Securing Personal Safety in the Caucasus | CRRC Data

Who secures personal safety in the South Caucasus? CRRC DI has an answer to this question and a surprising answer at that. We asked around 8000 households in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to evaluate how well criminal leaders, friends, relatives, media, neighbors, NGOs, Ombudsmen, police, private security agencies and Prosecutor’s office secure personal safety. For now let’s just focus on the three components: the Ombudsmen, police and the criminal leaders.

In Armenia, ironically, criminal leaders have top positions in the chart of groups/institutions that effectively secure personal safety of the population with 22% of the respondents evaluating them positively. Criminal leaders are not far from the police; moreover, while a similar percentage of respondents (22.1% vs. 22.9%) finds Ombudsmen and criminal leaders effective in securing personal safety, more respondents actually find Ombudsmen ineffective, by comparison with criminal leaders (52.3% vs. 47.1%).

How does the situation look in the neighboring countries? In Georgia, the percent of those who positively evaluate how criminal leaders secure personal safety (arguably relatively high) is around 13%; it would be interesting to compare these numbers with the data prior to Saakashvili reforms. (We actually have some data from 2004 in a different file, so let us know if you are interested in the comparison!) In Azerbaijan, only 7.2% assess criminal leaders effective in securing personal safety against 87.5% of those who find them ineffective.

Among the three South Caucasus countries Armenia shows the lowest level of trust in the police, while the highest level of trust being observed in Azerbaijan – almost 60%. Trust in the police in Georgia is not very high considering the fact that it is seen as one of the main successes of the post-revolution government. From our data we can see that the trust in police had decreased after the murder case of Sandro Girgvliani in 2006, but it is going up again.

CRRC DI allows exploring this topic further by looking at other components such as how relatives, friends or the Prosecutor’s office secure personal safety. More comparisons (age, settlement type, education, and so on) can be done thanks to the rich demographic bloc. Time comparison is also possible, since we have some data starting 2004. The datasets are available at CRRC website.

Caucasus Currencies against the US Dollar

How have Caucasus currencies developed against the dollar? This question is not entirely trivial, since significant parts of the local economy are dollarised. Some colleagues, for example, have their salaries denominated in dollars.


As the above chart shows, the Armenian currency appreciated quite sharply against the dollar. The other currencies also appreciated, but remained a little more stable. How to interpret this? We turn to EBRD's 2008 Transition Report.

With Azerbaijan, the report tells us that in "an attempt to slow imported inflation and reduce the impact of the weaker dollar on domestic inflation, the NBA [National Bank of Azerbaijan] switched the targeted currency from the US dollar (effective peg) to a currency basket that currently comprises 70% US dollars and 30% euros." (p. 101)

Georgia, the Transition Report notes, has also pegged and defended its currency, trying to keep it stable; as a result "international reserves fell from 1.5 billion USD to 1.04 billion USD at end-September 2008" (p. 129). The EBRD report does not note anything on Armenian exchange rates, except for a continuing consumer price inflation of just below 12%, annually (August 2008).

Over the next few months, exchange rates are going to be one of the issues to watch. Large fluctuations could make life more difficult. In Azerbaijan, the EBRD suggests that "real exchange rate appreciation (through either nominal depreciation or higher inflation, or both) is inevitable. A tighter fiscal policy will be necessary to control inflation of the medium-term." (p. 101)

And on Georgia: "Given the still high level of dollarisation in the banking sector (more than 60% of lending is in foreign currency), a possible depreciation of the currency would affect the quality of banks' portfolios as the repayment capacity of unhedged corporates [sic] and retail clients weakens." (p. 128)

The Armenian economy seems less dollarised, but, as the report notes, its real estate boom was heavily dependent on remittances. As those decrease, one would expect some impact on the currency as well.

Social Capital, Civic Engagement and Local Self- Government in Azerbaijan

An article entitled “Social Capital, Civic Engagement and the Performance of Local Self- Government in Azerbaijan” by Rafail Hasanov, CRRC 2007 Research Fellowship recipient from Azerbaijan, was published in Nationalities Papers.

The research addresses two questions: what is the role of social capital in civic engagement in the municipalities of three regions of Azerbaijan and how are the norms and networks of civic engagement linked to the quality of public life and performance of local government.

The major finding of the research is that while the legislation offers opportunities for the independence of institutions of local government at all levels, in reality, municipalities are subordinate to executive authority and operate on the basis of an uncertain system of laws and rules, resulting in their limited authority, influence and responsibilities.

Another interesting conclusion is that municipalities are more closely linked with citizens in rural areas, where smaller and less dense communities are typical. However, many citizens still mistrust this relatively new local institution. Moreover, the overall involvement of citizens in all sorts of associations and participation in joint NGO-municipality projects, which serve as the basis for functional local government, is low.

Fair and transparent elections, merit-based personnel selection and expanding municipalities' financial resources are the areas that would need the most improvement in Azerbaijan to ensure responsible and effective local self-government, according to the author.

As a way to increase the efficiency of municipalities, the study recommends regular reporting to the population about the work that has been completed by municipalities, frequent meetings with the population and responsiveness to people’s needs, budgetary transparency and increased staff competence. It is also necessary to gradually replace the currently prevailing vertical networks of civil participation with the horizontal form of interaction in communities.

Social Capital, Civic Engagement And The Performance

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

For more information, check out the research paper of Rafail Hasanov, or the journal article.

