Dr. Aijan Sharshenova studied political science and international relations at the Centre International de Formation Européenne and the Institut für Europäische Politik at Berlin, and University of Leeds, UK. She has worked for the Middle East and North Africa Office of the International Peace Institute at Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain, as well as in democracy and development assistance projects in Kyrgyzstan.

Dr. Gordon Crawford is a Research Professor of Global Development at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University, UK.

"This book provides a very timely and well-informed analysis of the effectiveness of EU democracy promotion efforts in Central Asia. It goes beyond existing accounts by offering a holistic picture of the state of affairs on the ground, accounting not only for the EU but also for local and wider regional contexts. In doing so, it acknowledges that a variety of factors affect external democracy promotion and that their impact can vary as international, regional, and domestic conditions change. Through a comparative case study of EU democracy promotion in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the book convincingly demonstrates that EU democracy promotion has not been successful in these two target countries and masterfully identifies EU-related, local, and regional factors that help to explain this."—Fabienne Bossuyt, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Ghent University, Belgium