What has been identified as, according to the relevant literature, the relationship between natural resources and conflict? In what ways are natural resources used to trigger conflict and instability? Who are the main players and actors in resource conflicts? To address these questions, this article critically reviews the main theoretical and empirical works on conflict, natural resources, abundancy and scarcity. In doing so, the article aims to update the existing discussion with the latest literatures, which is more skeptical about the relationship between natural resources and conflict. Constructively, the main objective of this review is to explain that in spite the diverse arguments on show; there is a systematic shortcoming in the existing literature. In doing so the article illustrates persistent research shortcomings and difficulties in the theoretical and empirical arguments that have been put forward so far.

Using insights from classical functionalism, this article analyses the complex relationship between the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea and the Caspian Environment Programme (CEP). The article pursues three objectives. First, it shows how shared ecological issues challenged individual littoral states and brought their respective governments under the CEP umbrella in 1998. Second, it shows how key actors (UNEP, UNDP, GEF, and World Bankbesides states) are involved in shaping the politics of the Caspian Sea region and how their preferences, both political and economic, and networks affect the capacity, opportunity and will of governments (e.g., ministries, parliaments and presidents) to cooperate. Third, it explains the link between low environmental politics and the uncertain legal status of the Caspian Sea. I find that lessons learned from environmental cooperation spilled over into the discussion of the legal status of the sea, which culminated in the signing of the Convention.

This article critically reviews the New Great Game image of the Caspian Sea region and the assumptions, concepts, and mechanisms (revolving around actors, aims, and motivations) this image is based on. More specifically, this review essay answers the following questions: How does the academic literature interpret the impact of competition between great powers on social, political and economic developments in the Caspian Sea region? Which actors are presented as the dominant players? The essay also introduces the existing criticism of the New Great Game concept and alternatives to it that have already been put forward. By identifying the gaps and limits of existing scholarship, this article offers new avenues for alternative theoretical and empirical interpretations. More specifically, this article argues that the New Great Game literature promotes unsystematic and shallow discussion as it ignores and misunderstands historical, material, political, economic, and normative differences in the Caspian Sea region. Within this discussion, actors, interests, identities, social contexts, and principles are taken to be fixed, i.e. not prone to change or to any sort of adjustment.

This paper seeks to explain Ukraine's natural gas and electricity sector reforms, to outline the challenges facing these two sectors going forwards and to identify prospects for renewables. It makes three core arguments: First, the regulatory templates promoted by the European Union do not lend themselves to swift implementation. This is because the EU's approach has been supply-driven, in the sense that it exports regulatory templates already developed within the EU; it is not, therefore, a suitable problemsolving measure for a crisis-stricken country with limited capacities and powerful vested interests. Second, there has been very slow progress made in innovative and creative shifts in Ukrainian energy transition policy, showing a lack of commitment to the transformation and modernisation of energy systems that should in principle be based on the promotion of new business models backed up by reformed political, regulatory and industrial infrastructures. Third, Ukrainian elites have been formally open to the flow of rules as evidenced by a number of agreements concluded between the EU and Ukraine. But, in practice, the preexisting, deep-seated preferences of those elites have perpetuated the opaque gas trading system, resulting in them being very selective about the rules that they are actually prepared to adopt.

The Four-Day War of 2016 once again exposed the danger that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict poses in the Caucasus. However, despite its military scale and human losses, Russia has raised only general statements from other co-chairs of the osce (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) Minsk Group, from the United States and France, and from other international actors such as the United Nations Security Council. In an attempt to stimulate debate about this lack of engagement, this paper claims that the external actors involved aim to cast silence over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict beyond the region. While this approach may serve to remove the political impact of the conflict from the international arena, it unwittingly also enhances the aggressiveness of both Armenia and Azerbaijan in the regional arena. The main aim of this paper is, then, to explain why the conflict is being silenced, how this is made possible and what the regional effects of this approach are. By drawing on the Four-Day War of 2016, the paper intends to show how the recent violence has challenged the silencing of external actors.