Christian Welzel from World Value Survey visits CRRC

Christian Welzel, Professor at Jacobs University in Bremen and Vice President of the World Values Survey (WVS), held a lecture on his findings at the Tbilisi State University on the 23rd of January. The World Values Survey has conducted five waves of surveys from 1981 to 2007. In total, this has given them coverage of 90 % of the world’s population and representative national data for 97 societies. The data of WVS gives a general position on values for surveyed societies, indicates the direction of trends and illustrates their subsequent impact on social, political and economic life.

Here are some interesting points of the lecture:

• Data from the Global Value Surveys contradict the assertion of an ongoing global convergence of values/ideas. While data tend in the same “emancipatory” direction in all global regions, they do so parallely. Consequently, regional differences in values do neither decrease nor increase.
• Happiness has been increasing steadily since 1981 in the world (amongst 45 of 52 surveyed countries). The only societies that have experienced regression in this respect were the post-socialist countries during the 90’s. The incentives for enhancing happiness are, according to Welzel, increasing levels of democratization, tolerance and economic development.
• Secular values, encompassing variables such as levels of inter-ethnic tolerance and gender equality, are generally increasing in the world. However, a few countries are experiencing notable regression, amongst which Russia and Turkey stands out.
• Levels of national pride are generally lower in countries that have suffered losses in wars (Japan) or have gone through stages of major disintegration (Russia).
  
  

The lecture included a presentation of an updated “global culture map” (similar to the previous Inglehart-Welzel map, shown below). Christian Welzel explained the two sets of dimensions that make out the axis’s that creates an illustration of how the general worldviews between cultural regions differ. The South Caucasian countries are juxtaposed in the “Ex Communist” cultural sphere. In spite of all their differences, the South Caucasus countries are tightly packed together (note that this is mid-90’s data though, and that Welzel's newest map is a little different).

The Traditional vs. Secular-rational values axis reflects importance of religious values, i.e. on issues such as deference to authority, divorce, abortion etcetera. The Survival vs. Self-expression axis is, other than a scale for economic development, an indication on how much individuals in a given society can concentrate on self expression values that gives priority to issues, such as, tolerance, gender equality and decision-making in economic and political life.

As regards the World Value Surveys data for the South Caucasus, one can not track changing trends in the region since it has only been included in one of the wave of surveys (1994-1999). However, good news: the Eurasia Partnership Foundation (CRRC’s mothership) has sponsored data to be collected in Georgia in 2008. We will let you know as soon as the data is available.

A journalist's account of the lecture is here. Want to investigate the works of the World Value Surveys, access other graphs or conduct you own online analysis? Click here.

Heritage Foundation | Index of Economic Freedom 2008

(We today noticed that we forgot to post this earlier -- apologies!)

The Heritage Foundation provides visitors with the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom, which covers 162 countries across 10 specific freedoms such as trade freedom, business freedom, investment freedom, and property rights. The 2008 Index provides an even clearer picture of economic freedom by using data-driven equations which allows countries to be graded between scores of 0 and 100.

According to the 2008 assessment, Azerbaijan’s economy is 55.3% free, which makes it 107^th in the world. If we look at the distribution, Azerbaijan falls into Mostly Unfree category.

Azerbaijan has considerable challenges in Investment Freedom, Financial Freedom, Property Rights and Freedom from Corruption. Its overall score is insignificantly different (0.5% points) than the last year. Azerbaijan is ranked 18^th out of 30 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, and its overall score is below the world average.

For more info on Azerbaijan, click _here.

Georgia is in a much better situation than Azerbaijan, having a 69.2% free economy, which makes it the world’s 32^nd freest economy. Its overall score is 0.1% point lower than last year. Similar to Azerbaijan, two categories remain significantly below the world average: Property Rights and Freedom from Corruption. Property Rights may reflect the 2006 and 2007 situation, in which old (illegally, as the government alleged) privatizations were rescinded. As for corruption, is the data really plausible? According to the CRRC Data Initiative (DI) 2007, only 1% of the respondents in Georgia say they had to pay a bribe in the previous year.

Moreover, Georgia is ranked 18^th out of 41 counties in the European Region, and its overall score is equal to the regional average. For more info on Georgia, click here.

From the South Caucasus countries Armenia has the best score. It ranks 28^th with 70.3% freedom, just narrowly beating Georgia.

But Armenia, like Georgia, scores way below the world average in Property rights and Freedom from Corruption categories. In Georgia's case, we are not convinced by the accuracy of the score on Freedom from Corruption. Note a further post on this issue, for more detail.

To view scores and rankings for any country, or to find out which are the top ten countries, along with detailed data and background analysis, click here.

Remittances in the Caucasus: EBRD Releases Results

EBRD has released the results of its study on remittances in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova. A
unique aspect of the study in Post-Soviet territory is that it not only surveys migrants in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, but it also carried out interviews with migrants themselves in Russia.
Many results, at first glance replicate findings from other studies as well as the Global Development Network study we are currently working on (stay tuned for more).

• Remittance money sent is generally only spent on basic needs.
• Migrants to Russia tend to be younger and male.
• Most migrants use the banking sector to transfer money (though many don’t have bank accounts) – but there is an extensive courier trade for remittances.
• Few migrants are interested in business or economic development in their countries of origin.
  

These findings have significant policy implications, not least because it shows that Caucasus migration varies from, say, Latin American patterns. Your comments on possible policy implications are welcome.

