Academic staff

Books

• Axford B, Browne V, Huggins R, Isaacs R, Politics: An Introduction (3rd ed.), Routledge (2018)
  ISBN: 9780415571906 eISBN: 9781315629346
  Abstract

  The eagerly awaited third edition of this highly respected and user-friendly text for introductory courses has been thoroughly updated to reflect the world today. Politics: An Introduction provides stimulating coverage of topics essential to the understanding of contemporary politics. It offers students necessary guidance on ways of studying and understanding politics, and illustration of the many different sites at which politics is construed and conducted. Ideal for students taking combined degrees at introductory level in politics and the social sciences, it emphasises the individual and social dimension of politics and covers theories and concepts in an accessible way. Fundamentally, it helps students see the political, and its relevance, in their lives.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  • a revised introduction considering ‘what is politics’ and how we understand and approach its study
  • clear and well-organised coverage of political theory, political behaviour, institutions and the policy process
  • carefully crafted in-text chapter features such as ‘consider this’ thought-provoking scenarios, ‘think points’, keyword definitions, chapter summaries, and exercises designed to enliven and extend the learning experience
  • stimulating, up-to-date examples and case studies from across the globe, such as ‘fake news’, online activism, the rise of populism, culture wars, ‘fertility tourism’ in India, hydropower in Cambodia, free speech in France, and personality politics in Turkmenistan
  • detailed consideration of democratisation, authoritarian regimes, direct democracy, gender critical perspectives, minority rights, global capitalism, social movements, radical political change, post-secularism, and challenges and changes brought by social media.

  Politics: An Introduction is a broad-ranging, accessible, and essential guide for all students studying, or beginning to study, politics.

  Website 
• Isaacs R, Frigerio A, Ed., Theorizing Central Asian Politics: The State, Ideology and Power, Palgrave MacMillian (2018)
  ISBN: 9783319973548 eISBN: 9783319973555
  Abstract

  This book brings together a series of innovative contributions which provide an eclectic view of how theorizing politics plays out in Central Asia. How are the concepts of governance, legitimacy, ideology, power, order, and the state framed in the region? How can we use the experiences of the Central Asian states to renovate political theorizing? In addressing these questions, the volume relies on the contributions of many young and local researchers, whose chapters are primed to address three key themes: exploring models of governance, revealing ideological justifications, and reframing state and order. Utilizing a range of single and comparative case studies from across the Central Asian space, this illuminating and original volume opens up a new space for political theorists, regional specialists and students of politics to begin reconsidering how we approach the theorization of regions of the world assumed to be on the periphery.

  
  

