Author: Alexander Cooley / Publication Year: within 25 Years

Author:: Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw, and J.C. Sharman
Publication Date:: 01-2018
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Democracy
Institution:: National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:: A growing body of analysis has explored how kleptocrats systematically capture and loot their domestic state institutions, but scholars and policy makers have paid less attention to how globalization enables grand corruption, as well as the laundering of kleptocrats’ finances and reputations. Shell companies and new forms of international investment, such as luxury real-estate purchases, serve to launder the ill-gotten gains of kleptocrats and disimbed them from their country of origin. Critically, this normalization of “everyday kleptocracy” depends heavily on transnational professional intermediaries: Western public-relations agents, lobbyists and lawyers help to recast kleptocrats as internationally respected businesspeople and philanthropic cosmopolitans. The resulting web of relationships makes up a “transnational uncivil society,” which bends global-governance institutions to work in its favor.
Topic:: Corruption, Normalization, and Kleptocracy
Political Geography:: Global Focus

Author:: Alexander Cooley
Publication Date:: 11-2015
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:: Alexander Cooley places the current conflict in Ukraine within a wider context, comparing it to other “frozen” conflicts in the states that emerged from the detritus of the Soviet Union. Is the Ukraine crisis yet another manifestation of a familiar pattern in the post-Soviet states, or is it fundamentally different?
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Sovereignty, Governance, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:: Russia and Ukraine

Author:: Alexander Cooley
Publication Date:: 07-2015
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Democracy
Institution:: National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:: Over the past decade, the international backlash against liberal democracy has grown and gathered momentum. Authoritarians have experimented with and refined a number of new tools, practices, and institutions that are meant to shield their regimes from external criticism and to erode the norms that inform and underlie the liberal international political order. These global political changes and systemic shifts have produced new counternorms that privilege state security, civilizational diversity, and traditional values over liberal democracy. The effects of these changes are most visible in the narrower political space that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are facing, the shifting purposes that regional organizations are embracing, and the rising influence of non-Western powers as international patrons.
Topic:: Security, Authoritarianism, Democracy, Diversity, and NGOs
Political Geography:: Global Focus

Author:: Alexander Cooley and Lincoln Mitchell
Publication Date:: 06-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: World Policy Journal
Institution:: World Policy Institute
Abstract:: SUKHUMI—The land between Georgia and this breakaway region represents a tense coda to a short war and a tenuous peace, a tribute to the fragile nature of such territories. Here, the frontier post is considered an international border by the Abkhaz and is patrolled by Abkhaz troops. Russian forces are camped nearby. After Russia and Georgia's brief war in 2008, Moscow recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia's declarations of independence. Since then, Abkhazia and South Ossetia have, with the Kremlin's support, lobbied for others' recognition but have, for the most part, failed. The territories are internationally isolated and increasingly dependent on Russia for security, hence the Russian troops. A steady stream of tired residents from Gali, an ethnic region on the Abkhaz side of the checkpoint, cross this frontier with shopping bags filled with goods for trade. By an unfortunate confluence of geography and politics, they are caught in between.
Topic:: Security
Political Geography:: Russia and Moscow

Author:: Lincoln A. Mitchell and Alexander Cooley
Publication Date:: 10-2010
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Washington Quarterly
Institution:: Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:: The Russia—Georgia war of August 2008 had repercussions well beyond the South Caucasus. The war was the culmination of Western tensions with Russia over its influence in the post—Soviet space, while the fallout exposed divisions within the transatlantic community over how aggressively to confront Moscow after its invasion of undisputed Georgian territory and its permanent stationing of troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.1 The conflict also called into question Georgia's relationship with the United States, as well as U.S. credibility as a regional security partner in light of Washington's apparent inability either to restrain Tbilisi from launching an attack against Tskhinvali in August 2008 or to help its ally once the war began.2 Since the war, both the United States and Europe have provided significant financial support to help rebuild Georgia and have denounced the continued presence of Russian forces in the breakaway territories. The transatlantic community, however, has failed to develop a forward-looking strategy toward those territories.
Political Geography:: Russia, United States, Europe, and Moscow

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