Bendixen & Associates, renowned for their polling of Latinos in the United States and the across Spanish-speaking world, carried out the study. Undoubtedly, B&A won the bid as the result of their expertise in carrying out remittance studies in Latin America. However, some facts of the study are curious and we would like to find out more than the scant information on methodology available online (particularly compared to EBRD’s amazingly documented Life in Transition Survey).

1. There is no mention of the sampling frame used in any of the countries. What strategy did B&A use to find households? Census lists are extremely outdated in both Georgia and Azerbaijan.
2. The report mentions a wide variety of interview languages employed for the study in Azerbaijan – including Tat and Farsi. B&A says, however, that all interviews were conducted in Georgian in Georgia. We find this surprising, since non-Russian speaking minorities in Azerbaijan are a very small percentage of the population and linguistically well integrated. This is not the case in Georgia were sizable ethnically homogeneous communities do not speak the titular language (Georgian). As the study specifically mentions the particular status of Armenian families in Samtskhe-Javekheti, it would be interesting to find out how the interviewers communicated with these households.
   
3. The Azerbaijan sample provides statistics based on regions. However, four regions out of eleven appear to be omitted. Guba-Khachmaz, which is in Northern Azerbaijan; Naxcivan, Azerbaijan’s exclave, which borders Turkey, and Kalbajar-Lachin and Dagliq Qarabag, which are both currently partially occupied – though there are regions under Azerbaijani control. If there was no sampling done in these regions, it should be stated, as the sample may then have certain biases in the national remitances picture. Naxcivan has distinct migration patterns with Turkey and many non-ethnic Azerbaijanis live in Guba-Khachmaz.
   
4. On the follow up study in Russia, B&A’s explanation of the sampling frame is also opaque. It states in one of the reports posted on the Internet that it got its information from the Federal State Statistics Service and that this information was updated. In another report, it claims that the data on households was gleaned from household surveys. Either way they report the following numbers: 903,000 Azerbaijanis, 344,000 Moldovans and 283,000 Georgians. There may be a confounding factors in these counterintutive numbers. Many migrants, as the study notes, are already citizens of Russia. Yet many of those who migrate to Russia and now have citizenship were ethnic Russians, who themselves may have been born in Russia and migrated to the Caucasus during Soviet times. Furthermore, many ethnic Armenians from Azerbaijan fled not to Armenia but to Russia after the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Many of these ethnic Russian and Armenian families may have fewer (or no) connections with their former country of residence and this may yield very different dynamics. Again, some information on this would also be interesting.

We hope that the EBRD will release more information soon and even the data. So stay tuned for further updates.

Index of Economic Freedom: a critical time lag?

Yesterday the Heritage Foundation released the Index of Economic Freedom 2009. The Index is published annually by the Heritage Foundation together with the Wall Street Journal for over 150 countries of the world (183 in 2009).

But the Index may be misleading, as the analysis of one of the index components reveals that some data that goes into it seem to be outdated. The index is calculated as an average of 10 indicators that measure the level of the economic freedom of a country. The indicators include: business, trade, fiscal, monetary, investment, financial and labor freedoms, as well as government size, property rights, and freedom from corruption.

To measure the last indicator, the Heritage Foundation uses the Corruption Perception Index produced annually by Transparency International. Data sources for CPI are surveys of business people and expert assessments. The authors of the Index of Economic Freedom take CPI and multiply it by 10, since the other 9 indicators that make up the Index are measured on a scale from 0 to 100.

One would expect that the Index published early in the year is based on the data from the previous year. We can expect that the 2009 index reflects the 2008 situation, even though calling this “a 2009 index” is misleading. However, the data goes back even further than 2008.

Compare the Index of Economic Freedom’s Freedom from Corruption score and CPI, which is used as the basis for the former, for Azerbaijan:
The CPI 2007 methodology explains that CPI combines assessments from the last two years – 2007 and 2006. This means that the Freedom from Corruption indicator in the 2009 Index of Economic Freedom is based on the figures of 2007 and 2006.

The authors of the Index use June 30 as the cut-off date for the inclusion of any information in the next year’s report. This means that all information that became available after June 30, 2008 was not included in the 2009 Index. That’s why the most recent CPI data, released by Transparency International in September 2008, did not go into the 2009 Index.

The Index of Economic Freedom is widely accepted as an annual assessment of a country’s performance. As such, it stirs discussion within society, and usually country’s previous scores are used for comparison. The FAQ section of the homepage for the Index states that “some factors are based on historical information." But what is the chance that an Azeri journalist or an ordinary citizen, who learns about the country’s Index for a given year, read the FAQ?

Also, one may ask how consistent and representative a mix of historical and current information (some Index components are based on the recent figures) is?

The credibility of international assessments like this and their impact on the governments, media and civil society across the world would only increase if they are consistent and based on an updated analysis.

Cell Phone Data | Figures for the South Caucasus

Cell phones seem to have become indispensable in the West. The number of cell phones in the UK, for instance, has already exceeded the number of its people. Throughout the world, the total amount of cell phone owners increases every year.

So how does this trend look in the South Caucasus? It appears that more than half the adult population across the three countries already owns a mobile phone. Furthermore, the South Caucasus is one of the top growing global regions for usage of mobile phones since the percentage of cell phone users has grown faster than in the nominally largest growing markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries).

