Cuil for the Caucasus? A quick test!

As many of you may have heard, this week saw the launch of a competitor to Google. Cuil, which apparently is an old Irish word for knowledge, has been set up by several former Googlists and promises a search that's more oriented on content, and says it can do a more comprehensive job in the ever-expanding worldwide web.

So if it's supposed to find rare and out of the way things, how does it do for the Caucasus? We did a quick self test. For Caucasus and data, it does indeed return us on the very top, or at least in the first line, and it's a nice interface, as you can see. However, it also shows choices that are at least somewhat eccentric.


We get a somewhat similar picture for caucasus research, but again it seems to favor our Armenian website. The Georgian or Azerbaijani office are not immediately in sight.


The preference for Armenia is a little odd, since our English language websites in the three countries are practically identical (and similar to the regional site, too).

What does it do for Caucasus and social science? Note we did not put the words in quotation marks, so it's a free search term.

There is some irony in this conclusion, but we don't think it's entirely fair.

And can it help with more specialized requests? We queried CRRC's own Survey Director, Tina(tin) Zurabishvili. Here you see a comparison of Google and Cuil.


Cuil gets it, but again takes us to Armenia. It also throws in a lot of chaff on Salome Zurabishvili, or Tinatin Khidasheli, two Georgian opposition figures. So Google still seems ahead here. As far as we're concerned, Cuil is an interesting additional tool if Google doesn't find what you're looking for, but not yet a serious alternative for internet research on the Caucasus.

Caucasus Data: Tolerance towards Others

The CRRC Data Initiative (DI) gives people an opportunity to do interesting cross-country comparisons of the South Caucasus (SC) people’s attitude toward their neighbors. This subject is quite sensitive and complex when thinking of the fact that the SC stands out for its sequence of ethnic conflicts.

According to the DI, Armenians prioritize doing business with other nations, which is followed by being friends with other nations and the last point is getting married to foreigner. As the chart shows below, 34% of Armenians approve of doing business with Azerbaijanis, 43% - with Turks, 94% - with Russians. As for friendship, Armenians show particular willingness in being friends with Russians (almost 94%), and also, with Americans (84%) and Greeks (83%). You can check the data for Armenians’ attitude toward other nations like Georgians and Iranians as well.

In contrast to Armenians, Georgians’ attitudes differ – they place friendship the highest, 94% of Georgians supports friendship with Russians, 87% supports friendship with Abkhazians; it would be very interesting to know Abkhazians' attitude towards Georgians. Georgians’ attitude toward Ossetians is the same as with Abkhazians (Friendship - 87%, Business - 82%, and Marriage – 42%).

Attitudes are less mercantile than in Armenia: business comes after friendship, but also with high percentages. Marriage outside one's people generally is not so popular, although still more than half of the population in Georgia and Armenia support marriage between Georgians and Russians and Armenians and Russians; a fourth of Azerbaijanis support marriage with Russians as well. Despite Georgia’s spats with Russia, Georgians appears to maintain strong positive feelings to the people. Marrying Americans is less popular, by comparison.

For Azerbaijanis, there is no clear difference in preferences for friendship and business. Mostly approval rates tally closely, although they obviously vary between nations. Overall, Azerbaijanis are reluctant to engage with Armenians (1% for all three variables), which cannot be said about Armenians’ attitude towards Azerbaijanis. That may be the logic of grievance, but note that the same cannot be said for Georgians’ attitude toward Abkhazians: Georgians lost the war but approval of friendship, business, marriage remain high. We would like to hear what you think might explain the stark contrasts.

Moreover, Azerbaijanis, similarly to Armenians and Georgians, are positively disposed toward Russians. In order to see whether religion variable controls Azerbaijanis’ attitude toward marrying Russians, we cross tabbed both variables: the data showed that only 6% of Muslim Azerbaijanis who attend religious services ‘every day’ support marring Russians. You might be interested to come up with your own hypothesis on Georgians marring Abkhaz or Turks.

For more details on the topic and/or for other interesting data, check out the DI dataset here. (Also with special thanks to Katy Pearce for suggesting us to look into this.)

PFA Report on “Armenia’s 2008 Presidential Election”

For those who have been far from Armenia or who have not actively followed the plethora of developments that have occurred in the country for the past six months, the report encompassing a nearly full picture of the current situation in Armenia has finally become available. “Armenia’s 2008 Presidential Election: Select Issue an Analysis” is a report recently released by Policy Forum Armenia (PFA), a newly founded association.

