Securitization and Democracy in Eurasia: Transformation and Development in the OSCE Region, edited by Anja Mihr, Paolo Sorbello, and Brigitte Weiffen. Springer, Cham. 2023. XVII, 411 pp. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16659-4.

Abstract

This book is a comparative study of securitization and democracy in Eurasia in the context of transformation and development in the OSCE region. In various chapters of the book, special attention is paid to the most important general condition for the success of democratization, which is the guarantor of the political stability of the countries of Eurasia, involving the reform of society while maintaining the ability of public institutions to manage the transitional country. Globalization and the transition to an innovative type of development, a deep qualitative shift in the life of modern society, in its structures and mechanisms of functioning clearly indicate the need for a large-scale breakthrough in the methods of political management. The conceptual rethinking of democracy in the OSCE region is also stimulated by international processes that do not fit into the framework of the currently existing unified liberal concepts. Nothing yet supports the conclusion that sooner or later all the countries of Eurasia will adopt liberal values in the form in which they have been formed in the Western world.

The main task of the authors of this study was to analyze the process of democratization of the Eurasian society, which has a complex dialectical character, that is, a constant balancing between stability and development is necessary. This causes the alternation of democratic tendencies, that is, tendencies of liberalization, emancipation of the political, economic and cultural spheres with tendencies to strengthen the influence of state power structures on the development of the Eurasian society.

The authors of various topics compare the current stage in the development of democracy, which has significant shortcomings, crises of political identity, parliamentarism, the electoral system, etc. This, in turn, leads to the need to concentrate volitional and power efforts in a strictly defined direction in order to resolve the problems and contradictions that have developed in the Eurasian society. Thus, etatization is both an instrument of regulation and a mechanism for self-preservation of the Eurasian society, a guarantor of its further development, ensuring the stability of the political system and contributing to the consolidation of disparate public interests and political forces.