The CRRC Data Initiative (DI) indicates that the number of mobile phones per household in Azerbaijan reached 76 % in 2007, the highest percentage in the region. Armenia followed up on second place with 70 % cell phones per household and Georgia came on third place with 61 %.
As for the distribution across the country, there are (predictably) more phones in the capitals than in the countryside, as shown below in the chart.

However, recent growth has been particularly pronounced in rural areas. This has decreased the cell phone ownership gap between rural and urban areas. For example, rural Azerbaijan went from having cell phones in 32 % of households in 2006 to 64 % in 2007, a doubling of numbers in a single year. Rural Armenia increased from 47 % in 2006 to 66 % in 2007, an increase of nearly 20 % in a year, and rural Georgia reached the 50 % level in 2007 from having had 38 % the previous year, which still is a 12 % increase.

Although you could do the maths, CRRC household data does not provide direct figures on the total number of cell phones. This statistic is offered by the International Telecommunication Union (click on “Statistics”). With slightly older data, it shows Armenia as the country with the highest density of cell phones in the South Caucasus with 62,5 cell phones per 100 inhabitants (41,8 in 2006). Georgia follows up on second place with 59,1 cell phones per 100 inhabitants (38,4 in 2006) followed by Azerbaijan with 53,3 cell phones per 100 inhabitants (39,2 in 2006). Their data is based on an annual questionnaire sent to government agencies responsible for telecommunication. Caveat emptor (it may, for example, include inactive phones). It might be interesting to reconcile the numbers from various sources.

For a refreshing anthropological view on mobile phone usage in developing countries, in the New Scientist, click here.

Want to investigate this topic further? Check out our datasets!

Freedom in the Caucasus | Freedom House 2008 Summary

Freedom House has just released its Freedom in the World report, for the year 2008. The report quantifies political rights and civil liberties. Civil liberties reflect four components: freedom of expression, associational rights, rule of law, and individual rights. Political rights focuses on three main components: electoral process, political pluralism and functioning of government. These indicators are then taken together to determine whether a country is free, partly free, or not free.

It's a mixed picture for the Caucasus. Armenia and Georgia are seen as Partially Free. In both countries civil liberties are rated as 4, on a scale where 1 means most free, and 7 least free. On political rights, Georgia also gets a score of 4. Armenia, by contrast, gets a score of 6 on political rights, down from the previous 5. This is unhappy company: 6 puts Armenia on a level with Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan but also Congo. Azerbaijan, on political rights also gets a score of 6, just one up from the worst possible level of seven (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia). By comparison, even Afghanistan gets 5, and Turkey gets 3.


On civil liberties, Azerbaijan is also ranked as 5. That puts it squarely in the Not Free category, with the same scores as Russia. The overall map captures the context.

Painfully, Georgia has been removed from the list of electoral democracies. Yet this maybe does not mark quite the change that some people suggest: previously, Georgia was trading on the hopes that elections would work just fine. 2008 provided a hard test, and there was some (ultimately) unsurprising reverting back to old forms of managing things.

A more detailed look shows that Georgia already received a significant downgrade last year, when its 2007 performance brought it down from 3 to a score of 4 on both political rights and civil liberties. Time, maybe, for the government to do its homework in building institutional checks and balances (as they have said they would) but also for the opposition to get off their soapbox to make themselves relevant to the political process.

Generally, when looking at the methodology, we found it broadly plausible. Sure, we could always quibble with details (are political rights and civil liberties always as correlated as Freedom House suggests?) but it's a reasonable way of making the state of freedom comparable across the world.

Check out the website for detailed maps, a good essay summary, some (horrible) pie charts. You want to know how Freedom House rated General Pinochet in the 1970s? Check the comprehensive Excel sheet giving you the scores over time.

Georgian Perspectives on Aid | Survey Data

How do Georgians look at the influx of foreign aid? And how do they interpret what is coming in? How should it be spent? These are questions that Transparency International wanted to find out about last November. We added the questions to an ongoing survey. The results, in the meantime, have also been published in the Caucasus Analytical Digest, a new online publication that summarizes key findings, and combines them with short analysis pieces.


If the image is too small, click on it to increase it in size.


Interested in more? Check out the Caucasus Analytical Digest, and, for the thoughtful and engaging Transparency International report go directly to their website.

Reading in Georgia | PIRLS International Student Achievement in Reading

In 2006 Georgia participated for the first time in the PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) assessment. PIRLS began in 2001 and looks at literacy trends and reading education for 4th graders in 40 different countries around the world (Armenia and Azerbaijan did not participate) and is administered every five years.

In terms of Reading Achievement, Georgia -- with an average of 471 -- fell below the PIRLS international average of 500. However it did score better than some post-communist countries like Macedonia (442). But Georgia's giant neighbor to the north fared much better. The highest performing country assessed in Reading Achievement was Russia with 565 followed closely by Hong Kong SAR (564), Singapore (558), Luxembourg (557) and several Canadian provinces (the Canadian provinces have traditionally taken the exam as separate entities).

Interestingly, the scores and rankings of the countries of the former Soviet Union varied greatly. While these countries had the same education system during Soviet times their current systems produced very different results in the PIRLS assessment. It would be interesting to add several Central Asian countries to the mix as well.



Acrros the board, girls had higher reading achievement than boys in every country and province in the assessment and Georgia was no different. In Georgia girls outscored boys by 17 points, 480 to 463. The international average difference between the genders was also a 17 point difference. On the theme of gender, 100% of the 4th grade reading teachers surveyed in Georgia were female.