  Website 
• Isaacs R, Film and Identity in Kazakhstan: Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture in Central Asia, I.B. Tauris (2018)
  ISBN: 9781784538385
  Abstract Cinema and nationalism are two fundamentally modern phenomena, but how have films shaped our understanding of the creation -the 'imagining' - of Central-Asian nations? Here, Rico Isaacs uses cinema as an analytical lens to explore how the Kazakh national identity has been constructed and contested. Drawing on an analysis of Kazakh films from the last century, and featuring new interviews with directors and critics involved in the Central Asian film industry, his book traces the construction of nationalism within Kazakh cinema from the country's inception as a Soviet Republic to a modern independent nation.Isaacs identifies four narratives since the collapse of the Soviet Union: a warrior-like 'ethnic' narrative rooted in the 18th Century struggles against the Mongolian Oirat tribes; a 'civic' inspired narrative cemented in the Stalinist deportations of the 1930s and 40s; a religious narrative founded within the mystic and philosophical religion of Tengrism and the cult of the Sky God; and a socio-economic narrative which roots Kazakh nationhood and identity in contemporary social divisions, the lived day-to-day experiences of ordinary citizens and the struggles they face with authority. These last two tropes demonstrate how cinema has emerged as a site of dissent against the country's authoritarian regime under President Nazarbayev. Film and Identity in Kazakhstan advances our understanding of Kazakhstan and nationalism by demonstrating the multiple and inessential character of each, and illustrates the important role of cinema in contesting political power in the post-Soviet space.Website 
• Isaacs, R, Polese, A., Ed., Nation-Building and Identity in the Post-Soviet Space: New tools and approaches, Routledge (2016)
  ISBN: 9781472454768 eISBN: 9781315597386
  Abstract Nation-building as a process is never complete and issues related to identity, nation, state and regime-building are recurrent in the post-Soviet region. This comparative, inter-disciplinary volume explores how nation-building tools emerged and evolved over the last twenty years. Featuring in-depth case studies from countries throughout the post-Soviet space it compares various aspects of nation-building and identity formation projects. Approaching the issue from a variety of disciplines, and geographical areas, contributors illustrate chapter by chapter how different state and non-state actors utilise traditional instruments of nation-construction in new ways while also developing non-traditional tools and strategies to provide a contemporary account of how nation-formation efforts evolve and diverge.Website 
• Isaacs R, Party system formation in Kazakhstan: between formal and informal politics, Routledge (2011)
  ISBN: 9780415590235 eISBN: 9781136791086
  Abstract https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781136791086
  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asian states have developed liberal-constitutional formal institutions. However, at the same time, political phenomena in Central Asia are shaped by informal political behaviour and relations. This relationship is now a critical issue affecting democratization and regime consolidation processes in former Soviet Central Asia, and this book provides an account of the interactive and dynamic relationship between informal and formal politics through the case of party-system formation in Kazakhstan. Based on extensive interviews with political actors and a wide range of historical and contemporary documentary sources, the book utilises and develops neopatrimonialism as an analytical concept for studying post-Soviet authoritarian consolidation and failed democratisation. It illustrates how personalism of political office, patronage and patron-client networks and factional elite conflict have influenced and shaped the institutional constraints affecting party development, the type of emerging parties and parties' relationship with society. The case of Kazakhstan, however, also demonstrates how in the former Soviet space political parties emerge as central to the legitimization of informal political behavior, the structuring of factional competition and the consolidation of authoritarianism. The book represents an important contribution to the study of Central Asian Politics.Website 

Journal articles

• Bougdaeva S, Isaacs R, 'Nomads under arrest: The nation-building and nation-destroying of Kalmyk nomads in Russia'
  Communist and Post-Communist Studies 51 (4) (2018) pp.375-385
  ISSN: 0967-067X eISSN: 1873-6920
  Abstract

  Nomads are positioned outside of the modern conception of nations, which is based on a traditional or modern hierarchical model (Kuzio, 2001) which tends to “dehistoricize and essentialize tradition” (Chatterjee, 2010: 169). Using an analysis of the narrative construction of nomadic Kalmyk nationhood, particularly through historiography and culture, this article demonstrates that in spite of nation-destroying efforts from the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union, the Kalmyk nation has been flexible with reinventing cultural strategies in charting the nomadic national imaginary from Chinggis Khan to the Dalai Lama. It argues that nomadic nationhood contains a deeply imaginary response to nomads’ cultural and intellectual milieu which provided a way of freeing itself from Tsarist and Soviet modular narratives of national imagination, demonstrating how nomadic nationhood exists as a non-modular form of nationhood.
  

  Website 
• Isaacs R, 'The micro-politics of norm contestation between the OSCE and Kazakhstan: square pegs in round holes'
  Third World Quarterly 39 (9) (2017) pp.1831-1847
  ISSN: 0143-6597 eISSN: 1360-2241
  Abstract Norm contestation by local actors has emerged in recent years as an explanation for the failure of norm diffusion. This article contributes to the literature on norm contestation by analysing how norms diffused by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) pertaining to election observation and free and fair voting are re-constituted and contested by domestic actors in Kazakhstan. The study contributes to the idea of ‘constitutive localisation’ by emphasising a more fundamental level of disagreement beyond just congruence between the diffused norm and local beliefs; by demonstrating contestation can occur at a later stage in the norm diffusion cycle; by focusing on the micro-politics of contestation by local actors involved in the implementation of diffused norms and; by revealing how norm contestation is not necessarily a process of emancipatory politics, but a strategic act to serve authoritarian consolidation. Utilising a four-fold framework, the analysis illustrates how norms, while initially accepted by Kazakhstani authorities, are reconstituted through political discourse and/or practice creating the moment of contestation. While this contestation is instrumentalised by political elites for their own advantage, it also remains an important element of agency within a normative order in which they had little previous control over.
   