The report is the first of its kind following the February 19, 2008 Presidential Election of Armenia since it provides a full description of the pre-election and post-election events. The report includes both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The information provided in the qualitative sections of this report is mainly based on Armenian local and international newspaper articles, reports released by international organization as well as blogs on the internet. Unlike the primarily technical reports by OSCE/ODIHR, the report does not just limit itself to describing the 2008 presidential elections, but also presents it in the larger context of political and social developments of post-Soviet Armenia.

For those who have closely followed the political developments in Armenia, a particularly interesting section of the report may be the section on the “Statistical Analysis of the Official Election Outcome”. In this section the authors utilize a number of tests developed in the 1990s by Sobianin and Sukhovolskiy, and later revised by other scholars such as Gelman, Kaiunov, Michael Myagkov (University of Oregon), Peter Ordeshook (California Institute of Technology), and their co-authors. The analysis of the election results through this methodology indicates inconsistencies in the 2008 Presidential Election. For example, the report reveals that there was much higher voter turnout in the regions outside of the capital city-Yerevan. This is unlikely, as generally considerably more civic activism is observed in Yerevan as opposed to the rural areas. Out of the 1,923 polling stations in Armenia more than 129 polling stations had higher than 90 percent voter turnout (p. 21, see figure below). Such turnout levels are highly unlikely, especially given the high migration levels. The other tests reveal inconsistencies within the distribution of individual candidates’ votes, in the relationship between the candidates’ votes and voter turnout, and within the distribution of invalid ballots. The report is careful to specify that the statistical findings do not provide definitive proof of election fraud, but only an (albeit powerful) indication.

Finally, the report concludes with a full section devoted to the civil society awakening in Armenia in connection with the 2008 Presidential Election. More specifically, the final section discusses the increase in the activism especially among women and the youth, as well as the rise in information sharing and networking through the internet. While the report does not provide any innovative recommendations to mediate the post-election discontent in Armenia, it provides a solid ground for policy makers to put the events of the past six months into perspective, assess what the available tools are and put the February 19, 2008 elections into the wider political context of Armenia’s newly independent history.

On a side note, similar studies of election fraud and perception were conducted by CRRC fellows in 2005 by Dr. Masis Poghosyan and Sergey Harutyunyan.

For more detail, check out the report itself at http://www.pf-armenia.org/

Diaspora Armenians in Armenian Society: the Problem of Adaptation

Difficulties with socio-economic integration – unemployment and a feeling of being “a society within a society,” are some of the examples from the list of problems Diaspora Armenians face when immigrating to Armenia. CRRC-Armenia fellow, Anahit Mkrtchyan, researched why these issues are problematic for the Diaspora Armenians and made policy recommendations.

As the researcher finds, integration of immigrant Armenians into the Armenian society is rather weak, because of a number of essential differences in values, lifestyle, dialect, moral principles and ideology peculiar to both immigrant and local Armenians. Furthermore, Diaspora Armenians lack information on their homeland and have high expectation before moving to Armenia, which also causes difficulties for their full adaptation to the Armenian reality.

According to Mkrtchyan (pictured above presenting at CRRC Armenia), attitudes of different groups toward creating integration policy vary. Local authorities avoid having repatriation and integration policies because immigrants can become competitive at the top levels in government and in business, also fear increased real estate costs. Many experts do understand the serious need of repatriation and integration policy, as repatriates will help to cultivate culture, legitimacy and civic attitudes in Armenian society. A group of representatives of Diaspora structures is sure that this policy is important, as the Diaspora faces assimilation, and there is a lack of patriotism among the younger generation.

Based on the local and Diaspora experts’ suggestions and findings, Anahit made the following policy recommendations:

• Consolidation of Armenian structures around two parallel missions and joint involvement in their realization.
• A nation wide integration program directed at better coordination of integration measures, offered on national and local levels. Involvement of trade unions, welfare structures, voluntary and social advocacy organizations and neighborhoods in drafting the adaptation and integration program. (Read more)

Mkrtchyan's work was published in the Turkish daily "Agos" in May 2008. The paper (PDF) in English is also available on the CRRC-Armenia website.

(Note that this, and other Fellows' work is on the CRRC Armenia blog, which we strongly encourage you to explore.)

Caucasus Data | Language: Russian versus English?

Recently, we happened upon an article that talks about the use of Russian across the Caucasus. Is Russian becoming obsolete? According to the article, some Georgian politicians suggest this is the case. At the same time, the article points out that the uptake of English is too slow to replace Russian as a lingua franca.

As usual, we were a little disappointed that the article relied on many assertions, without actually checking for data. As it happens, the Data Initiative provides some insights on the question.