PIRLS presents a wide variety of data related to literacy and reading achievement. According to PIRLS, a large percentage of Georgian students, 33%, come from homes that have less than 10 children’s books. And very few have access to technology; only 10% of students go to schools where there are computers available for student usage and only 3% have internet access in their schools.

On a positive note, Georgian teachers were some of the most educated of the countries surveyed with 98% having university degrees -- though what that degree means of course is open to interpretation. Interestingly, despite the low wages, Georgian teachers are among the most satisfied with their career, with 83% reporting that they had a “high level of career satisfaction.” Only Norway reported higher levels of teacher career satisfaction than Georgia. Perhaps this has to do with the ability of teachers to earn significant incomes from outside of school tutoring? It would be interesting to find out more.

PIRLS provides an interesting insight into literacy in Georgia and the Georgian education system. However, unlike in some other countries where the assessment was given in multiple languages in order to assess all 4th grade students, in Georgia only Georgian-speaking students were tested. This leaves out a significant population of Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian schools. Most likely including these schools would have changed the results.

For the full PIRLS report click here.

Math and Science in the South Caucasus | TIMSS 2007

TIMSS, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, has released their report for 2007. TIMSS is conducted every four years and it reports on mathematics and science education for 4th and 8th graders in 59 countries. In 2007 Georgia participated for the first time in the study. Armenia participated again in 2007 (you can read our previous blog posting about Armenia in TIMSS 2003 here).

So how did the countries of the South Caucuses fare? Armenia and Georgia fell below the international average in all subjects and grades except for one group. Armenian 4th graders performed just at the international average (500) in mathematics.



Armenia did much better than Georgia in both math and science, but both of the South Caucasus countries were outscored by several former Soviet and Eastern European countries. In 4th grade math scores for example; Kazakhstan (549) and Russian (544) ranked 4th and 5th overall. Several former Soviet and Eastern European countries performed at or above the international average including: Latvia (537), Lithuania (530), Hungary (510), Slovenia (502) and Armenia (500). Below the international average were the Slovak Republic (496), the Czech Republic (486), Ukraine (469) and Georgia (438).

Georgia was outperformed by all other participating former Soviet Countries and Eastern European countries in both math and science for 4th and 8th graders. What should be done? Reader input and discussion is most welcome. How much the ongoing reforms have showed up in the test results in the Georgian case would be worth of further study.

On a positive note, Armenia is doing better than it was four years ago in all categories and at all grade levels.

Armenia


The full 2007 TIMSS report is available here.

Freedom House Report | Democracy in the Caucasus

In June Freedom House released its 2008 annual Nations in Transit Report covering January 1, 2007 through December 31, 2007. The Nations in Transit Report covers the democratic performance of the former Soviet Union, the former Soviet satellite states and the former Yugoslavia.

Let’s take a look at how the nations of the South Caucasus have been depicted this year. Georgia has worsened on several of the indexes this year. This is not surprising given the events surrounding November 7, 2007 (the police violently disrupting protestors, the institution of a nine-day state of emergency and the state taking control of one media channel). Note the counter-intuitive grades: 1 represents the best level of democratic performance and 7, the worst.

Georgia Country Report 2008



After two years of slight improvements in performance, Georgia slid backwards in three categories: Electoral Process, Independent Media and National Democratic Governance. Overall Georgia (4.79) fares far worse in the rankings than the Baltic States (Estonia 1.93, Latvia 2.07 and Lithuania 2.25) and the Eastern European States (i.e. Czech Republic 2.14). Georgia is also worse than the former Yugoslavia (i.e. Macedonia 3.86 and Bosnia 4.11).

In comparison to the other non-Baltic, former Soviet countries however, Georgia is only bested in the rankings by Ukraine (overall 4.25). And while Georgia’s ranking for corruption (5.00) is impressively the best among the non-Baltic former Soviet states it still clearly struggles with both local and national democratic governance according to this rating system.

The non-Baltic former Soviet states rankings have deteriorated towards further authoritarianism and curtailment of media freedoms and the South Caucasus nations are no strangers to these trends.

Armenia and Azerbaijan’s rankings remained exactly the same this year as last year with the former receiving an overall 5.21 ranking and the latter a high, 6.0, putting it in the company of Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

A separate question remains as to how we can compare these ratings over time. Georgia interestingly has a better overall rating in 1999 than now and the corruption levels after spiking in 2004 have now returned to the level of 1999. Perhaps current assessments are based on more skepticism than in the past?

For more information and the complete reports for each country see Nations in Transit 2008

Exploring Azerbaijani Views on Alternative Energy

We have written previously about the World Public Opinion project of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The project has recently released interesting data on energy issues based on the poll conducted in 21 countries. According to the WorldPublicOpinion.org publication, the majority of Azerbaijanis favor alternative energy development. 64% (compared to 77% average of 21 world countries) think that solar and wind power should be promoted more strongly in the country. Increasing the energy efficiency of buildings is also favored, while opinions split on the expansion of coal/oil-fired and nuclear power plants.

At the same time, Azerbaijanis are not quite prepared to pay a higher price for cleaner energy: while 48% of respondents (69% average of 21 countries) favor requiring utilities to use more alternative energy, even if this would result in higher energy prices, 43% are against it. This could be explained by the fact that energy prices are already quite high and often beyond affordability for the poorest population groups in Azerbaijan.

