With Frustrated Democracy in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan, historian Audrey Altstadt turns her focus to contemporary Azerbaijan. The author of two books on the history of Azerbaijan, few scholars are better equipped than Altstadt to take on the task of mapping independent Azerbaijan's path from struggling nascent democracy to intractably corrupt authoritarian regime.

Altstadt's focus is “Azerbaijan's post-Soviet path from a troubled but hopeful beginning of democracy-building to the reestablishment of authoritarianism behind a western façade” (6). She traces this path in seven chapters. The middle five each address discrete facets of Azerbaijan's post-Soviet trajectory, bookended by a chapter on the history and geopolitics of the region and a concluding chapter on where Azerbaijan might go from here.

In Chapter One, “History and Geopolitics and What They Tell Us,” Altstadt sketches a brief history of pre-independence Azerbaijan and makes the case for why the country today matters geopolitically. In her view of Azerbaijani history, Persian, Russian, and Soviet rule were unequivocally oppressive and despotic. With this premise, her history veers toward a nationalist narrative of Azerbaijan, assuming the immutable existence of a defined Azerbaijani nation across the centuries chafing for independence under successive foreign rulers. Her shift in focus to why Azerbaijan matters today places the narrative on firmer footing, however. Altstadt makes a convincing argument for Azerbaijan's geopolitical significance, with its unique combination of fossil fuels, critical borders, openness to military cooperation with the West, and friendly relations with Israel.

In the second chapter, “The Open Wound: Mountainous Karabakh and National Consciousness,” Altstadt addresses the country's widely-covered ongoing conflict with Armenia over the Karabakh region. Suggesting it is less of a frozen conflict than a “simmering cauldron” (42), she notes that while Azerbaijan's postwar economic success has allowed it to invest in military spending that rivals Armenia's entire state budget, war is bad for business, and “President Ilham Aliyev is primarily a business man” (45). Thus, she does not see the Azerbaijani leadership as likely to reignite the conflict. Altstadt also makes the point that many Azeris are intensely attached to the Karabakh region, part of the reason why it remains such a sensitive “open wound” for them. She unfortunately does not explore whether that attachment is based on Karabakh's genuine historical significance or is a result of a postwar narrative that has elevated the region in the historical memories of most Azerbaijanis.

Chapter Three traces the growth and decline of Azerbaijan's democratic opposition. Unlike the post-Soviet states in Central Asia, Azerbaijan's populace initially rejected the old guard of the political elite, forcing former Communist First Secretary Ayaz Mutalibov out of the presidency and electing opposition intellectual Albufez Elchibey in his place. In the face of mounting military losses to Armenia and the missteps of the political novices who nowsuddenly found themselves in office, the success of Elchibey and his movement, the Popular Front, was short lived. This allowed former Azerbaijani Soviet leader Heydar Aliyev to arrive in Baku from his self-imposed exile in Nakhichevan and relieve Elchibey of the presidency, steering the new republic away from democratization. Altstadt then charts the rather feckless reactions of Western organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Parliamentary Assemble of the Council of Europe, to the Azerbaijani government's blatant election rigging and suppression tactics against the opposition. Altstadt follows this thread through the remainder of the book, showing how Western powers have consistently looked past Azerbaijan's domestic political situation out of deference to its importance to regional stability and the value of its oil reserves.

In Chapter Four, Altstadt looks at Azerbaijan's oil industry and cogently untangles the webs of corruption and nepotism that drive the country's economy, from its telecom industry to gold mining. Even a reader well acquainted with contemporary Azerbaijani politics might find him or herself overwhelmed by the many names and complex familial and patronage relationships Altstadt meticulously records in this chapter.

In the fifth chapter, Altstadt discusses the increasing repression of youth activism and civil society since 2010, most famously with the arrests of the “donkey bloggers,” revealing the government's fear of youth organization along the lines of what had been seen in Georgia and Ukraine before the color revolutions. This oppression only increased in 2014 following the 2013 presidential election, the first that Ilham Aliyev won following the rescission of term limits. Starting in 2014, journalists, activists, opposition politicians, and Islamists began to be methodically arrested on trumped up charges of hooliganism, drug possession, and tax evasion. Despite condemnations from Human Rights Watch and several rulings by the European Court of Human Rights calling for the release of arrested individuals, Azerbaijan has continued to jail dissidents and activists.

Frustrated Democracy's final thematic chapter, “Allah-u Akbar: Islam in Azerbaijan–Piety, Politics, and the Future,” is its most important contribution to the study of contemporary Azerbaijan. With the exception of some journal articles, this topic has received little scholarly treatment. Altstadt discusses the increasing identification with Islam that Azerbaijani citizens have expressed since independence. Paired with a largely absent native practice of Islam after years of Soviet rule, this has allowed both Iranian Shiite and Gulf-backed Salafi evangelizers to influence resurgent religious engagement in Azerbaijan. The government has reacted by closing mosques and arresting influential clerics. Altstadt shows that Islamists in Azerbaijan have faced harsher repression than secular opposition figures have. Nearly half of all political prisoners come from their ranks, and they serve prison sentences often ranging 11–12 years, twice as long as the typical sentencing period for journalists and activists.

Altstadt concludes by speculating on Azerbaijan's future. The wildcard for this, she posits, is the price of oil. Plunging prices could exacerbate extant problems with unemployment and income inequality, leading to a restive populace. Musing on Azerbaijan's “tough neighborhood” dilemma (226), Altstadt acknowledges its potential future realignment with Russia and Iran, drawing it farther from Western influence, though she wisely does not offer any concrete predictions.

Frustrated Democracy in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan is a welcome addition to the scholarship on contemporary Azerbaijan. It will come as informative reading to any scholar, diplomat, or government official engaging with the South Caucasus.