With English-language use, this is what respondents told us about their language ability:


One of the explanations for the different levels may be that diaspora contacts have traditionally brought more English to Armenia. Conversely, economic growth in Baku has attracted people more recently to begin learning English (as you will notice in many hotels and restaurants).

But then, where do people see language going in the next few years? Interestingly, there's overwhelming approval for English as the first mandatory foreign language in secondary schools. Almost 70% in Azerbaijan and Georgia would prefer English, with 57% favoring English in Armenia. In Armenia, 37% suggest Russian should be mandatory in secondary schools. Only 27% of Georgians, and, surprisingly, only 18% Azerbaijani respondents prefer Russian. In Azerbaijan, 9% think that no foreign language should be mandatory, while 4% suggest that Turkish should be the first foreign language.

It is at this point, that we're curious to explore how the respondents break down into different groups. When looking at the data, Nana stumbled upon an interesting dimension: the more intelligent the respondent is rated to be (by the interviewer, and it's a very crude measure, but returns interesting results), the more they favor English.


Want to know more? Compare women and men? The old and the young? Citydwellers' English versus rural folk? Let us know, or, better, explore the data set yourself.

CRRC Publication Research Fellowship 2008 Available

Explore issues - handle data - satisfy your curiosity - get published - generate opportunities
CRRC is offering a round of research fellowships. Are you curious about a social issue? Do you have some ideas or hypotheses that you want to explore further? This fellowship could be the perfect opportunity for you!

What issues are we looking to address?
We're looking for social science research that addresses pressing issues your country faces. The Millennium Development Goals (click here) constitute one such urgent research agenda. Other likely issues include child poverty, youth, social capital, migration and democratization. Pretty much any advanced analysis based on our Data Initiative is of interest to us. We can also help you develop your topic if you are unsure about it, but are committed to undertaking professional research. Check "CRRC Fellowship" in the label cloud on the left.

What results?
We want you to produce international quality research. You should aim to publish your research in a peer-reviewed journal (we will help you find one). This will give your research international recognition. We also expect your work to contain prescriptive richness and ask you to present your findings to relevant interested groups (international, organizations, NGOs, government agencies) in your home country. We definitely want you to use some of our great data from the Data initiative 2007.

Who is the fellowship for?
You are smart, committed, curious and want to apply all your abilities. Typically you will have at least a Master's Degree. You are committed to develop your research ability and have a track record of excellence. You may work in fields other than research, but you are interested in getting back into research because you realize there are excellent long-term opportunities there. We require a working knowledge of English, since you want to publish internationally. Exceptions can be made for those doing quantitative and survey work. (Sorry, no funding for stipends abroad, or for those who live outside the Caucasus.)

What do you get?
Primarily you get the satisfaction of doing excellent work and of being part of a small but vibrant community of internationally recognized research scholars in the South Caucasus. Moreover, if you get published internationally, many opportunities follow. The fellowship provides an opportunity to prove your professionalism, which you can use for many other applications (jobs, consultancy work, joint research projects, conference participation, international research stipends such as CRRC's Carnegie Fellowship, to name the most obvious). Depending on your research project, you can also get between USD 2000 and 4000 for pursuing your research interest (surveys, for example, may have higher costs).

Is it easy?
Yes and no. We will help at every step. But it certainly is not easy money. In research you confront new challenges and difficult decisions all the time. That is why we are doing it, after all. It requires determination and persistence -- we hope you will join us in the thrill of discovery.

How to prepare?
Our online application procedure is specifically designed to help you develop your research proposal. Write us a short email now (latest by July 18, 2008) to Melissa at melissa@crrccenters.org to find out more, telling us about your field or interest, and, if you have it, your provisional research topic. We will end you an email to let you know about the next step and to invite you to discuss your ideas at our open houses.

Maths in Armenia | comparing through TIMSS

What is the average Armenian secondary school student’s competence in Maths and Science? Is Armenia doing fine, or is it time for the education policy makers to review the secondary school curricula. Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) proposes an answer to these questions. TIMSS is an international evaluation of the mathematics and science knowledge of fourth and eighth grade students around the world. It was first conducted in 1995, and is administered once in every four years since then. In 2003, alongside with over 60 countries from around the world, Armenia also participated in the study.

Singapore (605), Hong Kong (586), Chinese Taipei (585), Japan (570) lead the TIMSS charts both in Maths and Science. The good news is that Armenia is among the countries that have high scores in Maths among the eight graders. Armenia is the 23rd in the chart, with an average score of 478 and is ahead of Serbia (477), Bulgaria (476), Romania (475) - countries that are above the international average score (467). The picture is different when it comes to the Maths scores of the fourth graders. Armenia’s indicators (456) are significantly lower than international average (495), leaving behind only Norway (451), Iran (389), Philippines (358), Morocco (341) and Tunisia (339).