The population is even less prepared to pay more for goods produced with cleaner energy: in Azerbaijan, 55% of respondents would oppose spending more on such efficiently produced products, while 38% would favor it. Among the 21 countries surveyed, this view puts Azerbaijan in a minority with only 4 other countries. Maybe this is not surprising, given that annual inflation already is running high in the country.

The overall attitude towards an extra charge for appliances and cars that are not energy efficient is slightly less negative. As in all other surveyed countries, most Azerbaijanis believe that a major shift to alternative energy would save money in the long run. Explore the survey results at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/

Weak State Institutions | Weak Social Capital?

What's the balance sheet of the Rose Revolution so far? There is agreement that there has been tremendous progress in some fields. The economy has grown, street-level corruption has evaporated, and in many other instances the state functions for the people.

However, it's also clear that state institutions remain weak. This general analysis (some progress, some failings) is borne out by the data we have collected. Often the failure to develop trusted state institutions is seen as a top-down failing, as the government not having done enough to put developments on track.

At the same time, there is also distinct civil society weakness -- not so much as a complaint about NGOs, but simply low levels of social capital. This weakness makes it hard to set up functioning and robust institutions in the first place.

The slides below illustrate this problem quite well.

Civil Society Data

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: crrc georgia)

With the trash picture we want to say that maybe the first step should be to focus on simpler local challenges, to illustrate to people that working together can have positive results. (If you want to see our comments to the slides, to get the full narrative, open the presentation in Slideshare, and click on the Notes, bottom right.)

Much of it ends up going back to Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in democratization in the region. There is a bigger debate that we are not having yet, or at least not on a high-enough level.

CRRC-Azerbaijan Past Events Summary

If you didn’t have time or are just too far away to attend a lecture at CRRC Azerbaijan, you can now get information about our past events from our main website.

We publish short stories about the lectures, presentations and seminars held at CRRC. You can also find event pictures and presentation slides there. Recent talks addressed topics such as public health, labor exploitation, and economic policy. To find out more, visit the Past Events section of our website.

How can you keep track, straight from your browser? Install an
RSS feed for the past CRRC events. That way the information comes directly to you!

Not yet signed up to our mailing lists on ongoing events? Oh dear. Please write to us at emin+signup [at-sign, written out to avoid spam] crrc.az.

And if you are interested in particular events, or want to present your ongoing research, let us know. We are extremely keen to support your work and research.

EBRD Life in Transition Survey | worth analyzing!

One of the most impressive recent survey efforts, measuring attitudes about different countries in transition, has been undertaken by EBRD. Called Life in Transition Survey (LiTS), this is an attempt to look at how 29 'transitioning' countries have developed following 1989. The survey tracks "public attitudes, well-being, and the impact of economic and political change".

LiTS is both encouraging and sobering at the same time. What is encouraging is that overall people, in spite of many hardships, do not want a return to centralized, authoritarian systems. At the same time, incomplete transition has left many people equivocal with regards to market systems. EBRD also notes that social capital remains in short supply.

The basic idea is set out succinctly in this EBRD presentation.

Life in Transition 2

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ebrd economy)

(Note that we really think such presentations should be available under a Creative Commons license, since technically we are not sure whether we're allowed to share this, although it's available online.)

But beyond this, LiTS offers much more, and much more detail on the Caucasus. Let's look at some of the findings in more detail.

1. Satisfaction with life is relatively low in Armenia, and the old and poor tend to be most dissatisfied. Only 20% of those aged over 50 are satisfied with their lives. And among the poor, the situation is even worse: only 16% of those with lower income are satisfied with their lives. The situation is similar in Georgia, where only 12% of those aged 50-64 are satisfied with their life. By contrast, satisfaction with the economic and political situation is relatively strong in Azerbaijan, particularly among the 50- 64 age group. This seems to tally with what we saw in our own 2007 Data Initiative (although interesting to compare and contrast with Elvin Effendi's work).
2. In Armenia support for democracy and a market economy is weak, with just one in four favoring a combination of the two. In Georgia, there are high levels of support for democracy, but less for a market economy, with those aged over 65 most strongly opposed to both (over 50%). In Azerbaijan, support for democracy and a market economy is high, with the middle-aged the most supportive. However, there also is little interest in the political and economic system, with four out of ten believing that the type of political/economic system does not matter.
3. Azerbaijanis' trust in public institutions, especially in the presidency, government and the political parties is among the highest in the region. By contrast, trust in public institutions is very low in Armenia. The armed forces is the only public institution in Armenia that enjoys public trust.
4. Georgians report a decline of corruption in the country and the frequency of “irregular payments” to the public officials is significantly lower than elsewhere in the CIS regions. “Irregular payments”, especially in the healthcare and education spheres, remain relatively high both in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
5. In all three South Caucasus countries people surveyed are more optimistic about the future of their children. The optimism is significantly higher in Georgia, where almost 70% of those surveyed believe that their children’s lives will be better than their own.

Separately, we are really impressed by this entire effort. It is a genuine public good. EBRD is frank about discussing shortcomings and challenges in the societies (and therefore note that the views are those of the Office of the Chief Economist, not necessarily of the entire Bank). This is incredibly refreshing in an environment where blandness prevails. The data set is publicly accessible, there's detailed documentation about questionnaire, fieldwork, methodology. And most of the material is available online.

