Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) Fellowship Reports | Posted

Our colleagues at NUPI just held their concluding conference for their first year of fellowships. Fellows hail from both the South Caucasus and Central Asia. A training, including survey design, was held earlier this year in Almaty and met with rave reviews. The concluding conference was held here in Tbilisi. The level of participation and professionalism was excellent and shows that well thought out efforts can help to improve social science in the region. Of particular interest to me were the reports on public investment in Azerbaijan and Chinese migration in Kazakhstan.

More commentary from SSC will be forthcoming. For now, you can download many of the reports from here. You can also find out more about the project.

International Survey of Think Tanks | Zilch in the Caucasus

The Foreign Policy Research Institute does an international survey of think tanks. Apparently they mailed 3,025 surveys to 126 countries. Of these, 817 responded in 96 countries.

So what is the think-tank landscape in the Caucasus according to this survey? Well, zero in Georgia, zero in Armenia, and Azerbaijan isn't even mentioned.

Sure, partially it is a matter of the periphery not making itself visible, but at the same time it does reflect that these institutions are still in their infancy, even if GFSIS and AIPRG already are around. At any rate, CRRC is planning to contribute to a broader project on reviewing the capacity to undertake public policy analysis in the region. As a first step, we want to do a baseline study, partially summarizing existing work. Second, we'd like to bring the few practitioners together, to see what worked, and what didn't. And this then is meant to yield a meaningful report. Stay tuned.