Nation-Building and Identity in the Post-Soviet Space: New Tools and Approaches (Post-Soviet Politics)

Nation-building as a process is never complete and issues related to identity, nation, state and regime-building are recurrent in the post-Soviet region. This comparative, inter-disciplinary volume explores how nation-building tools emerged and evolved over the last twenty years. Featuring in-depth case studies from countries throughout the post-Soviet space it compares various aspects of nation-building and identity formation projects. Approaching the issue from a variety of disciplines, and geographical areas, contributors illustrate chapter by chapter how different state and non-state actors utilise traditional instruments of nation-construction in new ways while also developing non-traditional tools and strategies to provide a contemporary account of how nation-formation efforts evolve and diverge.

Rico Isaacs is a Reader in Politics at Oxford Brookes University. His research focuses on the comparative political sociology of authoritarianism, regime-building and nation-building in Central Asia. Abel Polese is a research fellow at the Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction at Dublin City University and the Institute of Governance of Tallinn University. His main interest is the gap between theory and practices of governance which he explores both theoretically and in practice through a series of social innovation projects in Europe, the former USSR and South East Asia. He is a fellow of the Global Young Academy, gathering academics from all around the world to propose new directions in research policies, and his project Sustainable Development in Cultural Diversity was awarded the Global Education Award by the Council of Europe in 2011.