Science scores among both the eight and fourth graders in Armenia are disappointing: 461 for the eight graders vs. 574 international average score and 437 vs. 489.

Interestingly, girls in Armenia show better results both in Maths and Science than boys (that's not the typical story). Look at the average grades below.

Subject	4th grade		8th grade
	Male	Female	Male	Female
Mathematics	450	462	473	483
Science	432	441	455	468

Some alternative studies conducted in Armenia suggest that TIMSS sample may not be representative of the overall population. If we understand the argument correctly, the authors of this study argue that students included in the sample in Armenia are from middle-upper classes. Effectively this could mean that the poorest remain underrepresented. This may be an interesting topic for research (any potential fellows out there?).

TIMSS methodology, datasets and the questionnaires are available for further analysis here. The study is not conducted in other countries yet, although Georgia looks poised to join TIMSS.

European Cup Craze : Who Supports Whom in the Caucasus?

Given the recent craze over UEFA football and the large number of diehard football fans across the Caucasus, I think the question about the politics of support is worth addressing. It can provide interesting insights into both cultural and political affinities -- much like Eurovision support -- except with a different demographic. We have limited information here, so the blog cries out for help!

Georgians, the titan of South Caucasus football, will only support teams with a tried and true record of success, according to one colleague who is a football maven. This means that Georgians generally support Germany. The historical connections and affinities also play an important role here.

But what about Russia facing off against Spain? Here the jury is more mixed. According to one Georgian television poll (which isn't the best source but it's all we have), 45% of Georgians supported Russian in the Russia-Spain game. If true, this like our Data Initiative data, shows that Georgians are still very open to Russians, though they may have strong feelings against the Russian Government.



As for Azerbaijan, the picture is clear. It's Turkey all the way (see picture above taken in Baku). But what happens when Turkey loses to Spain? I don't have the answer, but I encourage our Azerbaijani readers to chime in.



Armenians, well, I don't have any info here. Please comment.

Religious practices across the South Caucasus | Take two

Last week we gave a snapshot of religious practices across the South Caucasus in general. The CRRC DI gives us an opportunity to explore this topic further and see whether religious practices are only country specific, or whether there are other factors influencing them. Let’s see if gender is a defining factor in religious practices in the South Caucasus.

The DI data shows that in all three countries women give more importance to religion than men. However, in Georgia the difference between genders is not as significant when it comes to religion as in Armenia and Azerbaijan. As an illustration, on the question “how important is religion in making decisions?” 53% of women and only 39% of men in Armenia attribute somewhat important or very important role to religion. In Georgia, 76% of all female respondents and 67% of male respondents give religion a central role in their life.

A similar pattern can be observed with praying. More female respondents say they pray more than once a week (some of which daily) than male: 44% female vs. 24.6% male in Armenia and 52% female vs. 25.6% male in Georgia. The situation is different in Azerbaijan, where slightly more male respondents report praying once a week (including those who pray daily): 16.4% male vs. 15.2% female. This, however, can probably be explained by the religious traditions embedded in Islam.

The World Values Survey (2000) also asked religion related questions to respondents in over 80 countries. Their data shows that women of Christian faith across the world are more religious than men. The picture is different in Muslim countries. Thus, similarly to Azerbaijan, in Turkey around 61% of male respondents attend religious services once or more than once a week in comparison to 7% of female.

Check out DI datasets if you are interested in exploring this issue further.

Religious practices across the South Caucasus | the Data Initiative

Data snapshot: how do religious practices compare across the Caucasus? In our Data Initiative, we included questions on religion, and we tried to unpack the concept further: rather than only asking about the importance of religion, we linked it to practice. Thus, we asked how often people attend religious services, how often they pray, and how often they fast -- since these are comparable components across Muslim and two separate orthodox religions.

Georgia has most people saying that religion plays a very important role in making decisions. 50% say it is very important, and another 26% say it is important. So, nearly three quarters of the respondents accord religion a central role in their life. In two other countries religion plays very important and important role in making decisions for around 50% of the respondents.

Georgia also has the highest number of respondents who attend religious services apart from special occasions. Thus, 6% of respondents attend religious services more than once a week and another 12% once a week. In contrast, only around 3% of the respondents in Armenia and Azerbaijan attend religious services more than once a week and another 7% and 3% once a week respectively. Praying apart from religious services is more popular among the respondents in Armenia and Georgia. Hence, 29% of the respondents in Armenia and 28% in Georgia say that they pray every day, in comparison to 14% of those in Azerbaijan. In addition, more respondents say that they pray less often (31%) and never (25%) in Azerbaijan.