The full printed report (soon in our libraries, if you find it too expensive) is written so well that it makes engaging bedtime reading. Our only huge regret is that these discussions seem not to have been carried into the relevant societies. If any donor is short of creative ideas, surely this is a way to go: let's get this data studied and analyzed locally, and let's get the discussions onto TV. (If anyone needs help with the dataset, let us know, or come to our offices.)

Iakobashvili on the Current State of the Conflict

I attended State Minister Teimuraz Iakobashvili’s talk held at the Institute for European Studies at TSU on November 14. Overall, the talk was the first talk in Georgia I have seen where the majority of people who attended were Georgian students. Despite the fact that the audience was overwhelmingly Georgian, Minister Iakobashivili spoke entirely in English. Additionally, the Minister was very generous with his time and engaged in an extensive Q&A session with students who also asked questions only in English

Iakobashvili’s main points (in note format) are as follows

1. Russia is in a state of decay. This decay will take time, but things are bad in Russia. They lost political and economic ground and the war revealed Russia’s military weakness. According to Iakobashvili.

From a military perspective

• Over 2,000 Russian soldiers were killed
• The 60 number quotes by Russians were only from Yamadayev’s troops
• Georgia destroyed Khrulyev’s column included 30/35 armored vehicles each carrying at least 8 people for a minimum of 240 dead from this column alone
• Russia suffered major hardware losses including: 17 airplane, 1 strategic bomber, 3 helicopters
• Russian soldiers are starving in Akhalgori and have resorted to raiding local Ossetians
  

From an economic perspective

• Gas prices have led to major budget shortfalls in Russia
• Europe will not ultimately be reliant on Russian gas
• No liquefied natural gas terminal and no ports for them in Russia
• China can get gas from Central Asia
  

From a political perspective

• Demographic tides are promoting separatism
• Only Moscow, St. Petersburg and Muslim dominated parts of Russia are growing. Muslim areas in Russia are demonstrating more ethnic homogeneity and anti-Russian sentiment
• High birth rates in Muslim Russia are leading to more unemployment and dissatisfaction
• 15% of Russian conscripts from the North Caucasus—many refusing to eat pork and stationed in Siberia
• Ingushetia has all signs of civil war
• Ossetians and particularly Abkhaz are angry at Russia
• Russia has upset Abkhaz political dominance by either 1) Installing a Russian second in command 0r 2) Directly taking over certain operations
  

2. Russia is angry now and was angry before and this is particularly dangerous for Georgia in the coming winter months

Russia was angry before because Georgia’s strategy of “soft power was working”

• Sanakoyev and Upper Kodori were successes
• “Boney M, swimming pools and cinemas” were a success
  

Russia is angry now because of all the bad results of the war

• This makes Russia very dangerous in the short term

3. Georgia’s strategy going forward – “Crisis gives you opportunity”

Build bridges to Abkhaz and Ossetians

• Georgia has a mission to save Abkhaz and Ossetians from Russian domination
  

Georgia is not a member of NATO and doesn’t have the “goddamn plan” MAP

• But MAP was only created recently under specific circumstances and should not be for Georgia
• A special GAP or specific technical goals should be given to Georgia – it should be a political decision
• Better than NATO, however, would be two American brigades in Georgia
• Georgia should “fight when the fight makes sense” – Georgia should not argue with the EU resuming talks with Russia – but should seek to influence the process
  

Q & A and Other issues

Q: Why didn’t the Georgian Government heed the European Commission’s recommendations about Upper Kodori and South Ossetia?

A: The EU is a “status quo” organization. “We would have to abandon our people” if Georgia listened to them.

Q: What about Georgia and Georgia’s future image and what about Swiss inquiry?

A: Russia saw they were getting beat in the press. Iakobashvili has a list of PR agencies Russia has engaged in. Russia allowed the NYT to swallow a story from a guy who no longer works for the OSCE. Russia is also influencing press freedom abroad. Berlusconi has censored debate in Italy.

Georgia should work hard to build relations with Obama’s foreign policy team

As a result of the war, the level of awareness about Georgia has significantly increased.

Q: Does government have scenarios, even worse case scenarios?

A: Yes. The government learns quickly. Reservist system needs to change. The war showed MANAGEMENT problems. The reservists were not the problem. The war showed us “who is worth what”

Q: What about the Armenians in Abkhazia. Who do they support?

A: They leave the politics to the Abkhaz, though the status quo has been good to them, since they generally live in the north of Abkhazia. 30 or 31 out of 35 members of Abkhaz parliament are ethnic Abkhaz. This is called “apartheid.”

Q: What about the EU Monitors?

A: It would be better if they were armed and in Tskhinvali, But they are much better than the OSCE or UN, because they are free from Russian influence. UN cannot help solve the problem.

Q: What about the Geneva negotiations?

A: Georgia expects 3 countries (US, Russia, Georgia) and three int’l organizations (EU, UN, OSCE). They will not accept SO or Abkhazia. Russia can have whatever technical experts they want on their team. But there should be parity, so if Kokoity is attending, so should Sanakoyev.

Q What is with the UN?

A: UNOMIG was asked to leave Kodori. To justify this, they issued a “ridiculous report.”
UN will not play a significant role politically because of Russia, but they have been very helpful on the humanitarian front.

Migration Impact Research in Georgia | Update

As you may recall, we are conducting migration research in Georgia, together with the International School of Economics in Tbilisi (ISET). Here is an update on this larger, Global Development Network-funded project, from a recent GDN Newsletter.

