Forbes: Azerbaijan is absolutely not a model for political reform

By Forbes, author Mark Adomanis

Matthew Bryza, the former United States ambassador to Azerbaijan, wrote a stunning article the other day. I say “stunning” because it’s exceedingly rare to see a country with a human rights record as unremittingly bad as Azerbaijan’s feted for its efforts at “reform.” There’s a lot to digest, but by far the most noteworthy passage comes right at the end:

“Thinking strategically about Azerbaijan doesn’t mean sacrificing Western values. Struggling reformers in Iran can look for inspiration to neighboring Azerbaijan, also a Shiite-majority country but one in which a 1,400 year-old Jewish community enjoys strong state support and where women gained the vote a year earlier than their American sisters. The United States and its European allies would be wise not to write off Azerbaijan, and instead pursue the full range of interests – and values – they share with this small, but strategically significant country”.

I’m not sure how to put this politely so I’ll just come out and say it: the idea that “struggling reformers” would look to Azerbaijan for inspiration is completely unsupportable. Azerbaijan is widely regarded as one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2012 democracy index (free registration required) gave Russia a less than stellar score of 3.74, which earned it 122nd place out of 167 measured countries. Its hardly a novel observation, but few democratic activists want to imitate Russia’s government.

However, Azerbaijan, according to Bryza a country that should serve as an inspiration to beleaguered reformers, was ranked even more harshly than Russia. The EIU put it in 139th place with a score of 3.15. Just to put those scores in a little more context, Russia’s score actually placed it within striking distance of several “hybrid” regimes, while Azerbaijan’s placed it close to China. Under-performing Russia in terms of democratic accountability isn’t easy to do, but Azerbaijan managed to do it.

And it’s not just the Economist Intelligence Unit. Freedom House also ranks Azerbaijan as “not free” giving it a score equal to Russia’s. The Polity IV research project, which provides an annual, cross-national, time-series on democratic and autocratic patterns of authority, also ranks Azerbaijan as being substantially more autocratic and repressive than Russia (in their ranking Russia is a highly flawed democracy, while Azerbaijan is an outright autocracy). Basically, every meaningful attempt to provide a quantitative measure of the extent to which a government is open and representative shows that Azerbaijan is at least as bad as Russia and likely quite a bit worse.

What Bryza is essentially saying is that “Iranian reformers should look for inspiration to a country with a political system that is even less representative than Russia’s. “That, of course, is ridiculous. I favor some degree of engagement with Russia, but I would never dream of citing is as a shining example of political reform because…well because it very obviously isn’t. If I ever did say “oppressed dissidents from country X should try to make their country’s political system more like Russia’s!” I would be mocked and it would be entirely justified.

Should the West still engage with Azerbaijan? Sure. I think the West should “engage” with virtually every country.* But we should not pretend that by engaging with a thoroughly unrepresentative and authoritarian government that we are doing anything to promote our values. We’re not. The Azeri government does not share the West’s values, which is precisely why it is consistently ranked by a wide range of independent institutions as one of the world’s most closed political systems.

There is always a conflict between interests and values, and engagement with countries like Azerbaijan makes this trade-off particularly stark. So go ahead and work with the Azerbaijanis all you want, but don’t have any illusions about whom you are working with.

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