Though fasting is a part of religious traditions in all the three countries, it seems to be less practiced across the South Caucasus. Among the three countries fasting is more followed in Azerbaijan, where 14% of the respondents always fast and 9% often fast. Overall, around 50% of the respondents in Azerbaijan either fast always, often or sometimes. As a comparison, only 2% of those in Armenia and 6% in Georgia always fast. The number of those who never fast is the highest in Armenia -79%. To explore this topic more check out CRRC Data Initiative.

Georgia post-Election Phone Survey | Quick Review

Yet another survey has been sent around as a PDF in Georgia. The survey attempted to measure the postelection mood in Tbilisi. According to the information provided in the PDF, 503 respondents have been selected randomly and interviewed by telephone. According to the results 46.92% of respondents say they "fully disagree with the announced results of the 2008 parliamentary elections". 25,65% say they totally agree with the announced results. We have been asked to comment, and some of the things we have to say will sound pretty obvious.

First, Tbilisi itself is a biased sample. All of the survey work so far has shown that Tbilisi residents are the more skeptical about the government than any other part of the country. While the views of Tbilisi residents may matter in terms of who will demonstrate on the streets, it is not an accurate assessment of the mood of the country. Moreover, and this is a standard objection even if it's not familiar to people that don't know much about surveys, telephone surveys have limited reliability. You will only reach people that have a telephone, are at home (or willing to pick up calls from random strangers on their mobile), and who are willing to trust the interviewer and take some time to talk. Now obviously each of these four qualifications serve as a filter, and the people that actually respond may well not be very representative.

As one saying goes, telephone surveys only get the views of those who are bored at home. Great for exploring some issues ("what television programming would you like to see?"), not for measuring attitudes towards complex political questions. Especially not in Georgia where there's little experience in weighting to counter the implicit bias.

Then again, you could say that surveys like this only attempt to take the general mood, and that in the absence of funding for face-to-face interviews across the country, such a survey still gives us a quick glimpse. There is some merit to this view, but the problem is that reporting the views of 46.92%, with the precision of 0.92% tacked on, suggests a level of representativeness that this survey simply does not have.

And there's another problem with the question: what exactly does "agreeing with the announced results of the 2008 parliamentary elections" mean? Did respondents like the results? Even if you voted for the winning party, you could fundamentally "disagree" with the results, since, knowing the final results, you would have preferred a lot more diversity in parliament. We ultimately just don't know what precisely "agreeing" means here.

Still, on one issue the telephone respondents seem to have been fairly prescient, at least as things have developed so far:


That's pretty much what happened in the meantime.

Study of Economic Relations Between Georgia and Armenia

At first glance it may seem that trade between the Georgian region of Samtskhe-Javakheti and the neighboring Armenian region of Shirak should provide a natural basis for development in both regions. However, the main border crossing point in Samtskhe Javakheti is under-utilized and trade is not creating stimulation for growth in either region.

The research, funded by UNDP and carried out by CRRC, focuses on the challenges of cross-border economic cooperation development between Samtskhe Javakheti and Shirak. It addresses the following questions: why is so little trade taking place over the main Ninotsminda checkpoint? What legislative and procedural changes could make this trade easier? Particularly, in light of the large changes in physical infrastructure, legislation and development, in what areas are opportunities likely to open up for cooperation in the future?

The report highlights some of the prospects for cross-border trade development which are embedded in the strong cultural connections between the two regions, seasonal differences and the quality of harvest. Thus, better customs procedures and transport infrastructure should create considerable opportunities for improvements in trade in the future. Recommendations concern both the physical condition of the checkpoints as well as the logistics.

One of the main limitations of the research is its focus only on the Georgian side of the border. In order to identify the areas for the development of cross-border trade, clear understanding of the differences in the two markets is necessary. Thus, a similar study of the market in Shirak could make the results far more powerful.

See the full report here!

What do Georgian Troops Think about the Iraq War?

Recently, the Georgian Times published an article on a poll recently conducted by GORBI of Georgian Troops in Iraq. According to the article, this is the first poll conducted amongst these soldiers.

The article highlights that troops continue to have very positive feelings towards their tenure in Iraq and agree with Saakashvili sending them there. According to the poll, 89% are satisfied with the current conditions and 93% are satisfied with their training.

This data may point to the professionalization of the Georgian army. Interestingly, according to a poll done by the Military Times (no ability to rate its quality) at the end of 2007, 80% of American troops, still say they are "somewhat" or "completely" satisfied with their jobs. This is despite the fact that now more than half of troops believe that America should not have gone to war.

