Donnacha Ó Beacháin's research while affiliated with Dublin City University and other places

... In the Japarov's constitution project the system of local kurultais was headed with the People's Kurultai resembling the Supreme Soviet of the Kyrgyz SSR. Although the latter had legislative powers, which were not provided for the former, this difference does not seem significant, since in the Soviet political practice the Supreme Soviets of the national republics did not have their own voice and followed the course of the Communist party [68]. The more important is that reform looks like the transition of power from the parliament which symbolizes 'the elite' to the People's Kurultai resembling 'the people's democracy' of the Soviet times with an emphasis on its direct, majority character (it does not matter if it was actually a democracy or not). ...

... Turkmenistan is notably one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world, but small cosmetic changes were made to the electoral system in 2017 to allow multiple parties to nominate presidential candidates. Despite the façade of moving towards democratic principles, all of the rivals of the incumbent heaped praise on the leader's remarkable economic and political success (Polese et al., 2017). How have leaders Saparmurat Niyazov (1985-2006), Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (2007 and his son Serdar Berdymukhamedov maintained power over the country? ...

... Indeed, inherited from the Soviet period, it is a highly industrialised and external-trade-oriented economy, exporting steel, electric energy, cement, machinery, textiles, and alcoholic beverages, and importing means of their production (e.g. natural gas and scrap metal) and foodstuffs (Ó Beacháin, Comai, and Tsurtsumia-Zurabashvili 2016). ...

... The latter one references a Soviet-era term for the actions conducted by Soviet security services such as KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoj bezopasnosti, Committee for State Security,) by means of media manipulation and various degrees of violence (Johnson 2018). Most scholars contend that "hybrid war" is not new or unique to Russia (Galeotti 2016;Renz 2016;Polese et al. 2016) and should not lead to panic over YouTube cartoons about girls and bears 2 that can somehow indoctrinate its audience to love Putin (Galeotti 2017). While cyber warfare has been viewed in Clausewitzian terms of critical security infrastructure strikes (Rid 2012), information warfare or its more Russia-specific designations such as "hybrid war" and "active measures," common among Kremlin critical journalists, had had much less coverage until 2007. ...

... Between the two conflicts, the Russian military intervention in Georgia in August 2008 (when the Georgian president decided to use his new NATO-built military to force the reintegration of secessionist territories), and economic boycotts and cyber-attacks against new EU member states, with which Russia was in increasing political disagreement. All these conflicts were influenced by Russia's determination that further Western encroachment into what Moscow viewed as its legitimate sphere of influence had to be stopped and reversed (Kanet 2010a;Polese and Beacháin 2011;Papert 2014;Putin 2007). ...

... With regards to the study of de-facto states that are of concern in this book, recent research by has emphasised the distinctive characteristics of the regimes consolidated in these entities. This contribution is part of an important but underdeveloped strand of research concerned with the dynamics of de-facto states in the post-Soviet space that has accounted for the various features of electoral processes in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Nagorno Karabakh (Beacháin, 2015). ...

... I did not, for example, include the possibility of foreign influences as they manifested themselves in various forms and degrees in the previous revolutions. On the foreign influences in previous revolutions, see ÓBeacháin, D., & Polese, A. (2008). American boots and Russian vodka: external factors in the colour revolutions of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. ...

... Therefore, scholarship is concerned with determinants of Georgia's pro-Western foreign policy. The main strand of literature, informed with constructivist approaches, focuses on so-called small groups of decision-makers and their ideas, values, perceptions, and identities (Davtyan 2021;German 2015;Gvalia et al. 2013;Kakachia and Minesashvili 2015;Kakachia, Minesashvili, and Kakhishvili 2018;Kolstø and Rusetskii 2012;Minesashvili 2021;Naskidashvili and Kakhishvili 2016;Ó Beacháin and Coene 2014). Another strand in the literature, informed with neoclassical realism, focuses more on structural factors, such as perceived relative power capabilities in the international context (Oskanian 2016), and factors such as elite cohesion and state capacity (Gvalia, Lebanidze, and Siroky 2019). ...

... Furman's imitation democracy concept and Ó Beacháin and Kevlihan's imagined democracy concept are instrumental for explaining the ability of Central Asian political regimes to mimic democratic institutions and practices without actually applying them. Donnacha Ó Beacháin and Rob Kevlihan (2015) addressed the coordination and co-optation strategies that Central Asian nondemocratic polities use to mimic democracy in the eyes of the international community and the part of the domestic population, who care about democracy. ...

... In Kazakhstan, top-down policy guidelines are flexible, fluid, and context-dependent (Daminov 2020;Ó Beacháin and Kevlihan 2013;Rees and Williams 2017). The promotion of Kazakh as the sole state language in Kazakhstan accompanies the continuing wide usage of Russian within and outside of the official domain. ...