  Key Words: OSCE, Kazakhstan, Norm Contestation, Election Observation, Norm Diffusion, Constitutive Localisation
  Website 
• Isaacs R, Molnar A, 'Island in the Neo-liberal Stream: Energy Security and Soft Re-nationalisation in Hungary'
  Journal of Contemporary European Studies 25 (1) (2016) pp.107-126
  ISSN: 1478-2804 eISSN: 1478-2790
  Abstract  
  Since 2010, the Hungarian government has increased its stake in the country's energy sector at the expense of foreign-owned energy companies. This ‘soft re-nationalisation’ is driven by both exogenous and endogenous factors especially the country’s external dependence on gas imports, its previous commitment to a European model of energy liberalisation, public dissatisfaction with high energy prices and the emergence of an ‘illiberal state’. The case of Hungary’s ‘soft re-nationalisation’ yields two central findings. Firstly, conceptually there is a need to move away from just focusing on the radical re-nationalisation of energy in the form of resource nationalism, and instead understand re-nationalisation as a consisting of a broad spectrum of state interventions into the energy market. Secondly, Hungary’s recent ‘statist turn’ in the energy sector highlights inherent tensions within EU energy policy as it threatens attempts to establish a fully liberalised and marketised energy market across the continent. 
  Since 2010, the Hungarian government has increased its stake in the country's energy sector at the expense of foreign-owned energy companies. This ‘soft re-nationalisation’ is driven by both exogenous and endogenous factors especially the country’s external dependence on gas imports, its previous commitment to a European model of energy liberalisation, public dissatisfaction with high energy prices and the emergence of an ‘illiberal state’. The case of Hungary’s ‘soft re-nationalisation’ yields two central findings. Firstly, conceptually there is a need to move away from just focusing on the radical re-nationalisation of energy in the form of resource nationalism, and instead understand re-nationalisation as a consisting of a broad spectrum of state interventions into the energy market. Secondly, Hungary’s recent ‘statist turn’ in the energy sector highlights inherent tensions within EU energy policy as it threatens attempts to establish a fully liberalised and marketised energy market across the continent.
  Website 
• Isaacs R, 'Charismatic Routinization and Problems of Post-Charisma Succession in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan'
  Studies of Transition States and Societies 7 (1) (2015) pp.58-76
  ISSN: 1736-874X
  Abstract

  Using Weber’s concept of charismatic routinisation, this article analyses the dilemmas related to political succession and post-charismatic order in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. While the presidents of these three countries have drawn their authority from a combination of charismatic, legal-rational and traditional authority, they have relied most heavily on charisma in particular to sustain their rule. With the presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan aging and facing the question of political succession, the article provides an analysis of the problems associated with potential for post-charismatic succession in these states. It does so by drawing on three of Weber’s mechanisms for charismatic routinisation: designation, hereditary charisma, and charisma in offi ce. The analysis demonstrates that in these three cases, despite charisma only having two routes available to it, traditional and legal-rational, the mixture of legalrational, traditional and charismatic domination undermines the process of charismatic routinisation. Consequently, the article argues that political succession in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will most likely evolve into a reconstitution of charismatic leadership.