Georgian citizens, however, like American citizens and unlike the Georgian troops generally do not support troop involvement in Iraq and often possess cynical views of America "buying cheap Georgian cannon fodder" type.

The article, however, opens several interesting research questions.

• Why do Georgian troops have such a positive attitude towards serving in Iraq? I think there may be several unexpected answers to this question, which involve exposure to different troops (i.e. Americans and Brits) and the benefits and salaries these soldiers receive compared to what the receive back home. Or maybe, they just have the feeling that they are serving a useful purpose. Feedback welcome.
• Interestingly, the questionnaire used by GORBI was a self-completion questionnaire. Our experience is that these type of questionnaires work poorly with Georgians, as there is no tradition of filling them out. We wonder how this worked with the Georgian troops.

If the GORBI dataset was publicly available, interesting analysis could be done there.

Georgian Election | ODIHR Preliminary Report and its Percentages

So the preliminary report on yesterday's Parliamentary Elections which ODIHR has just released again notes that the count had problems.

While this, as discussed yesterday, is not a good overall indicator for how the counts went throughout the country, it raises the question whether we can at least compare this report with the one for the Presidential Election in January. Presumably, if 23% of observers managed to find a bad count in January, and 22% identify problems now, it should mean that the number has remained relatively stable. So: in terms of count, the election roughly is the same.

Right? Actually, no. First, different observers have different standards in terms of what they characterize as "bad". As the ODIHR statistician (a figure fighting for more attention internally, and fortunately making some progress) will tell you, Russian observers, for example, fill out their forms somewhat differently. Since there is no training, there's no calibration of what "bad" means, and how to distinguish that from "reasonable" or "very bad". Change the composition of the Election Observation Mission, and you may change the results. Although this is the biggest problem when comparing two very different missions (Georgia's numbers, with 22% of counts assessed as bad or very bad and Armenia's Presidential Election in February, with 16% in that category just can't be meaningfully compared), it can also affect a comparison of two elections in the same country.

A bigger challenge comes from better targeting of observers: since this is a repeat election within a relatively short time frame, ODIHR can target so-called problem districts and precincts much more accurately. More observers in these problem districts means more problems found. It is perfectly possible that a relatively stable number actually hides a marked improvement. Again, that's a sort of non-obvious selection bias.

Add another curious component: in the January election at least some teams were ordered to abandon the observation because of rough cold conditions and snowfall at some point in the night ("drive before the driver gets too tired"), and return to their hotels. This time, with better weather, the observation probably was more sticky, and more teams stayed until the very end when some of the problems become really apparent. Again, this could have some impact when comparing the numbers.

Noting these counterintuitive impacts (some small, some big) on absolute numbers shouldn't serve to dismiss the observation effort, nor the attempt to quantify. Yes, no count should be bad, and training and everything else should remain as ambitious as possible. We're noting this primarily to contribute to a sophisticated use of the data, and again to underline the need for a revised observation methodology, which ideally emphasizes more sophisticated sampling.

Diaspora Internet Presence | Switzerland and Germany

One way of tracking how organised migrants abroad are is simple -- just check the web. During a less exciting conference presentation, we browsed how the people from the Caucasus represent themselves -- checking Germany and Switzerland, since these are less likely to offer a plethora of sites. As you might have guessed, Armenia stands out with the most organised webpresence. Let's look at what they are up to.

Armenien.am is very active, with a forum, and many events, And once you see that there is a "flirt area", the Armenian-Rhenish boat party will not really surprise you.


Certainly an active community!

In Switzerland, Hayastan.ch stands out. This is a Zürich group, young, with soccer games, volleyball, singing, an Armenian Summer Camp in Tessino, and a weekly language school. Knowing Switzerland well, I couldn't help noticing some very Helvetian traits, and not just in the fondue evenings. The website symbol combines the Zurich Churchtowers with Armenian colours



And then there is another Swiss group, too: more francophone, more political, with a lobbying component, for example asking Swiss election candidates for a detailed response on Armenian issues. Surely a balancing act for politicians, since there are Turkish voter groups as well.

You find them here. And again, some peculiar components: their major support the homeland project is... solar electricity.

Last stop, Armenien.de. A neat, professional site, based in Cologne, referring to local communities around churches, structured as incorporated associations. According to that site, there are 40.000 Armenians in Germany.

This isn't even exhaustive, just some snapshots. Next post: Georgian groups. They certainly are less visible. A Google search for "Zentralrat der Georgier" (roughly: "association of Georgians") returns:


No such Georgian hits! We are right back with the Armenian Central Council in Germany. It appears that in migration, the two cultures take very different directions in the level of their organization.