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'Development on the Move' gains global exposure
Representatives of the ‘Development on the Move’ project management team from GDN and ippr shared their research and its methodology at the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), attended by over 200 international experts and stakeholders in Manila, Philippines from October 27 - 30 ,2008.

'Development on the Move' was recognized as an innovative and ambitious cross-country research effort to measure migration's impacts and create new analytical tools. The conference participants were provided with a summary report of the early findings from the Jamaica pilot as well as a description of the project.

Meanwhile, the project's country studies are continuing successfully. Approximately 3,000 Colombian and Georgian households have been screened to participate in a national household survey on migration and will shortly provide valuable data on this topic. The surveys in Fiji, Ghana, Macedonia and Vietnam are now completed. The analysis will start in the upcoming weeks and the teams are already looking toward the Development on the Move project workshop in Kuwait, February 1- 2 2009, in conjunction with the GDN Tenth Annual Conference.

For more information on 'Development on the Move', please visit: http://www.gdnet.org/migration

For more information on the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GMFD), go to:
http://www.gfmd2008.org/

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In their last newsletter, GDN also highlighted the ongoing work over the summer. Here, directly from their newsletter:

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Development on the Move: Deeper into the field
Do you live in Colombia or Georgia?

If you do, you may receive a visit from a survey fieldworker for the Development on the Move project, wanting to ask migration related questions.

During the entire month of September, research teams located in Colombia, Georgia, Ghana and Macedonia have been working hard to prepare themselves for the fieldwork. Planning has required the teams to make arrangements with their respective National Statistics Office to access national data on migration/immigration, define a sampling strategy, produce a questionnaire and hire interviewers.

Today, approximately six thousand Fijians, Ghanaians, Macedonians and Vietnamese are familiar with our questionnaire and have agreed to contribute to the project by providing valuable data on migration.

Despite the recent political crisis, the team in Georgia has managed to keep the project going. The Development on the Move management team would like to take the opportunity to express its esteem and support to the survey group in Georgia.

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A little self-advertisement, maybe, but I also wanted to thank my colleagues for truly exceptional work, under trying circumstances. Are you interested in this migration work? Send us an email, so that we can keep you in the loop.

World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index | a few surprises

Indices are engaging and instructive, but some really baffle us. The World Economic Forum (WEF), the organisation that organises the annual high-profile Davos meetings, has come up with a gender index, and the Caucasus is featured. The index is intended to measure how the world is closing the gender gap in education, health, and political and economic participation. In principle, this is a great idea, since there are significant challenges and discrepancies (as our data itself shows).

So how does the Caucasus do? Azerbaijan does best, ranking 61, followed by Armenia at rank 78, and Georgia at 82. Surprising, no? Arguably a lot of data (including ours) would suggest exactly the reverse order.

Well, as it turns out the Caucasus says more about the index than the index says about the Caucasus. Let's look more closely. So in which neighborhood is Azerbaijan ranked? Well, it is following Hungary, but ahead of Ukraine, Slovak Republic, Luxembourg, Italy, the Czech Republic, Romania and also Greece. Armenia and Georgia are grouped with Ghana, Suriname, Bolivia, Malawi and Malta. Without even looking at the data, I suspect that female childhood literacy is way ahead in the Caucasus compared with that peer group, and arguably this should be weighed more heavily.

So where could the Caucasus turn to learn how to do it better? Well, according to the report, the Caucasus could start by emulating Mongolia (40), Kyrgyzstan (41), Kazakhstan (45) or even Uzbekistan (55). All of these do much better than the countries of the Caucasus (and, remember, better than many EU countries, too).

Let's look below the hood, to find out what's going on here. Four sub-indices assemble to create the full gender index. Economic Participation, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment. They are meant to measure equality of distribution within the country (not against an external benchmark).

Now looking at Azerbaijan, what happens is that two of the indicators under Economic Participation are missing, but this does not seem to weigh against Azerbaijan's score. So where does Azerbaijan end up on Economic Participation? World rank 4, just missing bronze in the Gender Equality Olympics, even ahead of overall champion Norway.

Azerbaijan Country Profile

Uzbekistan? Same story, ranking 11 worldwide on equality of economic participation. Again, see the missing lines of data.

Uzbekistan Country Profile

Other data does not even stand up to a basic sniff test. Health and Survival? Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan get perfect scores, giving them highest rank (with several other countries). Now maybe they ARE doing better than Georgia ranked at 127 for Health and Survival, or Azerbaijan (129). But does anyone believe that Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan (or Tajikistan, at 55) do better than Netherlands at 72, or Germany at 57? Equality of distribution may be a nice idea, but what precisely do we end up measuring here? The equality of shared misery is not a meaningful guide to discussion or policy.

So it appears that the ENTIRE rankings that the World Economic Forum suggest are based on a hodgepodge of incomplete data that doesn't get balanced out.

This is a real shame. First, gender indeed is an incredibly important issue and one cannot talk enough about it. Bad quality rankings undermine the cause, rather than supporting it. Secondly, these misconstrued rankings obscure that there could be more nuance in the discussion, which the actual country reports could provide (if, that is, they are to be trusted at all). Unfortunately, Armenia is missing from the country reports.

Or did I get this wrong? Check it out yourself, and stay tuned, we will write to the WEF to find out.