  Website 
• Isaacs R, 'Nomads, Warriors and Bureaucrats: Nation-Building and Film in post-Soviet Kazakhstan'
  Nationalities Papers 43 (3) (2015) pp.399-416
  ISSN: 0090-5992 eISSN: 1465-3923
  Abstract
  Nation-building is a process which is often contested, not just among different ethnicities within a nation-state, but also among the titular ethnic majority. This article explores the contested nature of the nation-building process in post-Soviet Kazakhstan through examining cinematic works. Utilizing a post-modern perspective which views nations and national identity as invented, imagined and ambivalent it identifies four discursive strands within recent post-Soviet Kazakh cinema pertaining to nationhood and national identity (ethno-centric, civic, religious and socioeconomic). Rather than viewing government-sponsored efforts of identity formation in cinema as a top-down process in which the regime transmits its version of nationhood and identity, the discursive strands revealed in this article illustrate there are varying understandings of what constitutes the nation and national identity in Kazakh cinematic works. Furthermore, the strand which focuses on the socioeconomic tensions of modern nation-building in Kazakhstan uncovers how film is used as a site for dissent and social critique of Kazakhstan’s modern political
  condition. What the article illuminates is how discourses related to nation-building can be both competing and complementary and that nation-building is a fluid and transgressive process in which among the titular majority there is no fixed unambiguous understanding of nationhood and national identity.
  Website 
• Isaacs R, Polese A, 'Between “imagined” and “real” nation-building: identities and nationhood in post-Soviet Central Asia'
  Nationalities Papers 43 (3) (2015) pp.371-382
  ISSN: 0090-5992 eISSN: 1465-3923
  Abstract
  Much of the existing literature on nation-building in Central Asia offers a statist topdown
  approach which focuses on how the nation and nationhood is “imagined” by
  political elites. In this special issue the contributors provide an analysis which seeks
  to explore the process of nation-building in Central Asia by addressing the other side
  of the state-society relationship. The case studies in this collection examine the “grey
  zone” between “imagined” and “real” differences between state-led policies and
  discourses related to nationhood and identity and how they are received by different
  audiences at different levels (regional, national and international). The authors bring
  to the fore the contested nature of nation-building in Central Asia as well as focusing
  on new or less conventional analytical tools for the study of nation-building such as
  cinema, construction projects and elections. This article provides the introduction to
  the special issue and lays out the contribution the articles make to the existing
  literature on nation-building in Central Asia. It also sets out the rationale and aims of
  the collection.
  Website 
• Isaacs R, 'Neopatrimonialism and beyond: reassessing the formal and informal in the study of Central Asian politics'
  Contemporary Politics 20 (2) (2014) pp.229-245
  ISSN: 1356-9775 eISSN: 1469-3631
  Abstract
  Neopatrimonialism has emerged as the central conceptual label applied by scholars to understand the politics of the Central Asian republics. Like the use of neopatrimonialism in other regional settings, this article argues that the concept has become susceptible to concept misinformation and stretching. Adopting a critical perspective, this article highlights three significant problems with the application of neopatrimonialism in the study of Central Asian politics: its appropriateness and operationalisation; the difficulty in ontologically and empirically untangling the formal and informal; and an inherent normativty in its application. While not advocating an abandonment of the concept, the article considers instead how it can be used better in conjunction with additional analytical approaches and/or concepts. The article proffers that a focus on either formal-institutional structures; discourses of power; and the concept of ‘multiple modernities’ would aid
  comprehension of the region and resolve the three issues highlighted in this work.
  Website 
• Isaacs R, Whitmore S, 'The limited agency and life-cycles of personalised dominant parties in the post-Soviet space: the cases of United Russia and Nur Otan'
  Democratization 21 (4) (2014) pp.699-721
  ISSN: 1351-0347 eISSN: 1743-890X
  Abstract
  Vladimir Putin’s United Russia and Nursultan Nazabayev’s Nur Otan represent a distinctive
  type of dominant party due to their personalist nature and dependence on their presidential 
  patrons. Such personalism deprives these parties of the agency to perform key roles in 
  authoritarian reproduction typically expected of dominant parties, such as resource 
  distribution, policy-making and mobilising mass support for the regime. Instead United 
  Russia and Nur Otan have contributed to authoritarian consolidation by securing the 
  president’s legislative agenda, stabilising elites to ensure their patron’s hold on power and 
  assisting in perpetuating a discourse around the national leader. However, because these 
  parties lack the agency to reproduce themselves, to entrench their position and to play more 
  than a supportive role in regime consolidation the life-span of such personalist dominant 
  parties is likely to be significantly shorter than that of dominant parties.
  Website 
• Isaacs R, 'Nur Otan, Informal Networks and the Countering of Elite Instability in Kazakhstan: Bringing the ‘Formal’ Back In'
  Europe-Asia Studies 65 (6) (2013) pp.1055-1079
  ISSN: 0966-8136
  Abstract