Ideally we'd like to measure that. Any creative suggestions how? (Number of mobile entries in migrants' mobile phones? Internet/Skype usage?)

Parliamentary Elections in Georgia | ODIHR Observation

With today's elections in Georgia, various themes come to mind. Certainly, elections have come a long way: by now, the Georgian government employs a series of highly qualified consultants, including Greenberg Quinlan Rosner of Clinton-fame, plus a Brussels-based PR firm, as well as working with experienced teams from the Baltics. This, then, is no longer the game of the 1990s, or 2003. Election observers know that they in turn will be observed, and maybe that's how it should be.

Note, also, the use of the Internet: so the United National Movement today is employing 150 minibuses to ferry voters around. And: they decided to put the number plates of these buses online. That doesn't make the move more popular with the opposition, but it's no longer the early-morning hush-hush thing of the past.


We're also currently working on a short paper arguing that OSCE's classical method of election observation needs to be overhauled. ODIHR, as OSCE's election observation arm is called, has an approach that has the feel of an undergraduate research project, and there is fairly little systemic thinking on how to do an observation well. While observers are briefed (often in tedious detail), there is no applied training on the minutiae of election observation. While there are legal, media, gender, minority analysts, CEC liaison, and security people there is no training officer.

In a good mission, the Long Term Observers will actually compensate for the institutional shortcomings. With bad LTOs (and having been on a fair number myself, it's noticeable how some dunderheads get recycled from mission to mission) it can be a farcical exercise.

Ultimately, research methods really matter: ODIHR (as OSCE's election observation arm is called) makes assertions about empirically verifiable facts, and this is precisely where social science methodology has come a long way.

Take this example from OSCE's Final Report on the Georgian Presidential Elections
Now, given that there were so many election observers out there (495 observers, that means almost 250 teams) a casual reader may assume that this is broadly representative: the count will have been bad in roughly 23% of stations throughout the country, right? Even if you do not draw this conclusion, test it out on friends or colleagues, and this is the assumption many will walk away with.

Now, as it ends up, that assumption may very well be mistaken. A team of election observers typically is visiting up to 10 polling stations on their observation day. They normally are instructed to pick a polling station in which they think "things will be bad" (politicized/ incompetent chairperson, some irregularities such as irreconcilable numbers during the day). As a result, there will be tremendous selection bias.

In other words, 23% of observers, untrained but looking hard, managed to find precincts in which counts were bad or very bad. Unfortunately, that number says little about what the percentage of precincts in the country is in which the count really was bad. It could be half that number, or even less (or more, given the lack of observer training!). An easy mistake to make, and just one example of what would need to be fixed in the reporting.

Time for ODIHR to undergo a rigorous external evaluation.

Creative Commons for the Caucasus! | A real opportunity

Many readers will already be aware of the concept of Creative Commons. The basic idea is to facilitate collaboration, interaction and people adding value to each other's online work. Creative Commons provides licenses for sharing easily, without giving up some of the author's basic rights. A great exposition of this entire concept is given by the founder of the entire idea, Lawrence Lessig, in an engaging TED talk (you didn't think that intellectual property rights could be that entertaining, did you?). See below.

Now that larger idea is extremely important in the South Caucasus as well. There is a lack of ideas, there's a lack of great materials for people to use, to teach, to read, to share, especially in the local languages. And conversely, there's little respect for authorship, and for the people that have created valuable content.

Introducing Creative Commons in the South Caucasus could be one step to alleviate this: not just by providing the licenses along the "build it and they'll come" expectation, but using the very process to advocate ideas of online interaction and sharing, and recreation.

And: this is precisely what Eurasia Partnership Foundation is about to do. They invite applications until the end of the month, hoping that some qualified groups will apply to port the licenses, and to popularize the concept. Hopefully, this will help to start the debate.

So for anyone interested in the web, or in Intellectual Property issues this really is a unique opportunity. Find a gang of like-minded people, apply, and get paid to popularize what you care about. Check the website of Eurasia Partnership Foundation for more detail. (The project is running in all the three countries, but I'm just linking the Georgian site.)

Here is the talk:

Caucasus Migration | US Immigration Services Annual Report for 2007

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently released its annual report for the fiscal year 2007 on immigrant and nonimmigrant visas issued by the US Foreign Service posts worldwide. The report also includes data for US visas issued under various categories for the years 2003-2007.

The report shows a general increase in the numbers of both US immigrant as well as non immigrant visas issued worldwide. Thus, from 2003-2007 the number of immigrant visas issued worldwide has increased by around 16% (from 364,768 in 2003 to 434,374 in 2007) and non-immigrant visas by 30.5% (from 4,481,632 in 2003 to 6,444,285 in 2007).

