantly shorter than that of dominant parties.

As opposed to the current literature which argues that informal politics pervades formal institutions in Kazakhstan and Central Asia more widely, this article argues that Nur Otan, the political party of the President of Kazakhstan, acts as a formal institution to counter the instability generated by informal networks competing for access to political and economic resources. This is achieved by consolidating the political parties associated with these networks into Nur Otan and the synchronisation of the party and the state apparatus. However, the extent to which Nur Otan can provide this stabilising function in the long term is dependent upon regime dynamics.

Richard Lance Keeble argues that Fleet Street’s coverage of the Afghan conflict has served largely to promote the interests of the military/industrial/media complex – and marginalise the views of the public who have consistently appealed in polls for the troops to be brought back home