  As opposed to the current literature which argues that informal politics pervades formal institutions in Kazakhstan and Central Asia more widely, this article argues that Nur Otan, the political party of the President of Kazakhstan, acts as a formal institution to counter the instability generated by informal networks competing for access to political and economic resources. This is achieved by consolidating the political parties associated with these networks into Nur Otan and the synchronisation of the party and the state apparatus. However, the extent to which Nur Otan can provide this stabilising function in the long term is dependent upon regime dynamics.

  Website 
• Isaacs R, 'Elite Fragmentation and Pro-presidential Consolidation: Party Development, Type and Causality in Kazakhstan'
  Journal of East European and Asian Studies (2011)
  
• Isaacs R, ''Papa'- Nursultan Nazarbayev and the discourse of charismatic leadership and nation-building in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan. '
  Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 10 (3) (2010) pp.435-452
  ISSN: 1473-8481
  Abstract Taking a critical perspective on the Weberian concept of charisma this article examines elite and citizen discourse regarding the perceived charismatic leadership and nation-building achievements of the post-Soviet president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Using a number of ideal type features of charismatic leadership based on the typology developed by Roger Eatwell, the article argues that Nazarbayev's leadership does not fit neatly the concept of charisma. Rather, in this instance, Nazarbayev's perceived charismatic leadership as the father of the Kazakhstani nation, and the single politician capable of meeting the challenges of post-Soviet nation-building, is a constructed discursive force projected from above at the elite level, which resonates with public attitudes towards him at the societal level. Charisma represents a discursive mechanism that emphasises President Nazarbayev's centrality to the unity, prosperity, and stability of the nation. This charismatic discourse has aided Nazarbayev in consolidating his authoritarian regime and illustrates the existence of a distinct form of post-Soviet charisma.Website 
• Isaacs R, 'Informal politics and the uncertain context of transition: revisiting early stage non-democratic development in Kazakhstan'
  Democratization 17 (1) (2010) pp.1-25
  ISSN: 1351-0347 eISSN: 1743-890X
  Abstract This article examines the genesis and influence of informal politics on non-democratic outcomes in Central Asia. As opposed to current scholarship which explains the emergence of informal politics as a result of kinship-based cultural legacies, this work uses the broader analytical framework of neopatrimonialism to understand informal political phenomena while emphasizing the role of uncertainty and contingent actor choice in explaining its appearance. The article also assesses how informal political behaviour (patronage and patron-client relations) was used to consolidate authoritarianism. Using Kazakhstan's (1990-95) early transition period as a case study this article notes how three processes central to transition (institutional conflict, emerging pluralism, and electoral competition) elicited a degree of uncertainty which destabilized prior institutional equilibrium. The president of Kazakhstan applied informal forms of politics to manage this uncertainty to re-assert his power and consolidate his personal authoritarian rule at the expense of emerging democratic institutions. The article illustrates how the uncertain and contingent process of transition is instrumental to the emergence of informal politics and the durability of authoritarianism in Kazakhstan, and that informal political relations and behaviour are important to understanding non-democratic and democratic paths in former Soviet states.Website 
• Isaacs R, 'The EU Rule of Law Initiative in Central Asia'
  Policy Brief (EU Central Asia Monitoring) 9 (2009)
  Abstract
  
• Isaacs R, 'Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia / by Kathleen Collins.'
  Totalitarismus und Demokratie 5 (2008) pp.129-132
  ISSN: 1612-9008
  
• Isaacs R, 'Managing dissent, limiting risk and consolidating power: The processes and results of constitutional reform in Kazakhstan'
  Central Asia and the Caucasus (2008)
  