The picture is a bit different across the South Caucasus. Among the three South Caucasus countries Armenia has the highest number of US immigrant visas granted annually. Moreover, from 2003-2007 this number has increased by 35% (from 689 in 2003 to 1062 in 2007), reaching its peak in 2007. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, has the lowest and more or less consistent level of US immigrant visas granted every year, varying between 230 and 294.

According to the report all three South Caucasus countries are considered a source of immigrant orphans, with Armenia leading the chart. But ultimately, numbers are comparatively low: 4 in Georgia, 5 in Azerbaijan and 32 in Armenia. Curiously, 2003 saw many orphan adoptions: 128 in Georgia, 62 in Azerbaijan in and 43 in Armenia.

If you want to see the full report, check it out here.

Subjective Well-Being in South Caucasus

How do people in the South Caucasus assess their well-being? What specific factors influence subjective well-being (i.e. self-rating of well-being) in these countries? How similar are these factors across the three countries, and are there significant differences with other transitional societies?

Elvin Afandi (2007 Fellow, CRRC-Azerbaijan), examined these issues using data from CRRC's Data Initiative survey for the year 2006. DI's "How would you describe the current economic condition of your household?" question allowed assessing subjective well-being of respondents who had to choose from "very poor", "poor", "fair", "good" and "very good".

Overall in the region, responses were distributed almost equally between poor/very poor (47% of respondents) and fair (48% of respondents). Cross-country comparison, however, revealed that subjective well-being in Armenia was more positive with more respondents identifying their economic conditions as fair, good and very good and less people identifying their economic conditions as poor and very poor than in other countries of the region.

Elvin's study suggests that impact of consumption poverty, unemployment, and inefficiency of social protection system on subjective well-being is much stronger in South Caucasus than in other middle-income transitional countries such as Ukraine or Russia. This is explained by economic recession in South Caucasus being more prolonged and more dramatic than in other middle-income transitional countries.

Some correlations are similar across the region. For example, being divorced, separated, widowed, being unemployed, and working in agriculture correlates with low rate of subjective well-being. Elvin Afandi suggests paying special attention to the fact that low subjective well-being is strongly associated with having negative perception of the past and future welfare. This may imply low upward mobility and chronic poverty.

Some variables, however, are more significant in some countries than in others. For example, being migrant in Armenia and Georgia has more impact on subjective well-being than in Azerbaijan. Interestingly, the study finds no effect of ethnicity on subjective well-being. It means that low subjective well-being is related not to ethnicity but rather to the fact that person migrated from another place.

Living in urban and rural places is more significantly correlated with subjective well-being in Azerbaijan and Georgia than in Armenia. It might mean that more dramatic urban-rural gap exists in these countries compared to Armenia.

Interest in politics positively correlates with the increase in subjective well-being. Correlation between withdrawal from discussing politics and low subjective well-being is significant in Azerbaijan and not significant either in Georgia or in Armenia. This might suggest higher risks of social exclusion of the poor in Azerbaijan.

Contact CRRC if you want to get in touch with the Elvin Affandi.

Diversity Polling on the Caucasus | Ask500

Sometimes it's worth clicking on those Gmail links. "Ask 500" is a website in beta, the web version of a straw poll. Polling? Surveys? Obviously I wanted to know more. To say it up front: it's about as unrepresentative as you can get, since it assembles those that suffer from terminal curiosity.

Playing around with it and discovering that so far this still is a small community, I posted a question on people's feelings about the Caucasus. I wanted to know whether people have positive associations (mythical, attractive), or rather negative ones (messy, dangerous, uncomfortable). And then providing some options in between. I also wanted to see whether this question will go anywhere, or whether tabloid interests will prevail.

It certainly is an attractive interface for seeing where the votes are:


Also, the comments function is particularly useful, a sort of focus group of the electronically vociferous.

Ask500 could become incredibly powerful in doing a quick review of an idea, checking it for mistakes. Put more succinctly, where a diversity of viewpoints is more important than representativeness, this approach could be a BIG THING (maybe not THE, but certainly A). It's interesting to see how the founders explicitly invoke Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds as a starting point for their work.

What never ceases to amaze me is how technology DOES flatten the world. An instrument can still be under development in the US, and as long as you have an Internet connection, you already can take part. (Obviously, turning electronic into economic opportunity to alleviate poverty is a very different challenge. Unless you are a programmer.)

In the meantime, check Ask500 to see how responses to the Caucasus develop while the poll is open. Note that the Vote button is quite small: top right.