Yury V. Bosin

 

 

 

Research

As a researcher, I seem to have a dual identity. I started my career doing qualitative area studies focusing on Central Eurasia with a special concentration on such issues as internal and cross-border nationality problems, multilateralism and economic integration, energy politics, and Afghanistan's reconstruction. Over the last five years, I have become increasingly interested in incorporating quantitative methods in my research to tackle broader theoretical questions. As a result, my most recent work uses statistical analysis for examining the connections between foreign aid and democratization in the Former Soviet Union. Ideally, I would like to combine my knowledge of the Central Eurasian region with quantitative modeling in an attempt to explain why the U.S. democracy assistance over the last decades has succeeded in some cases but failed in others.

 

 

Recent publications

 

NEW!   Supporting Democracy in the Former Soviet Union:
Why the Impact of U.S. Assistance Has Been Below Expectations

International Studies Quarterly, Volume 56, Issue 2, June 2012, 405-412.

 

Recent studies find that U.S. democracy assistance has helped build new democratic regimes across the globe. Nearly two decades of democracy assistance in the former Soviet Union (FSU), however, appear to have had a negligible impact on democracy in the region. This research uses a time series cross sectional statistical analysis to establish that U.S. democracy assistance efforts in the FSU have failed to enhance democracy in the region. The incentives that FSU leaders had to misrepresent their commitment to democracy and the U.S.'s understandable misperception of these leaders' actions help to explain this failure. Read more

 

 

NEW!   What Happens After The U.S. Leaves Afghanistan?

Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, Vol.14, No.3, 8 February 2012.

 

In June 2011, President Obama announced the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from Afghanistan. Another 23,000 are scheduled to pull out by next summer, and all American troops will return home by 2014. Although the U.S. has a clear intention to end the war, some pessimistic voices warn that it will be a critical blow to U.S. security and a retreat in the war on terror. However, a sober analysis shows that the U.S. still has a range of strategic options that would protect major U.S. interests in post-American Afghanistan and minimize the negative consequences of the withdrawal. Read more

 

 

NEW!   Winning with Warlords in Afghanistan

Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.22, Issue 4, October 2011, 603-618. (co-authored with Mark Peceny)

 

A fundamental contradiction has been built into America’s intervention in Afghanistan since the first days of the war in 2001. On the one hand, US policymakers have viewed the promotion of liberal democracy, economic development, and strong centralized state institutions as essential to achieve victory over the long term. On the other hand, however, the US has relied on local warlords to win its battles against the Taliban from the first days of the intervention. The Obama administration’s tortured policy review reflects the intractable dilemmas involved in trying to build a modern democratic state while relying on local warlords as crucial allies in the war against the Taliban. Read more

 

 

International Encyclopedia on Revolution and Protest

Wiley and Blackwell, 2009.

Read more

• Encyclopedia Home Page
• Afghanistan, 1978 Revolution and Islamic Civil War
• Afghanistan, resistance to 19th-c. British invasion
• Bacha-i Sakkao's movement
• Bolotnikov's rebellion, 1606-1607
• Bulavin's rebellion, 1707-1708
• Durrani empire, popular protests, 1747-1823
• Moscow fire and protest, 1547
• Pugachev's rebellion, 1773-1775
• Razin's rebellion, 1670-1671
• Roshaniya movement and the Khan rebellion
• Russia, cholera riots of 1830-1831
• Russia, temperance movement, 1858-1860
• Taliban, 1996-2007

 

Afghanistan Reconstruction in Regional Perspective

Central Asian Survey, Vol.28, No. 3, September 2009, 275-287. (co-authored with Gregory Gleason and Reuel Hanks)

 

The reconstruction of Afghanistan is in part dependent upon the reintegration of Afghanistan into the international community. Reintegration, in turn, is dependent upon Afghanistan's trans-border infrastructure of communication, trade, transport, water, power and investment. Accordingly, increased regional economic cooperation is a key element of Afghanistan's reconstruction. This article analyses regional economic cooperation in the South and Central Asian region in terms of logic, institutions, actors, and expectations. The article argues in favour of inclusiveness to enlarge the number of beneficiaries of economic benefits of regional economic cooperation while avoiding the pitfalls of risky strategies of faulty collective action. Read more

 

 

Afghan Experience with International Assistance

Beyond Reconstruction in Afghanistan: Lessons From Development Experience, edited by John D. Montgomery and Dennis A. Rondinelli, Palgrave Macmillan: NY, 2004.

 

Afghanistan has undergone three periods of foreign assistance, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century (when the British Empire offered regular subsidies to the Afghan Emirs, designed to entice cooperation from otherwise intractable local leaders), leading to the Cold War period (after the British Empire had waned and the new Great Powers - the United States and the Soviet Union - indulged in nearly 30 years of economic competition in Afghanistan), and continuing to a third period, which began during the civil war in Afghanistan in 1979 and extended through the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. The chapter summarizes a century-and-a-half of international assistance given to Afghanistan, with a goal of helping donors avoid some of its pitfalls. Read more

 

 

Principle and Purpose in Afghanistan's Consolidation

From Failing State to Functioning State: Pathways to Democratic Transformation in War-Torn Countries, edited by Sabine Collmer, Lit Verlag Dr.W.Hopf: Berlin 2009 (co-authored with Gregory Gleason)

 

A conundrum lies at the heart of the normalization of Afghanistan: economic development cannot take place without an increase in security and security cannot be improved and sustained without the success of economic development. While the strategic purpose of achieving stability in Afghanistan is clear; the question is whether stabilization based on encouraging the antagonists to be part of Coalition policy would undermine the principle of democratic normalization. Bearing in mind the conflict between principle and purpose, this chapter analyzes the role of regional cooperation in facilitating democratic consolidation in Afghanistan.Read more