• Isaacs R, 'The Parliamentary Election in Kazakhstan, August 2007'
  Electoral Studies 27 (2) (2008) pp.381-385
  ISSN: 0261-3794 eISSN: 1873-6890
  Website 

Book chapters

• Boulay S, Isaacs R, 'Legitimacy and Legitimation in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan' in Isaacs R, Frigerio A (ed.), Theorizing Central Asian Politics The State, Ideology and Power, Palgrave MacMillian (2018)
  ISBN: 978-3-319-97354-8 eISBN: 978-3-319-97355-5
  Abstract

  This chapter brings to bear what Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan can explain with regard to the concepts of legitimacy and legitimation in authoritarianism. It argues how legitimation should be understood as a series of claims by the regime regarding their appropriateness to rule which are then transformed through social action which then produces legitimacy. The chapter challenges contemporary theorisation of legitimation in the post-Soviet space, which disaggregates the process too far, failing to address the overlapping and interdependent nature of legitimising claims. Instead, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan demonstrate how authoritarian regimes can rely on a combination of charismatic, traditional and legal-rational claims to evoke legitimation, but that ultimately, we can never truly know the extent to which broader society believes in the legitimacy of these regimes.

  Website 
• Isaacs R, Frigerio A, 'Political Theory and Central Asia' in Isaacs R, Frigerio A (ed.), Theorizing Central Asian Politics: The State, Ideology and Power, Palgrave MacMillian (2018)
  ISBN: 9783319973548 eISBN: 9783319973555
  Abstract

  This chapter introduces the reader to the main idea of the book: to move beyond Central Asia as a field reserved to regional studies and towards the opportunities that it provides for theorizing politics. After a review of the scholarly debates and the main literature, it makes the case for a new take on generating theories of the political starting from this region. It concludes by introducing the analyses of the authors chapter by chapter along the three sections of the book: models of governance and power, revealing ideological justifications and reframing the state and order.

  Website 
• Isaacs R, Polese A, '„Realne” i „wyobrażone” w budowaniu narodu. Tożsamość narodowa w postradzieckiej Azji Centralnej//Between "imagined" and "real" nation-building: Identities and nationhood in post-Soviet Central Asia, and beyond' in Nartsiss Shukuralieva (ed.), Azja Centralna. Tożsamość, naród, polityka", Zakład Wydawniczy//Central Asia: Identity, nation, politics, Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos (2018)
  ISBN: 9788376884882
  
• Isaacs R, 'Cinema and Nation-Building: Kazakhstan' in Isaacs, R, Polese, A. (ed.), Nation-Building and Identity in the post-Soviet Space: New tools and approaches, Routledge (2016)
  ISBN: 9781472454768 eISBN: 9781315597386
  
• Isaacs, R, Polese, A., '(Re)imagining or Imagined Nation-Building' in Isaacs, R, Polese, A. (ed.), Nation-Building and Identity in the Post-Soviet Space: New Tools and Approaches, Routledge (2016)
  ISBN: 9781472454768 eISBN: 9781315597386
  
• Isaacs, R, Polese, A., 'Nation-Building in the post-Soviet Space' in Isaacs, R, Polese, A. (ed.), Nation-Building and Identity in the post-Soviet Space: New tools and approaches, Routledge (2016)
  ISBN: 1472454766 eISBN: 978-1472454768
  
• Isaacs R, 'Kazakhstan' in Abel Polese and Donnacha O'Beachain (ed.), The Colour Revolutions in the Former Soviet Republics: Successes and Failures, Routledge (2010)
  ISBN: 9780415625470 eISBN: 9781136951978
  Abstract Is president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev’s authority under threat as a result of the popular uprisings that occurred between 2003 and 2005 in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan? Will the colour revolutions inspire Kazakh opposition elites to mobilize popular discontent to overthrow Nazarbayev? Or conversely will the disproportionate actions of the authorities in Kazakhstan only breed more discontent?
  https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781136951978/chapters/10.4324%2F9780203848951-18
  Website